“I am afraid that the negative impact that social media have on people’s ability to directly communicate with each other and on civility in general, will be amplified and accelerated by advances in AI.
“I am very concerned that we will bring about a world depicted in E.M. Forster’s essay ‘The Machine Stops.’ Forster writes:
“‘Cannot you see … that it is we who are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills.’’’
This was written in November 2023 in reply to the question: Considering likely changes due to the proliferation of AI in individuals’ lives and in social, economic and political systems, how will life have changed by 2040? This and more than 150 additional responses are included in the report “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence by 2040”