My Thoughts on AI, Part 1: Fears, Opinions, and Mental Journey

My own personal thoughts and opinions on AI effects and usage, and how those have evolved over time

AI & the Environment

I write a lot about AI’s effects on the environment.

Attie

AI for the Atmosphere

Attie

AI for the Atmosphere

Machine god metaphors eat your brain

There are other ways of thinking about AI

AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans | Melanie Mitchell | Substack

I write about interesting new developments in AI. Click to read AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

The Atmosphere

A slightly-less-technical introduction

Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 1 of 2

How the human mind is different from our conception of it

AIR ‐ Uniform Resource Names for AI

A repository of models, textual inversions, and more - civitai/civitai

How should social science think about AI?

Big structures and large processes are back, baby

Are We Thinking Correctly About AI Intelligence? | Quanta Magazine

Computer scientist Melanie Mitchell discusses why artificial intelligence doesn’t “think” or “reason” like humans, and how we can create better methods for measuring machine cognition.

Deep Research, information vs. insight, and the nature of science

What AI will accelerate in the scientific process, what it cannot do, and how we can prepare for new manners of scientific investigation.

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Thought

This research paper examines, from a multidimensional perspective (cognitive, social, ethical, and philosophical), how AI is transforming human thought. It highlights a cognitive offloading effect: the externalization of mental functions to AI can reduce intellectual engagement and weaken critical thinking. On the social level, algorithmic personalization creates filter bubbles that limit the diversity of opinions and can lead to the homogenization of thought and polarization. This research also describes the mechanisms of algorithmic manipulation (exploitation of cognitive biases, automated disinformation, etc.) that amplify AI's power of influence. Finally, the question of potential artificial consciousness is discussed, along with its ethical implications. The report as a whole underscores the risks that AI poses to human intellectual autonomy and creativity, while proposing avenues (education, transparency, governance) to align AI development with the interests of humanity.

Ideas from philosophy I use to think about AI

Physicalism, functionalism, and lots of Quine

Ali Alkhatib: Defining AI

The main issue I have with a lot of work that tries to define AI is that the criteria they use to draw boundaries often turn out to be functionally useless for my needs; these definitions lead us to weird places, letting scholars fixate on strange, unworkable frameworks. Those pedantic fixations don’t really benefit the organizers, activists, regular people who are getting crushed by the systems they’re trying to work against. So I’m going to try to unpack how I think about AI; how I trace the boundaries of the term in a way that’s as useful as possible for me and my needs; and how I would encourage you to scope or define ideas that are important to your work.