When people ask me what the phrase "artificial intelligence" means, my short answer is, it means "venture capitalists, give me some money".
But OUP asked me for a longer answer, given here and summarized in the section headings:
@emilymbender The article looks very interesting. I have yet to gain permission to download it. Your abstract gives me the impression that the paper is written more from a social science perspective than a computer science perspective. Is that an accurate impression? As a multidisciplinary area of study with important social implications, I’ve found there are many legitimate ways to respond to the question “what is AI?” That is important because it is such a transformative technology. My first impulse is to answer from a hard science POV.
@emilymbender can I just say, the tendency to import science fiction literature as inevitable near future state has been this nagging, inchoate worry that I’ve struggled mightily to articulate, and seeing it laid out so clearly is both humbling and extremely useful. Thank you!
I guess we live in a society or something
@emilymbender Great explanation!
@emilymbender Thank you for sharing the pre-print. I read it with great interest.
I am curious about "McCarthy et al ... distancing themselves from adjacent work by Norbert Wiener and colleagues that was being carried out under the name cybernetics."
If you have a moment, could you please elaborate a bit or recommend where I could learn more about this rivalry? I didn't know there was a deliberate distinction between AI and cybernetics.
@emilymbender excited to read this, thank you for sharing the preprint!
@emilymbender Thank you for sharing your preprint.
@emilymbender, @scroeser relevant to your current interests. :)
@emilymbender Not a good thing in the wrong hands. Which is billions of people.
@emilymbender Thanks for sharing, I find it very useful.
@emilymbender thanks for sharing your preprint. Weizenbaum's ELIZA and the participants, "very human tendency to attribute understanding" makes me think how kind most humans are. We tend toward accepting speech as genuine which is unfortunately a tendency being abused by modern LLMs.
We going to wind up slow walking whether we come to it through wisdom or folly. Ethics is not a grass root, it is a cornerstone and they left it out on purpose.
I'm not sure enough of what passes for leadership remains to fight for the future. They all seem rather infected with a lethal combo of nihilism and fatalism.
I no longer expect the courts to help, sadly.
Does your paper present a solve? Is there a pre-print?
