Publishers Weekly
★ 09/04/2023
Artificial intelligence promises to extend the mechanical and impersonal character of life that states and corporations already impose on society, according to this searching meditation on creeping dehumanization. Cambridge University political scientist Runciman (How Democracy Ends) focuses on the rise from the 17th century onward of modern states and corporations that aggregate ordinary people into grand, machine-like “artificial persons” with superhuman capacities: these complex systems can pursue projects and purposes that outlive humans, and process vast amounts of data and make decisions that would befuddle or stymie individuals. At their best, such systems make life safe, predictable, and comfortable—and at their worst, they start world wars and wreak havoc on the environment. Later chapters survey the upheavals that might stem from advances in AI, including human obsolescence and killer robots. Runciman’s approach to these issues is less technological than social and psychological, and gets at a profound truth about hypermodernity: that it’s not about the replacement of humans by digital technology, but a submergence of individuality in aggregated, collective systems that’s been going on for centuries. Runciman conveys all this in clear-eyed, mordant prose, writing that “in a world of human-like machines, built by machine-like versions of human beings... to fixate on the human would be a mistake, because the merely human will be relatively powerless.” The result is a shrewd and stimulating look at society’s drive toward an inhuman perfection. (Nov.)
New Yorker - Gideon Lewis-Kraus
"[W]itty and refined . . . Runciman’s basic argument, which unfolds in the elegantly shaggy manner of a Peripatetic seminar, is that the alignment problem is not in fact an anomaly, and that the coming singularity might best be historicized as the Second Singularity. . . . he turns a standard argumentative form on its head. It’s not that we can look to the past to help us solve the alignment problems of the future. It’s that the alignment problems of the future help clarify our existing sense that everything is intractable and wrong. . . . Runciman’s point is that the alliance between even a democratic government and a safe-ish A.I. could derail civilization."
New Statesman (UK)
"Surely one of the most luminously intelligent [writers] on politics to have been published for many years."
Adam Tooze
"David Runciman is always fascinating."
Jill Lepore
"Amid a headlong international panic about a looming robot insurrection, David Runciman offers a searching history of earlier takeovers by other artificial creatures of our own making—states and corporations—and a stirring call for a new and fortified commitment to all that is human."
Anne Applebaum
"One of the great modern writers of democracy."
Financial Times - John Thornhill
"Ingenious . . . a well-informed and provocative read about the essence of political power."
Kirkus Reviews
2023-09-15
A philosophically charged critique of the use of AI in the hands of human actors.
As Cambridge political scientist Runciman notes, machines may take over eventually, and perhaps in two phases: the First Singularity, where they do our work for us, and the Second Singularity, where they do our thinking for us and discover that humans are disposable. But note the order of the players in the subtitle: Corporations and states are “both like and unlike AIs and other kinds of artificial agents,” and it is unlikely that AIs will be able to achieve world mastery without the guidance of corporations and governments to which we have ceded so much power—and more likely the latter, since corporations as such are likely to evolve or disappear. “It’s not a question of us versus them,” writes Runciman of those artificial agents. “It’s a question of which of them gives us the best chance of still being us.” That question turns on many elements, including the nature of capitalism. Will it be a predatory capitalism, a capitalism that sees little growth (the author cites Brazil and Italy as modern examples), or a capitalism that has evolved to value its human actors? That’s anyone’s guess, but, perhaps comfortingly to some, Runciman argues that the much-touted digital revolution has produced little of lasting value: “Can the iPhone’s contribution to the sum of human well-being compete even with the humble washing machine?” Another aspect is whether the state, perhaps the most critical player in the author’s trinity, is going to side with humans or with AI. Perhaps comfortingly to all but the bots, he suggests that despite the state’s artificial characteristics, it’s humans that “are the source of its ability to function.” We may have a chance, after all.
A thoughtful, learned contribution to the fevered conversation now surrounding AI.
