Philip Ball
Nautil.us
Originally published 11 Dec 24
Here is an excerpt:
To understand AI algorithms, Vallor argues we should not regard them as minds. “We’ve been trained over a century by science fiction and cultural visions of AI to expect that when it arrives, it’s going to be a machine mind,” she tells me. “But what we have is something quite different in nature, structure, and function.”
Rather, we should imagine AI as a mirror, which doesn’t duplicate the thing it reflects. “When you go into the bathroom to brush your teeth, you know there isn’t a second face looking back at you,” Vallor says. “That’s just a reflection of a face, and it has very different properties. It doesn’t have warmth; it doesn’t have depth.” Similarly, a reflection of a mind is not a mind. AI chatbots and image generators based on large language models are mere mirrors of human performance. “With ChatGPT, the output you see is a reflection of human intelligence, our creative preferences, our coding expertise, our voices—whatever we put in.”
Even experts, Vallor says, get fooled inside this hall of mirrors. Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist who shared this year’s Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering work in developing the deep-learning techniques that made LLMs possible, at an AI conference in 2024 that “we understand language in much the same way as these large language models.”
Here are some thoughts:
Ball's article examines the societal and ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence, likening its potential consequences to the dystopian narratives of Black Mirror. The article warns of AI's capacity to exacerbate inequality, enable mass surveillance, and undermine privacy, while also raising concerns about its role in manipulating behavior and perpetuating biases. It calls for robust ethical frameworks and regulation to ensure AI development aligns with human values, emphasizing the need for a proactive approach to mitigate risks. This thought-provoking piece serves as a timely reminder of the dual-edged nature of AI and the importance of addressing its societal implications as we advance technologically.
