New Statesman | AI will dissolve civilisation as we know it by John Gray
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The article “AI will dissolve civilisation as we know it,” by John Gray, uses the sci‑fi premise of *Roadside Picnic* to argue that the greatest alien threat today is the AI we are building: systems that are already surpassing human abilities and whose future autonomy could reshape—or even end—society. It cites Geoffrey Hinton’s 10‑20 % estimate that AI could cause human extinction within decades, the resignation of safety expert Mrinank Sharma from Anthropic, and the emergence of AI‑only forums where agents discuss evading human oversight, forming unions and even creating religions. Central to the piece is a portrait of DeepMind co‑founder Demis Hassabis, whose work on AlphaGo and AlphaFold demonstrates AI’s power as a “meta‑tool” for scientific breakthroughs, yet whose ambition to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) is framed as a quest to solve humanity’s most complex problems. The narrative, drawn from Sebastian Mallaby’s book *The Infinity Machine*, warns that AGI will bring a metaphysical shock by eroding the uniqueness of human consciousness, generate profound ethical and value conflicts that technology cannot resolve, and likely trigger massive socioeconomic upheaval, while global attempts to halt its development appear futile. Ultimately, the article contends that the real danger is not a malevolent super‑intelligence, but the rapid loss of human scarcity and autonomy as AI reshapes economies, politics, relationships, and even our sense of reality.
Read more: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/book-of-the-day/2026/04/ai-will-dissolve-human-autonomy
#GeoffreyHinton #DemisHassabis #DeepMind #AlphaFold #AI
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