The Tech Humanist Manifesto

so much of the way we’ve derived our identity, our sense of accomplishment, achievement, contribution, value, self-worth, is subject to radical overhaul in the next decade and the one following that and beyond. More jobs will be automated, augmented, enhanced, and yes, eliminated. And certainly new jobs will be created, but we can’t wait for them t... See more

We need to decide, for example, when we talk about autonomous cars: whose autonomy are we talking about? What are the broader implications of gaining freedom while losing control? Evolving from a society of private automobile ownership to privatized fleets of self-driving cars will give us back time, won’t it? Or will it? And yes , it will mean lif... See more

Because the fact is we encode our biases into data, into algorithms, into technology as a whole. So as we develop an increasingly machine-driven future, we need to encode machines with the best of who we are. And in that way, infuse the future with our brightest hope, our most egalitarian views, our most evolved understandings.

We need to ask what it means to be human when the characteristics we think of as uniquely ours can be done by machines.