Why We Can't Let Google Monopolize AI

Google is my favorite giant tech company. Unlike Apple, it has preserved a broadly innovative spirit, pursuing lots of ideas that have no direct link to its existing revenue model. Unlike Microsoft, it understands people well enough to give them consistently comfortable interfaces, and it keeps the interfaces pretty glitch-free. And unlike Facebook, it has never treated users, literally, like laboratory rats. Robert Wright (@robertwrighter) is an Ideas contributor for WIRED and the author of Nonzero, The Moral Animal, The Evolution of God, and, most recently, Why Buddhism Is True. He cofounded and runs bloggingheads.tv and meaningoflife.tv, and he founded and publishes The Mindful Resistance Newsletter.