Thermostats all the way down

In a recent episode of EconTalk, with guest author Stewart Brand, Stewart had a throwaway line I loved. The exchange went like this: Russ Roberts: Yeah, I said when I was running, I was paying attention. I think the better word might be 'vigilance.' Stewart Brand: Good word. Russ Roberts: And, when you're in danger, at risk, you're vigilant, and you have a natural incentive to be vigilant. And I think when I think about AI — and I'm thinking now about self-repairing software programs — you're self-updating. You talk about the Tesla updating itself constantly through the cloud and the web. But, it'll be interesting to see the effect of the loss of our own normal habits of vigilance as so many uncertainties are: We delegate those to other agents, and they won't be human ones, probably. Stewart Brand: Well, it's thermostats all the way down. And, governors on steam engines, and a lot of things which take care of keeping something in proper running mode, and alert to circumstances: the…