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Mindless Machines, Mindless Myths
Erik J. Larson thinks about “Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” which traces Robert Skidelsky’s philosophical reckoning with AI, automation, and the illusion of progress.
Rather than Marx, however, Skidelsky turns to Keynes—who, in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, famously predicted that within a few generations, technological advancement would reduce work to a few token hours a day, leaving us free to enjoy a life of leisure. He dares to connect Marx and Keynes to DeepMind, to read the web as a distorted echo of 19th-century visions, and to treat our contemporary AI debates not as cutting-edge but as chapters in a much older story about human dependence on tools we don’t fully understand. The fire-and-brimstone idea is a clear inheritance from thousands of years of Judeo-Christian thought, through Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, through the Reformation and the grim message of Calvinism: that heaven has limited seating capacity, and the only way we can be confident we’re “chosen” is by showing worldly success through hard Puritanical work.
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