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In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.
The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality. Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse—irrelevance.
Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better.
Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.
Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore.6 This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.
But liberalism has no obvious answers to the biggest problems we face: ecological collapse and technological disruption.
Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.
One of the nastiest experiments in the history of the social sciences was conducted in December 1970 on a group of students at the Princeton Theological Seminary, who were training to become ministers in the Presbyterian Church.
Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth. Even more alarmingly, the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion.
Consequently, people live ever more lonely lives in an ever more connected planet. Many of the social and political disruptions of our time can be traced back to this malaise.
People estranged from their bodies, senses, and physical environment are likely to feel alienated and disoriented. Pundits often blame such feelings of alienation on the decline of religious and national bonds, but losing touch with your body is probably more important.
Humans lived for millions of years without churches and without nation-states; they can probably live happily without them in the twenty-first century too.
