Joseph Bernstein , The New York Times; It Makes Sense That People See A.I. as God
"More and more, when it comes to our relationships with A.I. and the complex algorithms that shape so much of our modern subjectivity, we have slipped into the language and habits of mind we normally reserve for deities. And even people who do not make an explicit connection between A.I. and religion engage a kind of religious mode around the new technology."
"A lot of people, myself included, are worried about where technology is taking the human race, and especially how we can stay human in an age of artificial intelligence.
But my guest this week thinks we’re not worried enough. That some kind of apocalypse is all but inevitable — if it isn’t already upon us. That what’s needed now are strategies of resistance, endurance and escape.
And he practices what he preaches, having retreated to the west of Ireland with his family — the better to keep them out of the clutches of what he calls the machine.
But he’s come back to us, for a time, bearing a prophetic message.
Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and a critic, an environmental activist and a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. His new book is “Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity.”
