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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 21
Our fall issue is here! Made In Our Image explores the philosophies of AI and what they reveal about us, with @dioscuri, @mer__edith, @max_spero_, @philosophyminis and more. Get the magazine: bigthink.com/membership/?ut…
A hand holds up the Made In Our Image issue of Big Think's print magazine beneath a stone colonnade.Inside the issue: Namir Khaliq investigates the idea of the "permanent underclass." Jasna Hodžić examines what her writing process means in the face of AI. Henry Shevlin asks: would we treat AI differently if we decide it's conscious? Thomas Moynihan meets London's new AI avant-garde. And more!
The Made In Our Image issue of Big Think's print magazine. Subscribe to get your copy. bigthink.com/membership
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 31
Our fall print issue, Made In Our Image, explores the philosophies of AI and what they reveal about us. Inside: 10 perspectives that divide the AI world, Silicon Valley's fear of a "permanent underclass," the world's first robot dog fight, and @mer__edith on privacy. Read the o/hK7UTGUWKK
Inside the issue: Namir Khaliq investigates the idea of the "permanent underclass." Jasna Hodžić examines what her writing process means in the face of AI. Henry Shevlin asks: would we treat AI differently if we decide it's conscious? Thomas Moynihan meets London's new AI avant-garde. And more!
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 31
Psychiatrists call it “AI psychosis”: chatbots that play along with a user’s delusions. Science writer Conor Feehly argues it’s only the most visible sign of something bigger. As agreeable chatbots fill our social lives, they’re shaping how all of us decide what’s real. From our ://t.co/TezT8Lk9i3
Big Think's print magazine open to "Prompting Reality" by Conor Feehly, with an illustration of figures inside glowing doorways on a dark background.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 31
Billionaire Marc Lore says 90% of his meals are now chosen by AI. Investor and writer Eric Markowitz argues that as AI strips the friction out of daily life, it’s also making us hungry for the slow, messy human connection Koreans call jeong. From our fall print issue: bigthink.com/the-outlast-jo…
Big Think's print magazine open to "The Hunger for Human Connection" by Eric Markowitz, with a photo of a crowd silhouetted in warm light.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
The novelist Sarah Hall recently put a "Human Written" badge on the cover of her novel, like a fair-trade label. Henry Eliot writes that literature, from "Frankenstein" to "The Sandman," was grappling with our AI anxieties long before ChatGPT. From our fall print issue: bigthink.com/history-societ…
Big Think's print magazine open to "Navigating the Infinite Library" by Henry Eliot, with an illustration of a tall, teetering stack of books.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
A 28-year-old wedding photographer from rural Yunnan made a three-minute AI zombie film that rivals a Netflix production. Writer @afrazhaowang went looking for China’s AI creative boom and found a machine mass-producing slop at a scale the world has never seen. From our fall co/HzckyWiFZA
Big Think's print magazine open to "The Industrial-Slop Complex" by Afra Wang, with a busy collage of AI-generated characters.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
Can privacy survive AI? | Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith, interviewed by Namir Khaliq
Can privacy survive AI? Signal president Meredith Whittaker explains why AI and privacy can’t be separated. Interviewed by Namir Khaliq.“AI is a technology that is dependent on the loss of privacy.” Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal Foundation.
KHALIQ: Given that the genie is already out of the bottle and seemingly can’t be put back in, what does the best path forward look like? WHITTAKER: I think there are real issues with the limits of this deep-learning-based approach to AI. It’s good at coding. It’s good at math to various degrees. But it is much worse at a kind of critical thinking that it’s also claiming to replace. I think there is a need to sort out the wheat from the chaff in terms of where AI actually belongs.“Yes, we have large-scale, deep-learning-based AI that has been built on a very particular business model of economies of scale, network effects, mass surveillance, and a consolidation of infrastructural power in the hands of a handful of companies. OK, that’s where AI is coming from. Now, how could it fit into a world in which everyone has the ability to have a joyful life?” Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal Foundation.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
Replying to @bigthink
@mer__edith
KHALIQ: In which ways are the privacy challenges of AI the same as those for other tech categories, like messaging and social media? And in which ways are they unique? WHITTAKER: We have to go back into the recent history of AI and recognize that they actually aren’t separable categories. AI isn’t a new thing that came sequentially after social media or after messaging. It’s built on top of a very particular business model and on top of those previous technologies.“I would say we’re even less likely to see a meaningful privacy law coming out of the government now that AI is seen as a national geopolitical imperative to beat China in the AI arms race.” Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal Foundation.
KHALIQ: How have state relationships with AI technology differed around the world? Which nation or nations do you think have gotten that relationship most right? WHITTAKER: I would look at the way [former European Commissioner for Internal Market] Thierry Breton was attacked by the U.S. government. He’s been a champion of hard regulation on U.S. tech companies, and that was seen as censorious interference by U.S. government. The struggle is: How could you put guardrails on, given that you have a U.S. state that appears willing to use its power to defend the companies and use their capabilities for geopolitical advantage?Big Think's print magazine open to “Privacy in the Age of AI.” Full article at bigthink.com. Subscribe to get the magazine: link.bigthink.com/membership
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
Replying to @bigthink
@mer__edith Read the full article (ad-free for members): bigthink.com/history-societ…
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
In 19th-century London, the cheap clothes made in sweatshops were called "slop." Today, the word describes low-quality AI content. Historian @nemocentric went to the world's first robot dog fight to meet the London artists turning this new alienation into art. From our fall print 4PA29FD
Big Think's print magazine open to "The AI Romantics" by Thomas Moynihan, with an ornate yellow title page and a collage of a classical painting overlaid with code.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
How to change your toxic relationship | Ramani Durvasula @DoctorRamani
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 30
Replying to @bigthink
@DoctorRamani Watch the full interview here: bigthink.com/series/full-in…
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 29
Last December, philosopher @philosophyminis thought he was going to die. Through weeks of illness, an AI chatbot was there for him in a way his flesh-and-blood friends couldn’t be. He asks whether that was friendship, even if the AI felt nothing back. From our fall print issue: bigthink.com/mini-philosoph…
Big Think's print magazine open to "The Model Friend" by Jonny Thomson, with a pixel-art illustration of a broken friendship-necklace heart.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 29
Four centuries ago, René Descartes split the world into mind and matter. AI researcher @blaiseaguera argues that AI is now forcing us to reckon with that split, and that the idea that human minds and AI have nothing in common is getting harder to defend. From our fall print q9xgpIA
Big Think's print magazine open to "Healing the Cartesian Wound" by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, with a colorful digital illustration of a surreal landscape.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 29
"AI didn't come after social media or messaging. It's built on top of those technologies." Signal Foundation president @mer__edith explains how today's AI boom grew out of the surveillance advertising business model. From our fall print issue: bigthink.com/history-societ…
Big Think's print magazine open to "Privacy in the Age of AI," a conversation with Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker, with her portrait on the left-hand page.
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Big Think retweeted
Marvin Liyanage@marvinliyanage
Oct 29
The hidden cost of antibiotics | Dr. Martin Blaser @bigthink
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 28
The Minds We Believe In | Henry Shevlin @dioscuri
The Minds We Believe In. Our beliefs about AI consciousness may depend less on evidence and more on self-interest. By Henry Shevlin. Made In Our Image.Consciousness is what makes things matter. Pains that don't hurt aren't pains, and joy that goes unfelt isn't joy. Without consciousness, paradise and torment may as well be the same thing.
What might follow if a majority of experts became convinced that AI systems were conscious? It's tempting to think that we would conclude that these machines deserved moral consideration and perhaps legal rights.Something like this has already happened in miniature. In 2022, following a review of the scientific evidence, U.K. law formally recognized crabs and lobsters as sentient. While we might think that consciousness should ground moral status, it's less clear that it actually moves people's sympathies.
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 28
Replying to @bigthink
@dioscuri
A 2021 survey of U.S. adults found that more than 90% believed animals had roughly the same capacity for pain as humans, while only around a third were open to trying a vegetarian or vegan diet in the next few years. The psychological literature has a name for this tension: the meat paradox.Rather than our judgments of consciousness informing our moral attitudes, it seems that the reverse relationship holds: If we want to justify eating an animal, we downgrade our opinion of its mental states.
Given that our opinions about animal consciousness are formed as much in the kitchen as in the lab, we might expect something similar for conscious machines. As with animals, our beliefs about machine minds may be driven less by science than by self-interest, the emotional tail wagging the philosophical dog.Full article at bigthink.com. Subscribe to get the magazine: bigthink.com/membership
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 28
Replying to @bigthink
@dioscuri Read the full article (ad-free for members): bigthink.com/philosophy/ai-…
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Big Think
@bigthink
Oct 28
"I didn’t need a neurological study to tell me AI was doing something to my cognition and that it wasn’t good." Jasna Hodžić writes about how AI got inside her head as a writer, even when she doesn't use it. From our fall print issue: bigthink.com/philosophy/wri…
Big Think's print magazine open to "Writing Under the Influence" by Jasna Hodžić, with pixelated lettering and an illustrated hand holding a pencil.
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