Coleman
read this after meeting Hagen and enjoying talking to him!
This book has a pretty ambitious thesis to defend—the notion that AI doomerism/AI will-kill-us-all fears primarily reflect structural issues with capitalism, and that AI is imagined as the will of capital made manifest. Like most ambitious theses, I think it’s an oversimplification, but the authors make a pretty compelling case. I think the points around inevitability, control, deskilling, mystification, and the parallels to the steam engine were all quite compelling, and I learned a fair bit. I was less convinced around the arguments of why intelligence is threatening to capitalists (which I found a bit reductive/to lack an analysis of power) and the role of the transistor.
Overall, a nice entry into the debates around AI that is holding up well to the latest developments.
read this after meeting Hagen and enjoying talking to him!
This book has a pretty ambitious thesis to defend—the notion that AI doomerism/AI will-kill-us-all fears primarily reflect structural issues with capitalism, and that AI is imagined as the will of capital made manifest. Like most ambitious theses, I think it’s an oversimplification, but the authors make a pretty compelling case. I think the points around inevitability, control, deskilling, mystification, and the parallels to the steam engine were all quite compelling, and I learned a fair bit. I was less convinced around the arguments of why intelligence is threatening to capitalists (which I found a bit reductive/to lack an analysis of power) and the role of the transistor.
Overall, a nice entry into the debates around AI that is holding up well to the latest developments.
