Jaron is a critical voice in the overall conversation that is and needs to occur. He is very bright and his thinking deep. Those who can not follow him might look at their own ability instead criticizing him. He is not someone who needs you to agree with him but he does seem to want people to actually think!
Jaron Lanier should be listened to: There are simply too few people who try to develop a deeper critique of the overwhelming mainstream view of the technical elite that is enamored with an idea of the "superiority" of current and future machine intelligence, and he does it without becoming a Luddite. It is him who represents rationality in the face of an increasing grip of a new type of religion and mythical thinking about AI as the solution for all remaining problems. These technocratic elitists like Google's bosses who joined Kurzweil's Singularity Church don't really understand - or are way too well paid to ignore - the tremendous downside of the "gentle" power of AI to make people adapt to something that is not human, and ultimately enslave the majority of humans, those who resist the "rationality" of machine logic. Compared to the superpowers of the globalized Big Data that build empires based on data mining and networking, and systematically expand their hegemony by holding network centrality, the rest of us are like indigenous people and forest dwellers who only have the choice to get either instrumentalized or expropriated and displaced - to make space for brutally exploiting actual mining companies.
...He helped invent the internet. He invented cyber reality. Also- the video cuts out far before his conclusion, but even in this intro, he says quite a bit. Maybe you should see a doctor and get your ears fixed.
yes..it's a very tempting idea for most people who love to give in to temptation..people that arte irressponsible, greedy, selfish and thoughtless..among them academic leaders as Jaron points out. This is very scary and very possible and very much on our doorstep. We must not buy into it but we must retain and honour our humanity
