Every cybernetic totalist fantasy relies on artificial intelligence. It might not immediately be apparent why such fantasies are essential to those who have them. If computers are to become smart enough to design their own successors, initiating a process that will lead to God-like omniscience after a number of ever-swifter passages from one generation of computers to the next, someone is going to have to write the software that gets the process going, and humans have given absolutely no evidence of being able to write such software. So the idea is that the computers will somehow become smart on their own and write their own software.

My primary objection to this way of thinking is pragmatic: It results in the creation of poor-quality real-world software in the present. Cybernetic totalists live with their heads in the future and are willing to accept obvious flaws in present software in support of a fantasy world that might never appear.

The whole enterprise of artificial intelligence is based on an intellectual mistake, and continues to expensively turn out poorly designed software as it is remarketed under a new name for every new generation of programmers.