Interesting article. It critiques some AI optimists as falling for the same delusions of grandeur as the communists did. This all accords well with my constant harping that social problems are inherently unsolvable by algorithm (#849906), and the observation that software engineers have socialistic tendencies (#1015405).
It keeps happening—some shiny new idea or technology promises to solve all our problems. Give power to experts to arrange affairs “scientifically,” and poverty, oppression, disease, war and all human ills will disappear. Today, we are asked to trust artificial intelligence. ... This optimism reflects what we might call “techno-solutionism”—the belief that complex social problems can be solved by some algorithm, with minimal regard for unintended consequences or unexpected emergent properties. Some tech leaders have a quasireligious faith that they can, as the book of Revelation promises, “make all things new.” Past innovations may have been imperfect or even harmful, but now we see that, as a character in the recent film “Mountainhead” declares: “The antidote to bad tech is good tech!” ... This enthusiasm reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of complexity itself. We are witnessing the emergence of a new version of the old central-planning fallacy—the belief that complex social systems can be optimized through technological intervention, much as software systems are engineered.