On Artificial Intelligence
Lewis Thomas · New England Journal of Medicine · 1980
The most profoundly depressing of all ideas about the future of the human species is the concept of artificial intelligence. The ambition that human beings will ultimately cap their success as evolutionary overachievers by manufacturing computers of such complexity and ingenuity as to be smarter than they are, and that these devices will take over and run the place for human betterment or perhaps, later on, for machine betterment, strikes me as wrong in a deep sense, maybe even evil. Until now, computers have had the look of useful, often indispensable tools; you can't run banks or hospitals or department . . .