Democracy vs. the machine
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A good read from today's The Guardian...
Democracy v the machine: the birth of the digital age and the warnings that were ignored
It goes without saying that we continue to ignore the warnings concerning AI.
The digital revolution didn’t have to play out the way it did in the realm of politics and government; it played out the way it did because of the failure of liberal democracy to limit corporate power over politics and government, its failure to heed decades of warnings about the dangers of an automated state.
“the computer revolution is conspicuously silent about its own ends”. And, as Winner saw it, little evidence supported any of these computopian predictions. So far, “current developments in the information age suggest an increase in power by those who already had a great deal of power, an enhanced centralisation of control by those already prepared for control, an augmentation of wealth by the already wealthy.” He was shouting into a void.
The article mentions Lewis Mumford's "The Myth of the Machine". In my earlier years in NYC I would visit The Strand (bookstore) frequently. One of many purchases was this book. I just ran upstairs to see if I still had it... pretty sure I kept it all these years. Yep. I think I'll reread it.
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