Ethics and the risks of intelligent technology : the algorithmic threat to freedom of attention

Abstract

Considerable attention in media and policy circles has been directed to the far scientific horizon of the Intelligence Revolution and the existential risk to humanity that would be posed by the advent of artificial superintelligence. This is undoubtedly prudent. Were it to occur, this so-called technological singularity might well bring about human obsolescence or extinction. But, for reasons the author hopes to make evident, the technological transformations already underway are at risk of precipitating our ill-prepared arrival at an ethical singularity: a point at which the evaluation of value systems assumes infinite value.