Henry Farrell

AI’s Big Rift is Like a Religious Schism

TWO CENTURIES ago Henri de Saint-Simon, a French utopian, proposed a new religion, worshipping the godlike force of progress, with Isaac Newton as its chief saint. He believed that humanity’s sole uniting interest, “the progress of the sciences”, should be directed by the “elect of humanity”, a 21-member “Council of Newton”. Friedrich Hayek, a 20th-century economist, later gleefully described how this ludicrous “religion of the engineers” collapsed into a welter of feuding sects.

Henry Farrell, “AI’s Big Rift is Like a Religious Schism,” The Economist, December 12, 2023.

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