New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle

Acknowledging the reality of nonhuman intelligence has deep implications for how we act in the world and requires clear thinking about our own behaviours, opportunities, and limitations. While machine intelligence is rapidly outstripping human performance in many disciplines, it is not the only way of thinking, and it is in many fields catastrophically destructive. Any strategy other than mindful, thoughtful cooperation is a form of disengagement: a retreat that cannot hold. We cannot reject contemporary technology any more than we can ultimately and utterly reject our neighbours in society and the world; we are all entangled. An ethics of cooperation in the present need not be limited to machines either: with other nonhuman entities, animate and non-animate, it becomes another form of stewardship, emphasising acts of universal justice not in an unknowable, uncomputable future, but in the here and now.