Alan Jacobs


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So I’m fine with AI, because I don’t believe in it in the usual way it is interpreted, as machine consciousness. I don’t think that will happen, because brains and machines are very different things, and will end up always doing different things. The tendency to regard the brain as a machine should be easy to dodge by considering how we have successively considered it as a clock, a steam engine, a hologram, and now a computer; none of them are good analogies, not even our current favorites.

So “artificial intelligence” really will come down to machine algorithms designed for human uses, and when we understand AI as that, we can begin to think about the algorithms and the uses, without getting into anything more metaphysical or fantastical. We will certain project personalities onto machines, we already do that, but it is a projection and we have to keep that in mind.