AI Mania: From Tulips to Tokens

In one line

Michael Pollan has written about everything from mushrooms to apples and corn, but his coevolutionary story of how tulips and humans shaped each other may ha…

Opening excerpt

The reductionist worldview that species are simply carriers of DNA hardly explains the complex relationship between humans and plants, let alone our situation with AI. The term itself has become a meme in the original Dawkins sense and started replicating on its own. We know this self-reinforcing system of models and data is powerful, yet can’t even agree on whether agents are truly intelligent or perhaps conscious.

I haven’t had the pleasure of reading Pollan’s latest book on the topic of consciousness. My unpopular opinion is that AI has not solved “the hard problem” despite its obvious usefulness and the hype. I think Yann LeCun has it right in claiming that animals exhibit learning abilities far beyond machines. Donald Hoffman goes further and puts math behind a worldview where conscious agents are the base layer rather than something matter works its way up to. Sam Altman says we’ve reached the singularity, and while investors raise capital and profit, the rest of us are in amygdala hijack, worried about the next paycheck.

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