FREEDOM IS JUST A WORD

John Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) ("There is no reason to expect technological innovation to stop or slow. As we are forever being reminded, the advance of knowledge is now an exponential process. Some believe computers will soon pass the Turing test . . . and display intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of humans. . . . " "The inherent tendency of this wave of technological innovation seems to be to render the human majority superfluous in the process of production. In a more remote future envisioned by techno-enthusiasts, human redundancy could be more complete. There is no way even a small elite will be able to keep up with the development of artificial intelligence. In the longer run the only rational course of action will be to reconstruct the humans that remain so that they more closely resemble machines. A technologically enhanced species will join in in the ongoing evolutionary advance. As for the remnants that are left behind, human obsolescence is a part of progress." Id. at 108-109.).