In my post on everything digital, I mentioned Jaron Lanier and his Ted talk on the history of the internet in which he describes how the internet was developed and conceptualized from the beginning as something that should be available for free to all. This leftist, socialist ideal, he explains, led to the internet having become a huge behaviour modification manipulator and he warns that we should change this.
Jaron Lanier: How we need to remake the internet | TED Talk
In an article Jaron Lanier published April 2023 for The New Yorker magazine, he warns about the dangers of calling digital machines ‘artificial intelligence’ (A.I.). There Is No A.I. | The New Yorker
Here an exerpt:
As a computer scientist, I don’t like the term “A.I.” In fact, I think it’s misleading—maybe even a little dangerous. Everybody’s already using the term, and it might seem a little late in the day to be arguing about it. But we’re at the beginning of a new technological era—and the easiest way to mismanage a technology is to misunderstand it.
The term “artificial intelligence” has a long history—it was coined in the nineteen-fifties, in the early days of computers. More recently, computer scientists have grown up on movies like “The Terminator” and “The Matrix,” and on characters like Commander Data, from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” These cultural touchstones have become an almost religious mythology in tech culture. It’s only natural that computer scientists long to create A.I. and realize a long-held dream.
Categories and metaphors influence, if not determine or control, our thoughts. How I name something can suggest or evoke certain associations. If I conceptualize something abstract (or new, like a new technology), with words, expressions or categories from a certain different field, that field, the images and thoughts connected with it, will influence the conceptualization of the new field.
I studied this phenomenon in connection with how we conceptualize ‘the body’ in terms of machines. But we also tend to conceptualize machines in terms of human bodies and minds. What does that do? What are the effects of those kinds of conceptualizations?
As Jaron Lanier points out in his article, metaphors can create a whole universe of thoughts (and fantasies). And thoughts (and fantasies) can influence actions. Once I conceptualize a machine in terms with which I conceptualize the living, parts of the living are transformed to the (dead) machine. Even calling the machine ‘dead’ already demonstrates falling for the metaphor and its associations: A machine is not dead. The adjective is completely inappropriate. Something that was never alive cannot be dead. But that is the nature of metaphor: it is everywhere. Language abounds with metaphor to an extent that we often don’t recognize it anymore.
When it comes to so-called artificial intelligence, I believe many disputes, discussions, worries and concerns have their origin in our linguistic practice of naming an IT tool intelligence. If we called all these machines, sophisticated computer programmes, algorithms etc. just that: complex sophisticated computer programmes (if that’s what they are), and took a little more time differentiating between the different kinds instead of subsuming them all under this ominous term of ‘artificial intelligence’, many discussions would simply not happen. It is the metaphor that creates the topic.
I recently read an article in the New York Times by Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull, The False Promise of Chat GPT. The first two are professors of linguistics, Dr. Watumull is a director of artificial intelligence at a science and technology company. Chomsky’s main aim was to point out that a machine – in this case ChatGPT – cannot reach the same level or quality of intelligence humans have. He argues with the nature of human language, the human mind, how it reasons, how children have an inbuilt genetic system for language development etc. (you need to be a little familiar with Chomky’s work to understand HIS metahors).
I was wondering if the article had been written if A.I. was not called A.I. As someone said in the comment section
It’s shocking to me that anyone could ever consider the possibility that a machine could ever be intelligent. What a waste of time it is talking about ChatGPT, the latest fad, soon to be replaced by another. Human beings are not machines. For anyone to think of himself or herself that way is degrading.
I found it interesting how the commentator reversed the metaphor. Another one says:
Chomsky makes clear his reservations are based upon the KIND of thing AI Chat is, not its latest model. If he’s got a compelling case, then the many objections in the comments along the lines of “Just you wait!” are irrelevant. They follow the same form as arguing, “Bumblebees can reason – maybe not now, but a thousand years from now. Just you wait!” No: bumblebees are the kind of thing that lack the capacity to reason. We don’t waste a lot of time wondering if bees, algae, leaves of paper will ever reason.
No, we don’t wonder about bees and algae, leaves of paper etc. But their names are just names and not metaphors. They are basic level categories and do not invite for any further speculation as to their nature derived from their names. This is where a metaphorical conceptualization is different and we should be aware of that.
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Most comments in the New York Times are moderate in language and can offer different perspectives. When I strongly agree or disagree with an article, I sometimes go there for more thoughts.
However, even in the NYTimes the level of discourse is not always what it should be, and some of the comments on the article above I found a little disturbing. For instance, despite the article having been co-written by a specialist for ‘Artificial Intelligence’, one commentator wondered if Chomsky even knew how to use ChatGPT considering his advanced age.
Another, obviously not familiar with the ‘Science of Language’ or the ‘Philosophy of Knowledge’ wrote:
You will excuse me for not doing a close read of this absurdity. Geezers clutching buggy whips I think. I stalled at the idea that someone could know something because they know the philosophy of knowledge (I know because I know knowledge.) Really? What is knowledge? Have you solved epistemology for us? Then AI was being denigrated and reduced to creating rhymes in light verse. No. AI is in its infancy and the potential is unlimited to my eyes. It is exactly saying that a baby can never grow up. Then the ignorant statement about a genetic operating system. That is funny. Which genes are those? The DOS gene perhaps? You clearly needed a neurogeneticist to co author this, because you people have no clue. I get it. Philosophers live in an abstract world and don’t need actual data to reach deductive conclusions or the capacity to predict that nothing will change with a technology that is currently undergoing development.
The writer of this comment obviously should have consulted a psycholinguist before making fun of a world renowned linguist whose thoughts kicked off a vast array of research in the field of child language development in the 1960ies. And whose ideas on a genetic predispostion of humans for language I believe not to be disputed by any neurological field (calling this an ‘innate language device‘ or, as in the NYT article an ‘operating system’ is, of course, also metaphorical.)
Thus, he should have read a little more carefully: Nowhere is there mention of a ‘genetic operating system’. But that just on the side. The commentator here also clearly falls for the metaphorical concept ‘a machine is a person’ when he compares A.I. with a baby in its infancy. His own derogatory attack on one of the authors of the article sounds a little like a parent defending his child…however, that is pure speculation from my side 😉
References:
Opinion | Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT – The New York Times
George Lakoff; Metaphors We Live By, 1980, University of Chicago Press
Metaphors We Live By – Wikipedia
How Thinking of the Body as a Machine Affects Healthcare
Celebrating the Luddite Uprisings (parked)