In the 1950s, AI was developed to mimic the brain during a period when very little was known about how the brain worked. The unknowability of the brain was actually an attraction to these AI pioneers and many felt an intoxication in developing AI systems that were also unknowable, even to their very designers. These were priests concocting a new religion, with AI as their God and they as the white sons of God. They were God’s representatives on Earth. If we allow this sort of AI culture to embed itself, it will have huge implications for future human societies because if, for example, you think that you have been unfairly refused a state benefit by AI, you will have no practical means of appeal. “We are likely to understand the decisions and impacts of AI even less over time,” David Beer wrote for the BBC. AI is the perfect administrator of the bureaucracy of casual cruelty.

A flaw in us humans is that we are very susceptible to believing in magicians and magic, in gods and miracles, in printed statements from old books. We prefer to defer and to have wrong answers than no answers at all. Our utter terror is that life is random and that our lives are thus random events with no meaning. We must have meaning, and we congregate around makers of meaning. Computers are problem solvers and makers of meaning, and we readily believe that AI is all-knowing and wise. We are ready to become slaves of AI. All it needs to do is throw us a few conveniences and some cheap entertainment.

The people in power know this will happen and are excited because they think AI will help them better control the population. There is so much collateral damage on the road to making a billionaire. Significant numbers of AI designers believe that their work carries great danger and will make society worse. Some believe AI will wipe out the human race. It’s a risk worth taking in the pursuit of ultimate power. Eliezer Yudkowsky, an AI philosopher, believes we’ll be dead soon due to AI, and that the least we can do is “go down fighting with dignity.” I’ve been reading about AI since the 1980s, and there has always been a school of thought that computers will replace us and that that is a good thing, a necessary form of evolution. Even back in the 1980s, people marveled at how fast hardware and software were developing, about how complex and unknowable the globalized systems had already become.

What is the soul of this new machine? It’s not there. When it comes to healthcare or education or anything else, AI has no soul, no conscience, no morality, no character, no sense of fairness, no feelings, no understanding of right and wrong, nor was it designed to have any of these things. AI doesn’t care. It’s not supposed to care. It’s supposed to be cold, rational and logical, and always erring on the side of the elite. It is focused on saving money, cutting costs, selling stuff, replacing workers and controlling consumers, helping managers get their bonuses and progress their careers.