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ianh's avatar

Joseph Weizenbaum's experiences with ELIZA lead him to publish a book, Computer Power and Human Reason, which I feel compelled to recommend here. It came out in 1976 but discusses some of these same issues along with more general criticism of the role of technology in society.

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Liz Rios Hall's avatar

Thanks for this one, Michael. So many thoughts and feelings, but I'll keep it to one track for everyone else's sake :). I was struck by the footnote about your daughter and Alexa. (A footnote that could easily be a whole story.) I have a young daughter, too, and I can't help but filter all my questions about AI through her experience. What kind of relationship will she have with digital technologies like Alexa? How will it differ from mine? How will that relationship shape her as she grows? How should that impact how I parent her?

Years ago, when I was researching a story about AI, I read a series of articles that talked about how parents were "co-parenting" with AI assistants--how Alexa would read the kids bedtime stories and help them with their math homework. Around the same time I heard our daughters' generation being described as "the Alexa generation," which I thought was so curious. Since when are generations "branded" by corporations? But also, how will a child with a developing brain who is being "cared" for (i.e., having their emotional needs met) by a machine develop a different sense of what (or potentially "who") that machine is? If informed adults like Lemoine are susceptible to the sentience trap, then what does that mean for children who are still learning to differentiate between the concepts of real and imaginary? Also, what happens when the kids whose emotional and social bonds with AI were formed in early childhood grow up? How will they perceive the human-ish machines they've had sustained relationships with their entire lives, like Alexa (or LaMDA, humanoid robots, etc.), then?

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