I just skimmed a few random pages of the book, and ran into this stunning passage:
Marx’s improbable claim that economic-material development will ultimately trump the need for elite human leaders may turn out to be a point on which he was right. What Marx failed to anticipate is that capitalism is driving economic-technological evolution towards the development of artificial intelligence. The advent of greater-than-human artificial intelligence is the decisive piece of the puzzle that Marx failed to account for. Not the working class [as Marx believed—V.], and not a human elite [as Lenin believed—V.], but superhuman intelligent machines may provide the conditions for “revolution”. [...] If this is correct, the first signs of evidence may be unprecedented levels of permanent unemployment as automation increasingly replaces human workers. While this development may begin to require a new form of socialism to sustain demand, artificial intelligence will ultimately provide an alternative to “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” [...] The creation of an artificial intelligence trillions of times greater than all human intelligence combined is not simply the advent of another shiny new gadget. The difference between Leninism-Stalinism and the potential of AI can be compared to the difference between Caesar and God.
The small part of the book I’ve seen so far sounds lucid and without any signs of craziness, and based on this passage, I would guess that there is whole lot of interesting stuff in there. I’ll try reading more as time permits.
I just skimmed a few random pages of the book, and ran into this stunning passage:
The small part of the book I’ve seen so far sounds lucid and without any signs of craziness, and based on this passage, I would guess that there is whole lot of interesting stuff in there. I’ll try reading more as time permits.