Are we, the masses of mankind, doomed to become useless appendages to our technological creations? Will artificial intelligence get so smart as to take over everything? Is there to be almost no space for individuals? Workers? Thinkers? Producers?

Are we obsolete?

There is a new book out by Jobst Landgrebe and Barry Smith that answers these questions. The authors make a startlingly bold claim, and back it up with something more than the hand-waving b.s. we are used to on this subject. The book is titled Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence Without Fear, just out from Routledge.

David Ramsay Steele, who is CEO and Editorial Director of Carus Books, and its imprint Open Universe — as well as author of From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation, Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview on the Slab, and The Mystery of Fascism: David Ramsay Steele’s Greatest Hits — is an enthusiast for Landgrebe and Smith’s effort. He has long been skeptical of many of the more outlandish claims for AI, and he read the manuscript of the book as it approached publication. He suggested that the LocoFoco Netcast team interview Jobst and Barry, and I agreed with no small amount of enthusiasm.

But I agreed mainly on the condition that David do most of the interviewing. I am in way over my head on this issue, and do not really know much other than what I read in science fiction — which is hardly a reliable guide on such issues. He agreed. He has, after all, been featured by the LocoFoco at least twice, if not three or four times. And with David asking the most acute questions, that would allow me to ask the Dumb Guy questions.

So last week the four of us chatted for an hour and a half. I have edited that chat down just a bit, and present it on SoundCloud and Rumble and YouTube:

Yes, at least one of my questions was indeed Dumb Guy dumb. My intro, too, will not win awards for accuracy, my characterization of Elon Musk’s AI goals being offhand and parodic — and considering the august company I had on, perhaps I should have postponed my mirth. But the other participants are as eloquent — and their comments as apposite — as one could hope for.

I had read one of Dr. Barry Smith’s books before this discussion, by the way — Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano — and own another that I have occasionally consulted. He is a major scholar of Continental philosophy, and I was delighted to read something by him on an issue of current popular interest. Somehow discussions of Edmond Husserl, Alexius Meinong and Roman Ingarden (the latter mentioned in this episode, and by Jobst), cannot be expected to obtain a wide readership.

Actually, I should say, “delighted to begin to read something by Dr. Smith,” since, as I confess in the podcast, I did not make the requisite time to read the whole of the pre-publication copy David had sent me. Even after all these years using iPads, it often takes quite an effort for me to read a whole book in ebook format, especially a PDF. This means I will “be forced” actually to buy the book!

I know some people insist that podcasts be published unedited. I am not one of those people. Before Dr. Smith joined our Zoom conversation, Jobst, David and I got to know one another informally, discussing such things as the books in our respective backgrounds: my green books (Loeb Greek/English editions) and Jobst’s red set of books that look so similar, and are also about history, but in German, and may not have an English equivalent. We also discussed science fiction, Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick, specifically. For some reason I did not bring up Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Now that would have been relevant. I may include this conversation as a future extra on LocoFoco.Locals.com.

Jobst Landgrebe earned his doctorate in medicine, and has worked as both scientist and entrepreneur in the field in question, artificial intelligence. As he mentions in the podcast, it was he who conceived the idea for the book and the need for collaboration with a philosopher. Jobst had been encountering too much nonsense being said about AI.

I hope that, after listening to this podcast, every listener goes out and buys the new book. This is an important subject. It should not be left to rumor-mongering by “futurologists” and others who do not know the science or understand the philosophy behind the issue.

And note: thanks to James Littleton Gill for two examples of his image work with the artistic artificial intelligence DALL-E. And yes, Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe both discuss DALL-E in our conversation.

twv