286
14 Summary: What’s Wrong with AI?
AlphaZero managed to outperform AlphaGo without human training shortly later,
just by playing Go a lot of times against itself, the German news journal Der Spiegel
wrote on October 29, 2017: “Gott braucht keine Lehrmeister”
1 [“God does not need
teachers.”].
14.1.1 AI as God?
This was around the time when Anthony Levandovski (*1980), a former head of
Google’s self-driving car project, founded a religion that worships an AI God.
2 By
that time, many considered Google to be almost all-knowing. With the Google Loon
project, they were also working on omni-presence. Omnipotence was still a bit of a
challenge, but as the world learned by the end of 2015, it was possible to manipulate
people’s attention, opinions, emotions, decisions, and behaviors with personalized
information.
3 In a sense, our brains had been hacked. However, only in summer 2017
did a previous member of a Google control room, Tristan Harris (*1984), reveal in his
TED talk “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day”.
4
At the same time, Google was trying to build superintelligent systems and to become
something like an emperor over life and death, namely with its Calico project.
5
1 Ein Gott braucht keine Lehrmeister, SPIEGEL (October 29. 2017) https://www.spiegel.de/wissen
schaft/technik/kuenstliche-intelligenz-gott-braucht-keine-lehrmeister-kolumne-a-1175130.html.
2 The engineer at the center of a bombshell Uber lawsuit has founded a religion that warships an
AI god, Business Insider (September 27, 2017) https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levand
owski-religion-worships-ai-god-report-2017-9; Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence
(November 15, 2017). https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-intelligencereligion/.
3 Das Digital-Manifest: Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur, Spektrum der Wissenschaft
(November 12, 2015) https://www.spektrum.de/thema/das-digital-manifest/1375924, in English:
Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? Scientific American (February 25,
2017) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-democracy-survive-big-data-and-artificialintelligence/.
4 Tristan Harris, How a handful of tech companies controls billions of minds every day, (July 28,
2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730.
5 Google’s project to ‘cure death,’ Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center, The Verge
(September 3, 2014) https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6102377/google-calico-cure-death-1-5billion-research-abbvie.
14 Summary: What’s Wrong with AI?
AlphaZero managed to outperform AlphaGo without human training shortly later,
just by playing Go a lot of times against itself, the German news journal Der Spiegel
wrote on October 29, 2017: “Gott braucht keine Lehrmeister”
1 [“God does not need
teachers.”].
14.1.1 AI as God?
This was around the time when Anthony Levandovski (*1980), a former head of
Google’s self-driving car project, founded a religion that worships an AI God.
2 By
that time, many considered Google to be almost all-knowing. With the Google Loon
project, they were also working on omni-presence. Omnipotence was still a bit of a
challenge, but as the world learned by the end of 2015, it was possible to manipulate
people’s attention, opinions, emotions, decisions, and behaviors with personalized
information.
3 In a sense, our brains had been hacked. However, only in summer 2017
did a previous member of a Google control room, Tristan Harris (*1984), reveal in his
TED talk “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day”.
4
At the same time, Google was trying to build superintelligent systems and to become
something like an emperor over life and death, namely with its Calico project.
5
1 Ein Gott braucht keine Lehrmeister, SPIEGEL (October 29. 2017) https://www.spiegel.de/wissen
schaft/technik/kuenstliche-intelligenz-gott-braucht-keine-lehrmeister-kolumne-a-1175130.html.
2 The engineer at the center of a bombshell Uber lawsuit has founded a religion that warships an
AI god, Business Insider (September 27, 2017) https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levand
owski-religion-worships-ai-god-report-2017-9; Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence
(November 15, 2017). https://www.wired.com/story/anthony-levandowski-artificial-intelligencereligion/.
3 Das Digital-Manifest: Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur, Spektrum der Wissenschaft
(November 12, 2015) https://www.spektrum.de/thema/das-digital-manifest/1375924, in English:
Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? Scientific American (February 25,
2017) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-democracy-survive-big-data-and-artificialintelligence/.
4 Tristan Harris, How a handful of tech companies controls billions of minds every day, (July 28,
2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730.
5 Google’s project to ‘cure death,’ Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center, The Verge
(September 3, 2014) https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6102377/google-calico-cure-death-1-5billion-research-abbvie.