Hans Løken asked Eliot Peper:

Hi Eliot, I've read most of your books and greatly enjoy the mix of interesting characters, non-predictable plots and interesting take on technological challenges we may be facing in the near future. What is your thinking on current focus on AI development, potentially civilization-ending threat to humanity or something that will save us in the years to come? Cheers, Hans

Eliot Peper I don't think AI will end or save human civilization.

Hollywood often portrays AI as computer code that takes on a life of its own and (often) rebels against its makers. But for all our progress in machine learning, we have gotten no closer to understanding consciousness or endowing computers with it. Software can be incredibly powerful, but it remains code: intricate recipes that networks of silicon chips execute on our behalf.

So instead of a potential robot overlord or robot savior, I see AI as a profoundly transformative tool like writing, contraception, the steam engine, the printing press, railroads, antibiotics, etc. Each of those technologies changed the course of history and the shape of civilization in fascinating ways, but trains didn't become our overlords nor did printers become our saviors.

What did they do? They gave us power—radically increasing human agency and the leverage of individual action. In doing so, they amplified the best and worst aspects of human nature, allowing us to dramatically decrease child mortality and to destroy entire cities with a single bomb.

The most interesting thing about AI isn't AI itself, but its consequences. Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose? How does it change our relationship with the world, each other, and ourselves?

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