Tom Chatfield (Pan Macmillan)
IN 1770, inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen claimed to have created a machine that could skilfully play chess against human opponents. Known as the Mechanical Turk, his contraption defeated many challengers, including Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin, and caused much amazement and debate about how it worked. It was eventually exposed as a hoax, however, with a human chess master hiding inside.
The Mechanical Turk raises intriguing questions about how humans perceive technology, says philosopher in Wise Animals: How technology has made us what we are. For example, we may often have incorrect assumptions about what a machine is doing. As he writes: 鈥淲e鈥檙e only too keen to attribute human-like autonomy to machines, in the process forgetting how much they depend on their makers and maintainers.鈥�
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Now, artificial intelligence can actually beat human players at chess and engage in human-like conversations, with the advent of a new generation of chatbots such as OpenAI鈥檚 ChatGPT. As AI advances, our desire to anthropomorphise technology has reached new heights, and Chatfield delves into the implications of this phenomenon.
Some have claimed, for instance, that current chatbots could be conscious, suggesting they may have their own intentions, which could put humans at risk. And when it comes to online content, it is becoming harder to distinguish between deepfakes and real images, videos and audio, creating ethical issues about trust and transparency (see page 14).
Throughout his book, Chatfield encourages readers to consider technology and our relationship with it in different ways. The first part covers our technological past in its broadest sense. The term technology is used to describe all human-made artefacts, including clothing and the written word, and Chatfield explores how we co-evolved with our inventions.
The second part examines different philosophical perspectives that often aren鈥檛 considered when we debate the role of present and future technology. Overall, Chatfield aims to help readers keep an open mind about the possibilities, stressing that the way innovation has progressed wasn鈥檛 the only way it could have developed. He also makes key points about how technology is shaping us in ways that aren鈥檛 always obvious.
AI is far from neutral. It has been trained on our biased data and systems, such as face recognition systems that struggle to work for people with darker skin.
The way technology is designed also makes demands on our attention and time. For example, notifications lure us into using email instead of making a call or doing something else entirely. 鈥淲hat assumptions and predictions are our minds being pushed towards by the systems they鈥檙e enmeshed in: by their interfaces, abstractions and automations?鈥� asks Chatfield.
Wise Animals is ambitious in its scope. Its references are broad, from the writings of ancient Greek philosopher Plato in , where he outlines the dangers of writing because words on a page can be misinterpreted in a way they can鈥檛 when spoken, to the book by journalist Gaia Vince, which describes how our evolution is shaped by genes, environment and culture.
Some of Chatfield鈥檚 arguments are repeated in different chapters, and it feels like he is rounding up previous ideas rather than developing them and providing fresh insight. However, he does offer a good overview of the complex nature of our relationship with technology.
Looking to the future, Chatfield is hopeful about developments in technology that could help us address challenges and enhance our lives. He focuses on human-machine collaboration rather than rivalry. As for machine superintelligence posing an existential risk to humanity, he emphasises the differences between humans and AI. For example, even though they can produce similar outputs, the process each uses is different. A machine has no intentions or desires and is engineered by people for particular purposes.
Hopefully, it will stay that way.
Sandrine Ceurstemont is a writer based in Morocco
