My Take | America’s billionaire tech bros are bringing us closer to the end times
Whether it’s the Antichrist, the eugenic need to propagate smart babies to colonise Mars, or Cold War rhetoric against China, they are imposing eccentric and often dangerous ideas on the public
CEOs all used to wear suits and ties like uniforms, and focus only on their own business when speaking in public. The late Steve Jobs was considered radical for promoting Apple products while wearing turtlenecks and jeans.
These days though, when it comes to billionaire tech bros, there are no attire restrictions, and no subjects are off bounds. In fact, there are no such things as core competencies. Since they are good in some tech fields, many think they are geniuses over everything else. Not only are they not shy about sharing their pearls of wisdom, but are more than willing to use their power and influence stemming from unimaginable wealth to impose them on the public.
Just as many think there are no limits to their supreme intellects, some of the most powerful tech bros also think the same about general artificial intelligence. They have let loose their personal beliefs, which are not only eccentric but sometimes downright dangerous.
Christian tech billionaire Peter Thiel, whose extensive network spans not only Silicon Valley but also Washington and the White House of Donald Trump, has declared people who attempt to regulate or merely criticise the AI industry as “legionnaires of the Antichrist”, according to The Washington Post.
His claim came from his latest off-the-record lectures titled, “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series”, delivered to a restricted audience, but the audios were secretly obtained and reported on by multiple news outlets in the US. So he wasn’t speaking metaphorically but was literally referring to the mark of the beast from the Apocalypse.
Whether Christian or secular, this view of AI and tech in general among the tech bros is called accelerationism, meaning come what may, there should be no checks or regulations on their development. No captains of industry like regulations, but this is libertarian extremism. I sometimes wonder whether this isn’t the reason behind their obsession with general AI, that is, systems that supposedly mimic human intelligence by exhibiting the flexibility and resourcefulness of human expertise, but with the speed and efficiency of computers.