Is AI inevitable? Jill Lepore says no

In late September, amid mounting warnings about the risks of AI, the CEOs of six of the world’s most powerful technology companies signed an agreement on artificial intelligence. U.S. President Donald Trump called the accord “morally binding”. But it isn’t legally binding – it’s essentially a pledge from the world’s biggest tech companies to police themselves.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore has a name for this: the “artificial state”. A world run not by democratically elected governments, but by the billionaires who control technology companies.

Lepore’s new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, explains how we got here, why she thinks it can’t last, and how the public can push back.  

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