Jonathan Michie on his father’s efforts in the 1970s to map out concerns regarding widespread social coercion driven by automation. Plus a letter from Callum Brown
Jill Lepore asks why nobody listened to warnings about the threats posed from the AI revolution (Democracy v the machine, 18 August). As she is a Harvard professor, her piece is understandably US-centric. But in 1972 there was an international gathering of AI researchers and others in Italy to tackle the ethical and social implications of AI.
This “Serbelloni group” of global experts (they met at Villa Serbelloni on Lake Como) was led by my father, Donald Michie, the director of the University of Edinburgh’s department of machine intelligence. The group mapped out early concerns regarding potential political tyranny, the erosion of human autonomy and widespread social coercion driven by automation.
