Lanier was the only child of Jewish parents who knew all about inhumanity. In other words, a responsibility to act morally and humanely. Lanier says the more sophisticated technology becomes, the more damage we can do with it, and the more we have a “responsibility to sanity”. Death by insanity doesn’t sound too appealing, and it can come in many forms – from world leaders or terrorists screwing with global security AI to being driven bonkers by misinformation or bile on Twitter. To me the danger is that we’ll use our technology to become mutually unintelligible or to become insane if you like, in a way that we aren’t acting with enough understanding and self-interest to survive, and we die through insanity, essentially.” “From my perspective,” he says, “the danger isn’t that a new alien entity will speak through our technology and take over and destroy us. At its simplest, digital technology works in a on/off way, like the keys on a keyboard, and lacks the endless variety of a saxophone or human voice. Often he has used music to explain the genius and limitations of tech. In his other life, he is a professional contemporary classical musician – a brilliant player of rare and ancient instruments. Lanier’s backdrop is full of musical instruments, including a row of ouds hanging from the ceiling. There’s nothing Lanier likes more than showing technology can go wrong, especially when operated by an incompetent at the other end. But the technology isn’t working in the most basic sense. We meet on Microsoft’s videoconference platform Teams so that he can show a recent invention of his that enables us to appear in the same room together even though we are thousands of miles apart. In books such as You Are Not a Gadget and Ten Reasons For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts, he argues that the internet is deadening personal interaction, stifling inventiveness and perverting politics. He is also one of the most distinctive men on the planet – a raggedy prophet with ginger dreads, a startling backstory, an eloquence to match his gargantuan brain and a giggle as alarming as it is life-enhancing.Īlthough a tech guru in his own right, his mission is to champion the human over the digital – to remind us we created the machines, and artificial intelligence is just what it says on the tin. He is both insider (he works at Microsoft as an interdisciplinary scientist, although he makes it clear that today he is talking on his own behalf) and outsider (he has constantly, and presciently, exposed the dangers the web presents). Lanier, 62, has worked alongside many of the web’s visionaries and power-brokers. There’s plenty left to worry about: human extinction remains a distinct possibility if we abuse AI, and even if it’s of our own making, the end result is no prettier. Hehehehe!” But he doesn’t want us to get complacent. Flush because I’m embarrassed, smile because I’m relieved. Of course it can, and yet we don’t say that the car has become a better runner.” “It’s like saying a car can go faster than a human runner. “This idea of surpassing human ability is silly because it’s made of human abilities.” He says comparing ourselves with AI is the equivalent of comparing ourselves with a car. Lanier doesn’t even like the term artificial intelligence, objecting to the idea that it is actually intelligent, and that we could be in competition with it.
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