The virtual Uncle Karl is only 3 days away!
QuoteThe designation of AI as "artificial intelligence." The term has been repeated so incessantly —and with so little precision— that it obscures more than it clarifies. It creates the impression of something mystical, autonomous, somehow divorced from human thought, and therefore either wondrously omnipotent or terrifyingly alien.
The phrase "artificial intelligence" suggests that we stand in the presence of a kind of counterfeit or ersatz intelligence. Yet we do not speak this way about any other technological extension of human capacity. We do not call a forklift or a hydraulic press an "artificial muscle," though it multiplies human physical power many thousands of times. We do not describe riding a bicycle, driving a car or boarding a jetliner as "artificial running" or "artificial flight."
Modern telescopes no longer rely solely on visible light but detect invisible electromagnetic radiation —radio, infrared, X-ray and gamma— thereby vastly extending the sensory powers of humanity. These technologies amplify human capability; they do not replace its essence.
Why, then, this insistence on labeling computational systems as "artificial intelligence"? The term is not scientifically neutral. It mystifies technology by implying that intelligence can be somehow fabricated in isolation from human intellectual labor, as if it were an autonomous substance that can be synthesized like a chemical compound. This is not merely inaccurate; it is ideologically useful to the ruling class. It encourages passivity. It encourages awe. And it encourages the belief that the technology exists above and beyond social control.