I have been warning the world about the dangers of dual use
18 of digital technologies since 2011.
19 After the FuturICT flagship was turned down, I got concerned and started to alert the public.
20 In the years since 2013, hundreds of
newspaper articles appeared (these can be found with Google News). I have given
several hundred talks, which were uploaded to the FuturICT youtube channel
21 (but
not all of them are publicly accessible). I have also published dozens of blogs (see
http://futurict.blogspot.com), many of which appeared in two books entitled
“Thinking Ahead”
22 and “Towards Digital Enlightenment”.
23
Furthermore, I have worked on the self-published book “The Automation of
Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution”,
24 which is written for a
scientifically interested readership that is open to philosophical, ethical and programmatic considerations. The 10 chapters from 2015 (Chaps. 1–5 and 7–11) have
become the core of this book with the title Next Civilization, but I have added 4 new
chapters that were written in 2019 (Chap. 14) and 2020 (Chaps. 6, 12 and 13). For
the sake of historical authenticity, I left the previous chapters largely unchanged.
From today’s perspective, it is hard to imagine that the 2015 version of the book
was highly controversial. At that time, a global digital control system was in the
making. My alternative vision of the future, based on distributed organization,
coordination, self-organization, and self-governance, fundamentally questioned the
data-driven paradigm controlled by a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI).
At that time, many were looking forward to the “singularity”, after which we
would see a superintelligent system or “digital God,”
25 which may be allowed to
reign the world like a “benevolent dictator”,
26 based on mass surveillance data. It
could also be tasked to make the world sustainable. Unfortunately, the Artificial
Intelligence system may figure out that a “depopulation strategy” might “fix the
18
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology.
19
See the second part of D. Helbing and S. Balietti, From social data mining to forecasting
socio-economic crises, EPJ Special Topics 195, 3–68 (2011) https://link.springer.com/article/10.
1140/epjst/e2011-01401-8.
20
Probably the first contribution of this kind was “Google als Gott?”, published in the NZZ on
March 20, 2013, https://www.nzz.ch/startseite/google-als-gott-1.18049950; English translation:
Google as God?, in D. Helbing (ed.) Thinking Ahead (Springer, 2015) Chap. 8, https://www.
springerprofessional.de/en/google-as-god-opportunities-and-risks-of-the-information-age/2369816,
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.3271.
21
See https://www.youtube.com/futurict.
22
D. Helbing (ed.) Thinking Ahead: Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory
Market Society (Springer, 2015).
23
D. Helbing (ed.) Towards Digital Enlightenment: Essays on the Dark and Light Sides of the
Digital Revolution (Springer, 2019).
24
D. Helbing, The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution
(CreateSpace, 2015).
25
Google and the Birth of a Digital God?, The Globalist (December 25, 2017) https://www.
theglobalist.com/google-artificial-intelligence-big-data-technology-future/.
26
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship.
Prologue
xi
18 of digital technologies since 2011.
19 After the FuturICT flagship was turned down, I got concerned and started to alert the public.
20 In the years since 2013, hundreds of
newspaper articles appeared (these can be found with Google News). I have given
several hundred talks, which were uploaded to the FuturICT youtube channel
21 (but
not all of them are publicly accessible). I have also published dozens of blogs (see
http://futurict.blogspot.com), many of which appeared in two books entitled
“Thinking Ahead”
22 and “Towards Digital Enlightenment”.
23
Furthermore, I have worked on the self-published book “The Automation of
Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution”,
24 which is written for a
scientifically interested readership that is open to philosophical, ethical and programmatic considerations. The 10 chapters from 2015 (Chaps. 1–5 and 7–11) have
become the core of this book with the title Next Civilization, but I have added 4 new
chapters that were written in 2019 (Chap. 14) and 2020 (Chaps. 6, 12 and 13). For
the sake of historical authenticity, I left the previous chapters largely unchanged.
From today’s perspective, it is hard to imagine that the 2015 version of the book
was highly controversial. At that time, a global digital control system was in the
making. My alternative vision of the future, based on distributed organization,
coordination, self-organization, and self-governance, fundamentally questioned the
data-driven paradigm controlled by a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI).
At that time, many were looking forward to the “singularity”, after which we
would see a superintelligent system or “digital God,”
25 which may be allowed to
reign the world like a “benevolent dictator”,
26 based on mass surveillance data. It
could also be tasked to make the world sustainable. Unfortunately, the Artificial
Intelligence system may figure out that a “depopulation strategy” might “fix the
18
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology.
19
See the second part of D. Helbing and S. Balietti, From social data mining to forecasting
socio-economic crises, EPJ Special Topics 195, 3–68 (2011) https://link.springer.com/article/10.
1140/epjst/e2011-01401-8.
20
Probably the first contribution of this kind was “Google als Gott?”, published in the NZZ on
March 20, 2013, https://www.nzz.ch/startseite/google-als-gott-1.18049950; English translation:
Google as God?, in D. Helbing (ed.) Thinking Ahead (Springer, 2015) Chap. 8, https://www.
springerprofessional.de/en/google-as-god-opportunities-and-risks-of-the-information-age/2369816,
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1304.3271.
21
See https://www.youtube.com/futurict.
22
D. Helbing (ed.) Thinking Ahead: Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory
Market Society (Springer, 2015).
23
D. Helbing (ed.) Towards Digital Enlightenment: Essays on the Dark and Light Sides of the
Digital Revolution (Springer, 2019).
24
D. Helbing, The Automation of Society Is Next: How to Survive the Digital Revolution
(CreateSpace, 2015).
25
Google and the Birth of a Digital God?, The Globalist (December 25, 2017) https://www.
theglobalist.com/google-artificial-intelligence-big-data-technology-future/.
26
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictatorship.
Prologue
xi