Generic historical commentary on safety regulations and cybernetic theory

increased. As a result, governments and engineers used feedback from accident statistics to implement countless regulations, devices, and design changes that made technology progressively safer. The fact that some regulations (such as using a cell phone near a gas pump) are ludicrously risk-averse underscores the point that we have become a society obsessed with safety, with fantastic benefits as a result: Rates of industrial, domestic, and transportation fatalities have fallen by more than 95 (and often 99) percent since their highs in the first half of the 20th century.”° Yet tech prophets of malevolent or oblivious artificial intelligence write as if this momentous transformation never happened and one morning engineers will hand total control of the physical world to untested machines, heedless of the human consequences. Norbert Wiener explained ideas, norms, and institutions in terms of computational and cybernetic processes that were scientifically intelligible and causally potent. He explained human beauty and value as “a local and temporary fight against the Niagara of increasing entropy” and expressed the hope that an open society, guided by feedback on human well-being, would enhance that value. Fortunately his belief in the causal power of ideas counteracted his worries about the looming threat of technology. As he put it, “the machine’s danger to society is not from the machine itself but from what man makes of it.” It is only by remembering the causal power of ideas that we can accurately assess the threats and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence today. *5 Steven Pinker, “Safety,” Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Penguin, 2018). 83 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016886