AI's Evolution, Connections
Metaphors and Memories
April 27, 2024 - Vol. 2, Issue 19.
In a TED video released mid week, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI, and now chief of Microsoft AI, consumer products division that’s bringing together Copilot, Bing and Edge, explained that since AI is being adopted at unprecedented rates by people, and fears and concerns are also high, he wants to help people understand it. He suggests AI is a new digital species, another human-like entity who helps us. Suleyman also claims that pretty soon, all of us will have an AI and not just individuals but organizations, cities, states, governments, etc.
Suleyman’s perspective reminded me of another metaphor, AI as human intermediary. Linda Smith shared this metaphor at a conference 48 years ago. Although Linda’s metaphor isn’t fancy like Suleyman’s, it is also a solid one. In one of her 1976 papers