Will it destroy us, or will it save us? An age-old debate between tech optimists and tech pessimists that has played out over centuries as the steady march of human progress delivers new technologies, from the wheel to the printing press to the smartphone. Today it is a conversation being conducted with increasing urgency about artificial intelligence.
The optimists point out that history has proved the doomsayers wrong countless times. Take the printing press: the 15th-century Catholic church worried that the spread of information would undermine authority and stability across Europe; some intellectuals worried that information would be dangerous in the hands of the plebs; craft guilds opposed the democratisation of their skills via manuals. In the end the printing press did enable harms – the publication of a witch-hunting manual in 1486 paved the way for centuries of persecution of women suspected to be witches – but they were utterly dwarfed by its enlightenment benefits. Modern-day luddite is not a particularly attractive mantle, and at the first global AI safety summit, being hosted in the UK this week, there will be a lot of industry pressure on the politicians attending to drop the doomerism and join the cool gang.
