Mind Reading AI and the End of Humanity By Brian Simpson

     Here is an angle that we technophobes have not thought much about, being concerned with AI enslaving us. Mind reading AI may make social as we know it impossible, eroding the present foundation of civil society:
  https://www.rt.com/news/468228-mind-reading-computer-humanity-zizek/

“Technologies linking human consciousness to any sort of a cloud computing service could not just open the way for totalitarian mind control, but destroy the very essence of human relations, philosopher Slavoj Zizek says.
A computer that can read the thoughts of many people at once would make normal human life impossible, the Slovenian cultural philosopher told RT in the wake of the World Artificial Intelligence (AI) Conference in Shanghai, which saw Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma and Tesla CEO Elon Musk clashing over the future of AI. What I am studying now is the so-called phenomenon of wired brains, a possibility of our brains being connected with strong digital machines. And that is not a utopia. In the media lab at MIT, Massachusetts, they already have simple machines like that. It is like a helmet, nothing intrusive, they put it on your head. And then something horrible happens - I saw the video - you think certain thoughts, you do not say anything, and the machine reproduces them either in writing or with artificial voice. The primitive level machines can already read your thoughts. It is ok, if it involves your agreement but what if it is done (and it is easy to imagine that) without you knowing it? Now, there is a serious option to read our thoughts, not just our emotional attitudes like being angry or sad but even the line of our thoughts in our mind. The next step in this “utopia” will be a computer that can read my thoughts and your thoughts that can connect us so that we can share our thoughts. If you and I are connected through the same computer, I can literally participate in your thinking directly without any external communication like word typing. As you probably know, modern technology theorists Ray Kurzweil and Melanie Swan called it a new form of divinity.”

     These technocrats are out of control, and when has technology, especially the stuff that changes society so profoundly, ever been subject to democratic decision making? On the contrary, everything is decided by markets and profits. Such a system invites techno-doomsday, as numerous sci fi films have vividly portrayed. We would be better with civilizational collapse than the monster world that they are forcing upon us, giving the ordinary deplorable a few techno crumbs, like next generation mobile phones, as their 30 pieces of silver, while utterly destroying everything that makes us human.