The Alienness of AI Is a Bigger Problem Than Its Imperfection
If humans aren’t perfect, why should AI be?
Today I bring you a fresh perspective on a topic I’ve written about a lot before: AI imperfection.
But, instead of enumerating the ways in which AI systems fail, as I typically do, I’m going to change my point of view to give you a new — and rather convincing — argument that I haven’t seen written anywhere else.
Let’s start from the beginning. A few days ago, before ChatGPT was a thing, I was scrolling Twitter and saw this picture (try to recognize what you’re looking at):
It took me a whole minute to realize it’s just a little doggy.
Then it struck me: humans are nowhere near perfect.
It’s ironic that I write so much (maybe too much? let me know!) about AI ethics, bias, misinformation, unreliability, and systems wreaking havoc, and it turns out that humans fail a lot, too.
If we’re so imperfect, why am I demanding such perfectionism for AI? Why do I set…
