{"id":116638,"date":"2025-09-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/?post_type=ftm_article&p=116638"},"modified":"2025-09-10T14:18:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T18:18:53","slug":"ai-doomerism","status":"publish","type":"ftm_article","link":"https:\/\/www.freethink.com\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-doomerism","title":{"rendered":"AI doomerism isn’t new. Meet the original alarmist: Norbert Wiener"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long before Geoffrey Hinton and Eliezer Yudkowsky sounded warnings about artificial intelligence, there was Dr. Norbert Wiener in the 1950s and \u201860s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Newspaper<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wiener was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence or, as he called it, cybernetics. His groundbreaking work laid the foundations that our current AI boom is built atop of, and his concerns about AI have no doubt influenced those being voiced by his successors in the field today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In late 1959, Wiener gave a speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In early 1960, it would be adapted and published as a paper<\/a> titled \u201cSome Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation.\u201d The speech began by citing the predictions<\/a> of Samuel Butler in the 1860s, which foretold machines would eventually out-evolve and rule over man, noting they had not come to pass. However, he said it was different this time<\/em> since machines had become so much more advanced at such a rapid pace. <\/p>\n\n\n