(1) David Watson on our tendency to anthropomorphize AI: “Deep neural networks deviate from human modes of learning in several fundamental and alarming ways.” “Compared to human brains, deep neural networks are brittle, inefficient, and myopic.”
(2) Luciano Floridi on what I call ‘artificial unintelligence’: “Many people think that AI is about coupling artificial agency and intelligent behaviour into new artefacts. The opposite is true: AI decouples successful problem solving from intelligent behaviour. It is thanks to this decoupling that it can colonise the boundless space of tasks, whenever these can be successfully performed without any understanding, awareness, sensitivity, concerns, hunches, insights, meaning, experience, wisdom—and all those other ingredients that contribute to qualifying human intelligence.”
(3) Jonathan Zittrain on knowledge without understanding: “Most machine-learning systems are statistical-correlation engines. They can’t explain why they think some patients are more likely to die, because they don’t ’think’ in any colloquial sense of the word—they only answer. As we begin to integrate their insights into our lives, we will, collectively, begin to rack up more and more intellectual debt.”
Universiteit Utrecht interviewde hoogleraar Latijnse Taal en Literatuur Antje Wessels en mij over excuses als PR-strategie: “Van klassieke dichters, tot moderne Big Tech-bedrijven; al eeuwen worden mooie woorden gebruikt om er vooral zelf beter van te worden. Hoe werken die retorische excuses precies? En waarom slikken we ze?” Lees hier het interview.