The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence
There has been a lot of hype about Artificial Intelligence lately, perhaps too much. But if you want to understand the bigger picture in a non-technical political-economic framework, this is for you. It is part of a more extensive work from Daedalus whose theme from the Spring 2023 issue is “AI & Society“; this piece, however, The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence, by Erik Brynjolfsson is where to start. In my humble opinion most commentators on this subject start with an opinion which bleeds through their entire work, while this might be OK if they are writing an editorial, or at least acknowledge their agenda, all too often, opinions are related as fact. In contrast Dr. Brynjolfsson does a great job of objectively setting the stage for how AI *could* fit into our future without the usual angst and hand-waving that is so often seen in these pieces. I stress the word ‘could” because this is the value of his piece. “The future is not preordained” is his point; we have choices about how AI can work for us. One assumption he makes is that we can not put the genie back into the bottle, AI is here to stay, and it will only become more critical. However, we can decide who will benefit from it; will it be all of us or just a few? So if you have a few minutes, click through to read the article. After that, perhaps you could spend a few minutes thinking about how you want AI to fit into your life and how we as a society can get there.