The Professor of Ethics and Technology says we must “demystify the human condition”.
In response to a Google engineer’s recent claim that artificial intelligence (AI) can be “sentient”, Hertie School Professor of Ethics and Technology Joanna Bryson reflects on the differences – and similarities – between AI and humans in an essay for the technology magazine Wired published on 26 June.
According to the expert on artificial intelligence, “Our defensiveness around those key socio-cognitive concepts of intelligence, consciousness, and cooperation is our defense of the identity we’ve spent so much time acquiring.” The AI expert notes, however, that, “From here on out, the safe use of artificial intelligence requires demystifying the human condition. If we can’t recognize and understand how AI works—if even expert engineers can fool themselves into detecting agency in a “stochastic parrot”—then we have no means of protecting ourselves from negligent or malevolent products.”
She warns that “Achieving this understanding without substantial numbers of us embracing polarizing, superstitious, or machine-inclusive identities that endanger our societies isn’t only a concern for the humanities, but also for the social sciences, and for some political leaders.” The technology sector must prove it is “on the side of transparency and understanding that underpins liberal democracy, not secrecy and autocratic control,” she writes.
Read the entire guest essay.
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Joanna Bryson, Professor of Ethics and Technology