A month ago, fellow Michigan Review writer, Sam Wallace, published an article regarding the inevitable rise of technology and why we shouldn’t be worried. I sighed in relief for about three weeks; that is, until Blade Runner 2049 forced me to reconsider a more serious interpretation of artificial intelligence. Sam’s arguments are sound if AI remains within the context of automation, but what happens if AI entails more than just highly capable, economy-breaking machines?
Like what Aesop’s fables are to children, dystopian science fiction are to geeks in how they provide alluring, cautionary tales. These tales focus on a specific aspect of human arrogance, which is blown up into a worst case scenario.