Will artificial intelligence change what it means to be human? – The Mail & Guardian

Francis Fukuyama famously said in his 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, that history had come to an end circa 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It announced the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Soviet Russia and, generally, of communism as an economic system, and, correlatively, the unopposed global spread of liberal democracy. One hundred and eighty years before Fukuyama, Hegel had said something similar when he saw Napoleon on horseback riding into the town of Jena in 1806. Napoleon was, for many in those early days, the symbol of the spread of freedom through Europe and against the tyranny of monarchy. There is today the suspicion coming from both Marxists and conservatives alike that the imminent transformation of the labour process, its complete automation through robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), will bring about the end of history.