Sidelsky, Larson tells us, thinks our problems stem not from the machines themselves but from the stories we’ve told about them.
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It’s imaginary because the clues that matter — why people starve, why peace fails, why the planet overheats — are not hidden in larger and larger datasets.
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Chatbots process enormous amounts of data and produce convincing outputs but, he says, they do not grasp the meaning of the concepts they manipulate.
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Recently, Spotify was found to be publishing AI-generated songs by deceased musicians. In addition, AI bands are starting to pop up.
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The pirated digital book copies sank Anthropic on a fundamental point. It was not “fair use.”
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Trying to understand the rationale of big monopolists such as Microsoft and Google is often a fool’s errand.
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Common sense says AI companies need to be responsible for their product — just as if it was created directly and disseminated by a human.
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Whatever one’s opinion, it’s still a fact that, unlike a human writer or artist, AI can’t think or feel.
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What we now call “intelligence” has gradually become detached from the embodied, contextualized reasoning that characterized earlier generations.
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A new study from MIT links excessive use of ChatGPT to a decline in critical thinking skills. Instead of making users more productive, the study finds that dependence on ChatGPT is associated with loss of memory and cognitive decline. In short, the AI tool isn’t making us smarter. It’s doing quite the opposite to us. The researchers divided participants into three groups: the LLM group, the search engine group, and the brain-only group. Here is a section of the abstract from the study, Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use. In session 4, LLM-to-Brain participants showed Read More ›
Three books stand at the top of the dystopian genre, even several decades after their publication: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; and perhaps supremely, 1984, by George Orwell. Each novel features versions of a futuristic society in which freedom is restricted (through different means) and foresees a bleak existence governed by the basest impulses in the human race. While Orwell’s masterpiece is typically hailed as a warning of the surveillance state, where individuality is erased in favor of group identity, it is also about the rise of technologies that replace human thought. Novelist Walter Kirn points this out in a recent episode of America This Week: 1984 is the story of the extinguishing, the Read More ›
The tech sector can push AI hype that resembles cargo cult science to its investors because of changes in media resulting from 30 years of the internet.
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If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? Ohio State University recently announced that each of its students must take an AI skills class starting in the Fall of 2025. Micaiah Bilger of The College Fix reports, Every undergraduate major at Ohio State will include classes that incorporate “AI Fluency,” NBC 4 WCMH reports. The public university’s leaders have developed a strategy that they believe will equip students to use the technology both creatively and responsibly. As AI continues to shape and disrupt higher education, administrators and teachers have to grapple with how to deal with this powerful technology. Many reports, personal testimonies, and commentary illustrates how much students today depend on AI systems like ChatGPT to do their assignments. Professors, meanwhile, Read More ›
AI, as a tool, can have a lot of benefits and uses, but as we’ve witnessed time and time again, it often makes mistakes.
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People struggling in the aftermath of brain injuries provide some valuable insights into that leap.
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Suppose that AI genuinely poses a threat to the human species, but in a much subtler way than we expect?
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The real danger of reductionism is not just that it fails to explain creativity, but that it actively encourages dismissal of what cannot be reduced.
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In this first of three parts, I look at the role of serendipity — the art of making happy, unexpected discoveries — and how a mechanized world diminishes it.
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In a bizarre twist, Opus threatened to expose a fictional affair if it were to lose its spot to another AI system.
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Gilder offers a down-to-earth interpretation. Much has changed but reality hasn’t.
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