Fair Warning — Real Life

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The AI field continues to be marked by utopic visions and immense optimism, and discussions of moral responsibility and structural power dynamics are taxing — tiring even for the dedicated humanitarian. In the face of optimism, “potential,” and excitement, continually pointing out negative impacts is rarely rewarded. In fact, at times, such work... See more

Abeba Birhane • Fair Warning — Real Life

TTali Kleerekoper

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Once the emphasis is shifted to educational goals, a different set of more far-reaching questions is necessarily raised, about how and why schools fail to address these priorities. Among the reasons such questioning might uncover are students coming to school hungry or coming from a milieu in which reading is regarded as irrelevant to the concrete... See more

Abeba Birhane • Fair Warning — Real Life

TTali Kleerekoper

Rather than ‘should AI be used to replace therapy, we must address the questions of what needs should therapy fulfill?” only then will we be able to know if AI is what can provide, strengthen therapy.

Beyond being skeptical about the prospects for an “intelligent machine,” Weizenbaum also recognized how computers were beginning to be invoked as an easy way out of complex, contingent, and multifaceted challenges. This attitude — now widespread— was particularly evident in the education field. In the 1985 interview with The Tech , Weizenbaum was... See more

Abeba Birhane • Fair Warning — Real Life

But Weizenbaum’s turn toward critique started with the reception of ELIZA, which he built to imitate Rogerian therapy (an approach that often relies on mirroring patients’ statements back to them). Although he was explicit that ELIZA had nothing to do with psychotherapy, others, such as Stanford psychiatrist Kenneth Colby, hailed it as a first step... See more

Abeba Birhane • Fair Warning — Real Life

TTali Kleerekoper

More on inventors hating their creations. Pygmalion vibes(?)

What emerges from this is a portrait of technology as inevitable progress that must, despite its inevitability, be fully embraced without hesitation. For the tech evangelist, artificial intelligence research is self-evidently necessary, the next triumph in the ever-rising pyramid of human achievement and progress. In this discourse, AI allows... See more

Abeba Birhane • Fair Warning — Real Life

TTali Kleerekoper

“For as long as there has been AI research, there have been credible critiques about the risk of AI boosterism.”

Although we process information, we do not do it the way that computers do.” Even to ask the question, he argues, of “whether a computer has captured the essence of human reason is a diversion, if not a trap, because the real question — do humans understand the essence of humans? — cannot be answered or resolved by technology.”