David Runciman & Helen Lewis

David Runciman | How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs

Recorded: Sun 19 Nov 2023

Duration: 1hr

David Runciman | How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs

Winter Festival 2023

Silicon Valley believes that eventually we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. David Runciman believes that this happened a few hundred years ago when humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer, and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago – and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency. 

 In conversation with journalist and author Helen Lewis

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