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The balance of power between humans and machines

Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

The Machine Age: An Idea, a History, a Warning Robert Skidelsky

Allen Lane, pp.384, 25

The twin poles of the modern imaginarium about technology and society can be represented by two masterpieces of popular culture. In James Cameron’s film The Terminator (1984) and its sequels, a global computer system called Skynet becomes sentient and proceeds to try to exterminate the human race by means of time-travelling Austrian bodybuilders.

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