The Mirror of AI: Why Are We So Baffled By Our Own Reflections?

Between popular media, misinformation, and the constant distraction of the Internet Age, it can be hard to unravel some of the now-ubiquitous discourse surrounding ‘artificial intelligence’.

We’re seeing a widespread amazement at our own reflections in most mainstream discourse on the uses and misuses of “AI”. For example, last year the New York Times’ “ The Daily” podcast episode “The Online Search Wars Got Scary, Fast” proved to be an uncharacteristically vacuous discussion about interaction with a chatbot. Both interlocutors contributed to building an aura of unsettling mysticism surrounding the interviewee’s experience of the chatbot acting overly-attached and insisting that he should leave his wife to be with said chatbot. I will admit that, prima facie, this sounds like an odd use of a computer in polite society. But trying to construe this into a sinister pre-apocalyptic free-with-ads kind of sci-fi experience does an extreme disservice to anyone seeking to understand the technology and its implications for society. As we will explore, these language models that are receiving so much media attention are trained on text generally from the hive of scum and villainy that is the Internet, i.e. on words written by people, and this is yet another totally predictable case of garbage in, garbage out. The amorous pleadings of the chatbot evoked the mediocre dialogue of an apprehended ex-lover in a soapy crime procedural, which could indeed be a source for its modeled responses. The shock expressed by the reporters on the podcast only serves to highlight our human ability to project and to anthropomorphize anything we can get our hands on. Exactly why we are so surprised to see our own culture reflected in the tools we build remains something of a mystery to me, although I think some of the confusion emanates from how we use language, both to create and discuss these new tools. The sensationalist discourse not only serves to distract from the real dangers, but it also obscures the actual applications of these technologies across many disciplines that hold immense promise and excitement as we enter the next epoch of the Information Age.

What Do We Even Mean?
So to get on the same page, or at least understand the options, let’s consider what ‘artificial intelligence’ means. For that, we need to…