Your point about the elite defining true intelligence as the qualities they themselves have -- that's exactly right. It's a big theme of the book I've been working on. Also, as women enter more and more arenas, there's a retreat to the motte of the last few male-dominated fields as being the "real" ones, cf computer science and physics. Like biologists have just been vibing this whole time.
I’m really looking forward to the Genius Myth when it comes out this summer. On the biology point it’s interesting that some of the clearer/practical examples of generative AI being successful are in the life sciences with things like protein design, and yet this gets weirdly little attention or direct focus from the same sort of people.
I recently read Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women, so your point about AI development being curated by a small subset of people really resonated. Our current world isn't designed by or for half the population; heaven knows what a world centered exclusively around nerds would look like.
Invisible Women is a really good book, and it's a good point - it reminds me of the debacle of Juicero, where Silicon Valley people poured $140m into a product that was just obviously silly to anyone outside the bubble.
The one thing which is rarely discussed when it comes to AI is cultural differences. In some parts of the world, it's so far simply not possible to do stuff simply via a screen, and business is done person-to-person over many years of building trust. A large part of our AI dialogue is because most AI firms in the new are US-centric, so this view of how non-Anglo cultures will interact with AI is hardly thought of. AI means that the dominant culture becomes more dominant, but over time, different norms will evolve, just like they always have in different parts of the world. AI doesn't have to lead to a global monoculture, and it won't...
That's a really interesting take, and I guess it applies generationally as well - we tend to assume older people don't like apps because they're 'bad' at technology but actually this is rarely the case these days in my experience, it's more about the frustration if you've grown up doing things the 'easy' way - by talking to someone.
This is completely the inverse of my experience of LLMs - I think they're amazing for curiosity. Google was life-changing because it let you pursue any fleeting query without even breaking your train of thought, and LLMs are an even profounder revolution for me - now any time I have a question that's too specific, too weird, too speculative for there to be existing writing about it online, I can have a great conversation with ChatGPT about it instead.
Fwiw I don't disagree, and it's kind of my point that they are what you make of them - I think they can be very useful tools for exploration if you use them for that purpose. On the other hand if you use them to outsource making decisions or thinking for yourself, that's a problem. And it's noticeable that a lot of tech people seem to push too far that way.
Your point about the elite defining true intelligence as the qualities they themselves have -- that's exactly right. It's a big theme of the book I've been working on. Also, as women enter more and more arenas, there's a retreat to the motte of the last few male-dominated fields as being the "real" ones, cf computer science and physics. Like biologists have just been vibing this whole time.
I’m really looking forward to the Genius Myth when it comes out this summer. On the biology point it’s interesting that some of the clearer/practical examples of generative AI being successful are in the life sciences with things like protein design, and yet this gets weirdly little attention or direct focus from the same sort of people.
I recently read Caroline Criado Perez's Invisible Women, so your point about AI development being curated by a small subset of people really resonated. Our current world isn't designed by or for half the population; heaven knows what a world centered exclusively around nerds would look like.
Invisible Women is a really good book, and it's a good point - it reminds me of the debacle of Juicero, where Silicon Valley people poured $140m into a product that was just obviously silly to anyone outside the bubble.
Haha I hadn't heard of Juicero before! That's quite something.
The one thing which is rarely discussed when it comes to AI is cultural differences. In some parts of the world, it's so far simply not possible to do stuff simply via a screen, and business is done person-to-person over many years of building trust. A large part of our AI dialogue is because most AI firms in the new are US-centric, so this view of how non-Anglo cultures will interact with AI is hardly thought of. AI means that the dominant culture becomes more dominant, but over time, different norms will evolve, just like they always have in different parts of the world. AI doesn't have to lead to a global monoculture, and it won't...
That's a really interesting take, and I guess it applies generationally as well - we tend to assume older people don't like apps because they're 'bad' at technology but actually this is rarely the case these days in my experience, it's more about the frustration if you've grown up doing things the 'easy' way - by talking to someone.
This is completely the inverse of my experience of LLMs - I think they're amazing for curiosity. Google was life-changing because it let you pursue any fleeting query without even breaking your train of thought, and LLMs are an even profounder revolution for me - now any time I have a question that's too specific, too weird, too speculative for there to be existing writing about it online, I can have a great conversation with ChatGPT about it instead.
Fwiw I don't disagree, and it's kind of my point that they are what you make of them - I think they can be very useful tools for exploration if you use them for that purpose. On the other hand if you use them to outsource making decisions or thinking for yourself, that's a problem. And it's noticeable that a lot of tech people seem to push too far that way.