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Predicted benefits, proven harms

thesociologicalreview.org · 2,082 words · saved by 1 readers

Artificial intelligence (AI) finally seems to be living up to the hype. We can chat with it, ask it to write an essay or use it to generate a photo-realistic image of anything we can imagine. At the same time, these capacities seem to confirm the dystopian potentials of machine intelligence. If AI can already “pass” law and medical licence exams, how long before it turns into Skynet, the self-aware AI that turns on its creators in the Terminator films? Peering into the core of contemporary AI with the stereo vision of the technical and the sociological shows its ongoing entanglement with eugenics. The discourse surrounding artificial intelligence is, however, a spectacle. It acts as a smokescreen that diverts our attention from both the far-reaching impacts of actual AI, as it exists today, and the disturbing politics it incubates. Grasping the sociological import of AI means engaging with what’s going on under the hood. Understanding how the machinery works is a precondition for reali

Magazine June 2023 Artificial Intelligence Dan McQuillan 6th June 2023 Share this article Artificial intelligence (AI) finally seems to be living up to the hype. We can chat with it, ask it to write an essay or use it to generate a photo-realistic image of anything we can imagine. At the same time, these capacities seem to confirm the dystopian potentials of machine intelligence. If AI can already “pass” law and medical licence exams , how long before it turns into Skynet, the self-aware AI that turns on its creators in the Terminator films? Peering into the core of contemporary AI with the st

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