By: Jill Lepore
This is an excellent book. It is well written and an easy read. Although there is much overlap with the other two books I recently read and reviewed (The Nerd Reich and Techofeudalism), Lepore provides more detailed background and history of what appears to have motivated the careers of the tech billionaires. For example, books and articles I have read on this subject all point to how science fiction influenced their thinking. Lepore essentially provides a thesis on the global history of this kind of science fiction, starting with automatons, then robots, bots and generative AI, most leading to our ultimate destruction, and for us the same, after the creation of an Artificial State.
The author defines the Artificial State as having one effect on the “twenty-first century merchant princes” (like Theil, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and others), and another effect on the rest of us: “a future in which humans are ruled, and many replaced by machines, owned by corporations,” owned in turn by the tech guys. The book, as others, makes the point these guys claim they are on a frantic drive to save democracy and the world, but doing so by facilitating AI development and implementation these guys believe will destroy us all. There appears to be a recognition that once the Artificial State is realized, the planet will be mostly uninhabitable. Having separated humans from nature (which has mostly been destroyed), and then from one another, instead of the “democratic governance of technology” we will have the “technological governance of humans.”
Besides the in-depth dive into the development of fiction surrounding man making machines to serve man, and having these machines turn on us and take over the world, the book covers a fair amount of law and philosophy. Lepore uses Hannah Arendt’s experience in Europe during the rise of fascism, where she warns that to “replace the natural with the artificial is to repudiate the Earth itself.” Philosophical discussion leads to interesting legal considerations, such as a review of the history of personhood in this country, and its development over time to include not only other humans, but discussions of whether animals, forests, and streams should be included as artificial persons (like corporations). It will not be long before AI finds its way into the public discussion as well.
In the end, Lepore makes the point, as fantastic as it sounds, that these billionaire geniuses, instead of using science fiction for entertainment and inspiration, they used it as a business plan to guide their research and development. And what of the dreaded robot apocalypse? Many of these same spoiled, arrogant tech brats have an escape plan. Jeff Bezos plans to escape to space. Elon Musk plans to colonize Mars. Peter Theil will escape to his bunker in New Zealand, and Mark Zuckerberg will find refuge in the Metaverse.
I was hoping that the book would end on a more positive note. After all, the title suggests the rise and fall of the Artificial State. No such luck. By the very end of the book, Lepore writes that AI is a construct and, as a construct, it can be deconstructed. Well, dah. That is certainly true. But I expected the exposure of some fatal flaw in the design that would make its termination, or at least the need for government oversight, obvious and more compelling that it already is. What we get instead, in the Epilogue, is more in the form of a warning – don’t tether yourself to a computer; don’t cut down all the trees; maintain a connection to nature. She ends on a biblical quote from Job 12:7-9, imploring us to seek advice from nature, not machines. It may have done better as a warning to end with an earlier quote from Ecclesiastes 3:19, where we are admonished to see our fates tied inextricably to the fate of beasts – “as the one dieth, so does the other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man has no preeminence above the beast: for all is vanity.” This is a perfect characterization of the current group defined by Lepore as “merchant princes.” Maybe that is what they were at one time, but I prefer Harari’s description of them as a new class of people aspiring to become, or believe they already are, Homo Dei.