"The Robots Are Already Here and They're Called Corporations"
Isabelle Roughol
Building news organisations where people love to work｜Journalist & media executive｜Public historian
PARIS – As a child, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, read science fiction. He dreamed of a future where artificial intelligence was a part of life. He thought then that when courts started giving rights to robots, that future would be realized. Lo and behold, here we are.
Don't ask when it will happen, it's already happened. The robots are already here and they're called corporations."
This assertion is bold, but think of finance, commodities trading, automated manufacturing, Amazon warehouses... There are many jobs today that humans cannot apply for.
A computer can make decisions, buy cloud space, reproduce itself, generate revenue — and pay a board of humans to represent it, Berners-Lee explained. "It can do all the things that people can do," he adds. "And when it wants to defend its own interests, it can mobilize a lot more ressources."
With Citizens United, the US Supreme Court gave the rights of people to corporations. And corporations are increasingly run by robots. While Berners-Lee chuckles when he says he's "very scared," you can feel a shudder going through the collective spine of the LeWeb audience. A nervousness that expresses itself in laughter and clapping.
And Berners-Lee, his mind going even faster than his extremely rapid tongue, leaves it there.
I'm still grappling with these 5 minutes of TBL brilliance. What do you think? Do corporations express the will of the people that compose them or have they grown into something else? What do we stand to gain or lose from artificial intelligence working its way into the workplace? Have we created a monster we can't control? Comment away.
(For the rest of TBL's talk, on privacy and building the Web we want, read here.)
Administrador en Daguidui
9 年The article is incredible. It shows with clarity that corporations are really machines very difficult to disconnet. These corporations are not interacting and are not behaviour like humans-
Author, SBPRA, freelance feature articles
9 年Corporations with humans sitting in chairs is close to a robot. Corporations survive at the cost of humans. Corporations succeed due to use of humans. All of the above comments are interesting.
Administrador en Daguidui
9 年Very interesting. The corporations really seems to behavior like machines. They aren't humans at least.
Front End Developer at Ryze UK
9 年Corporations express the will of those in control of them. Those that compose them are as replaceable as the tissues in the bathroom and thought of in the same light. We have already gained a lot from AI in the workplace and will continue to do so. If it were not for the constant money grab by those in positions of power AI in all its incarnations would allow equal achievement but with many less hours of input per person. Instead it is used to reduce a corporation's expenditure on staff. We have not and will not create a monster we can not control. We have the opportunity to change society. We should not be scared of AI... we should be scared of the corporate power structures that control society. AI can be our saviour if we start thinking about people not money.