Norbert Wiener, Father of Cybernetics, Was the Original AI Doomer in 1960
lukas_m_ziegler · x · 2026-10-26
A look back at Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), who coined "Cybernetics" and founded modern control theory — and was arguably the first AI doomer.
- Wiener built early robots that could seek or avoid light, and argued causal inference from data was better left to trained statisticians.
- Starting in 1960, he wrote works like "Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation" and "God & Golem, Inc." warning that misaligned machine goals could lead to catastrophe — arguments strikingly similar to today's AI alignment debates, 65 years later.
- He observed that "complete subservience and complete intelligence do not go together," likening machines to the philosopher slaves of Ancient Greece who eventually outwitted their masters.
Both original texts are freely available online (the 1960 paper PDF and the open-access MIT Press book).
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