Is our relationship with technology shifting from healthy realism into something closer to religious devotion? This provocative question lies at the heart of Sarah Spiekermann’s DLD26 talk, in which the Vienna University professor argues that today’s AI enthusiasm often crosses over into full‑blown idolatry.
This shift begins with absolutist claims about technology and irrational attributions, such as one in three people believing “that AI is somehow probably conscious”, Spiekermann observes.
Technology leaders, she says, fuel fantasies of superintelligence because “they want to hook us up on their stack.” Meanwhile, real systems are riddled with errors and dependent on flawed data. “Any software has on average 6,000 mistakes for 1 million line of code”, Spiekerman notes. “That is also true for AI.”
As a counter-move, Spiekermann founded The Future Foundation, which aims to develop a new ethical compass for humans in the digital world.
Watch the video to explore this talk in detail.
