Jaron Lanier Quotes

Technology could benefit or hurt people, so the usage of tech is the responsibility of humanity as a whole, not just the discoverer. I am a person before I'm an AI technologist.

It's reasonable to say that certain things we understand should perhaps have limits on how they're used and how certain technologies are deployed. That's very much what we should do as a society.

Can companies just claim a total lack of political responsibility in how their technology is used in all instances? It's something that companies should be thinking about when they sell their technologies around the world.

Technology is amoral, but it requires humanistic values to steer it in a way that's empowering, and not detrimental to social progress. It's up to us to maximize the good and minimize the bad.

Whenever technological advancement is made it can always be used both for good or for bad.

The question I want to put forward is, 'Does the technology we are developing ultimately benefit mankind?'

Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods-in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.

Each of us has a vital role to play in building a world in which the government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around.

The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.

I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course.

Society will decide after the technology is created what we will and won't accept.

A great gulf, however, has been opened between man's material advance and his social and moral progress, a gulf in which he may one day be lost if it is not closed or narrowed.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

I think that technologies are morally neutral until we apply them. It's only when we use them for good or for evil that they become good or evil.

I have always felt that, aside from research that violates universal human mores, when it comes to technological applications, that which can be done will be done.

It is only by the rational use of technology; to control and guide what technology is doing; that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desirable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not appalling to imagine.

Technology gives us power, but it does not and cannot tell us how to use that power. Thanks to technology, we can instantly communicate across the world, but it still doesn't help us know what to say.

You must engage at the level of people's higher order values, and in doing so, you can engage them in a meaningful way on a large number of issues.

I feel every technology can be abused, but fundamentally we put new technologies into the service of humanity.

Faced with the profound changes that AI technologies can produce, pressure for "more" and "tougher" regulation is inevitable. Misunderstanding about what AI is and is not, especially against a background of scare-mongering, could fuel opposition to technologies that could benefit everyone. This would be a tragic mistake. Regulation that stifles innovation, or relocates it to other jurisdictions, would be similarly counterproductive.

I imagine if you're one of those genius people working on AI, the desire to find out what's possible is presumably the driving factor, but I hope there are just as many people who are thinking about what we actually want. Just because something's possible it doesn't mean it's going to be good to us.

While infusing technology with humanity, we are trying to make sure it's used for good and also trying to foresee some of the ways it can be used in a bad way and eliminate those.

Technology can be used to make people's lives easier, to reduce inequality, to facilitate inclusion, or to solve intractable global problems, but without dialogue and governance, it can be used against humanity - the choice on how we use technology is ours.