Philosopher of technology George Gilder, author of Life after Google (2018), offers some thoughts at Wesley J. Smith’s podcast, Humanize, on what to make of rapid advances in AI:

We live in an era of cultural whiplash. Never has the potential for technological advances been more pronounced, and at the same time, the potential for wrenching societal dislocations so threatening. What are we to make of such times as these? Should we be excited or fearful, optimistic or quaking in our boots?

For answers, Wesley turned to George Gilder, one of America’s most prominent and innovative thinkers about technology and the economy and a co-founder of Discovery Institute where he directs Discovery’s Technology and Democracy Project and is a senior fellow of the Center on Wealth and Poverty.

Mr. Gilder attended Exeter Academy and Harvard University. At Harvard, he studied under Henry Kissinger and helped found Advance, a journal of political thought. In the 1970s, as an independent researcher and writer, Mr. Gilder began an excursion into the causes of poverty and wealth, which led to his best-selling Wealth and Poverty. (May 28, 2025)

From Gilder in 2019:

”Seriously, the Google people do not believe that there will be life after Google. Their vision of AI usurping human minds really represents what I call an eschaton, a final thing, almost like an eschatological vision.

They believe that AI will achieve what my friend Ray Kurzweil calls the Singularity when it will attain capabilities far beyond human minds and thus be able to reproduce itself. And project itself into the universe and seed the universe with a cascade of ever more intelligent machines, thus kind of propagating human life throughout the universe.

And since many of the people at Google — most of them probably — believe in multiple parallel universes (which is a preposterous view), these AI machines will multiply on. Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Ray Kurzweil and all these Singularitarians can fly off to a nearby planet with Elon Musk, leaving the rest of us back on the beach in the United States collecting guaranteed annual income.”

If that is what they believe, Google’s business activity is surely worth a glance. The other day, senior research scientist Jack Poulson revealed that he had quit Google over its involvement with totalitarian AI censorship in China.

“George Gilder: Google Does Not Believe in Life After Google,” April 25, 2019

Seriously, stay tuned.