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🔆 Misleading metaphors: Can ChatGPT be my advisor?
How we perceive technology, Arizona starts AI school and massive breakthrough in AI reasoning.
Leon Ingelse
December 26, 2024
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🗞️ Issue 50 // ⏱️ Read Time: 8 min
Hello 👋
When was the last time you “had a conversation” with a chatbot? If you're like most early AI adopters, you might talk about AI tools as if they're wise friends or members of your team. Referring to AI systems as if they are human beings is becoming normalized and makes their usage more accessible. However, this friendly familiarity also comes with the risk of missing both the real limitations and the full potential of AI systems. Let us show you why.
In this week's newsletter
What we’re talking about: How talking about AI systems as if they are human beings can influence our perception of them.
How it’s relevant: Understanding and communicating about AI systems is vital to using them responsibly and to their full potential. Metaphors can help with that, but inept usage may cause missed opportunities or overestimating AI systems.
Why it matters: Reaping the fruits of AI innovation can determine the future success of any business. Understanding AI opportunities and their shortcomings is a significant competitive edge.
Big tech news of the week…
🖥️ The cognitive decline of AI: Several studies explore the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) but their susceptibility to human impairments has not been researched to the same extent. A new study used tests that are widely used to spot early signs of dementia. It shows that leading large language models or “chatbots” show signs of mild cognitive impairment.
🌍 OpenAI’s new AI model o3 has achieved a breakthrough high score on a prestigious AI reasoning test called the ARC Challenge. AI fans speculate that o3 has achieved artificial general intelligence. Even if this is an “impressive leap in performance”, it still hasn’t demonstrated what experts classify as human-level intelligence. Humans will increasingly be valuable in judgement, governance, and direction.
🧱 The state of Arizona, US, will provide personalized academic instruction to students by using AI for 2 hours per day. The remaining hours of the school day will include “life-skills workshops” covering areas such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and entrepreneurship.
The Aspects of Simple Explanations
Expressions like machine learning and a conversation with ChatGPT, represent underlying, more complex, processes. Whereas an algorithm learns to recognise cats in images, it doesn’t learn like a human does. Metaphors like these help us interpret AI systems and their capabilities.
While metaphors can help us understand AI systems and their capabilities, using metaphors to simplify AI also comes with the risk of misinterpreting its capacities and shortcomings, which in turn can lead to problems in business decisions. It is important to recognize that machine learning is different. Learning machines are both better and worse compared to certain aspects of human learning. Most importantly: The learning is different.