Schmidt and Thrun emphasize the “crucial insight that differentiates AI from the way people learn.” Instead of the typical assurances that machines can be designed to be more like human beings and therefore less threatening, Schmidt and Thrun argue just the opposite: it is necessary for people to become more machine-like. Machine intelligence is enthroned as the apotheosis of collective action in which all the machines in a networked system move seamlessly toward confluence, all sharing the same understanding and thus operating in unison with maximum efficiency to achieve the same outcomes.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1318