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| Photo: Adam Frank |
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| Photo: Simone Noronha / for NBC News |
Are you just a computer made of meat? Are all
your thoughts, feelings and experiences nothing more than circuits made
from neurons in your head?
If you’re like a
lot of people, your answer to this question will be a definitive “No!”
From science to philosophy, there are lots of good reasons to hold that
human beings are more than just computing machines. Unfortunately, many
of the technologists bringing versions of artificial intelligence to the
market are already sure they know that we are.
For them people are, indeed, just biological
computers. And, based on this flawed perspective, powerful new machines
are being built and pushed out into the world right now. If we’re not
careful, we may all find ourselves living in a world of unconscious
machines destined to make us less human by boxing us into an existence
that fits their algorithms.
A few years ago, I attended a lecture that scared the pants off me because it demonstrated this mindset at work...
Beyond the specific example of emotional computing, the big problem with thinking of people as computers is that once you take that step, the only thing that matters is what can be computed and therefore predicted. Exactly how well can your last music purchase be linked to your political affiliation? Given your credit card use last week, exactly how likely is it that you’ll respond to an ad for a Disney cruise on Facebook?
Read more...
Source: NBC News
