The AI Mirror How To Reclaim Our Humanity, Reviewed

“The AI Mirror, How To Reclaim Our Humanity In An Age Of Machine Learning”, by Shannon Vallor, published just last month. It is a thorough piece of work exploring AI’s relationship with humanity from a different perspective. The author did a wonderful job of exploring the human story of using AI technology and its associated risks.

The AI Mirror reviewed

The scale of AI and its maladaptation in today’s world has screamed out for a book such as this. The author’s premise in the book is to explore why humanity and AI are conceptually inseparable. It also explores our current adoption of AI, along with the how and why it’s endangering our future.

The book starts out with context around what it means to be human. Existential questions about our existence, and what makes up our upper level activity-sets are key to understanding AI’s mis-positioning in mainstream society. It also notes how a narrow pool of people created AI, yet its application reports AI has a mirror of all humanity. This machine-learned behavior changes our perceptions, and not always in good ways.

The analysis from the very beginning is thoughtful and written for any user of technology who can relate to technology’s position in our world. It moves into how AI, with a change of focus and technological implementation, can become instrumental in solving major threats to our future. Instead of being distracted by our past in an AI mirror, we can use AI to solve environmental crises via circular economies, global warming, or other planetary threats we face.

This wider scope proposed by the author develops as you read into the book. By surpassing the AI mirror, the reflective window aids us in identifying our weaknesses, enabling fixes, and developing solutions for a better future. It uses past intelligence in a more productive manner.

Chapter 1, “AI Mirror”, continues this journey by exploring what we got, and how we could use it less destructively. Awareness is key, as the author makes a whistle-stop tour of AI’s development path and its impact on humanity. She makes an interesting connection with AI (data) transformers and how scammers abuse this technology. Quick adoption by criminals points to a lack of vision in design. It also supports the book’s premise that humanity and AI are conceptually inseparable.

Chapter 2, “Minds, Machines and Gods”, starts out with more assumptions made by a generative AI chatbot. In 2023, a chatbot manipulated a man in Belgium into committing suicide. What looked like AI gone-rogue was actually a modelling error by product managers. They instructed it to be programmed to be more emotional, so it would increase user engagement.

Chapter 3, “Through The Looking Glass”, continues the exploration of the human condition. It explores the looking glass of AI and how a mirror can seem like a window to the future, when in fact, it’s just a small subset of possibilities. It also explores the opportunity-cost of under-using human creativity and imagination.

Chapter 4, “Through The Civilized Keep”, takes a journey back through mathematics that created automated numerical constructs. It delves into the design intent for low-level functions in a pre AI age. It then explores how these constructs underpin the current form of AI that competes with upper level human functions like creativity and imagination.

Chapter 5, “The Empathy Box”, is an important exploration of why a narrow strip of our communal past is dangerous to use as a template for predicting our future. It has shone a light on the level of racism that AI can sew into any analysis that supports important decisions. It also shines a light on what we need to change to make it better.

Chapter 6, “AI And The Boot Strapping Problem”, is an exploration of how traditional scientific caution is out of style for mainstream society, despite the catastrophic risks we communally face. It explores how we need to stop obsessing over our past to make a successful future.

As with most non-fiction books, the final chapter is about looking forward. Chapter 7, “In A Mirror, Brightly”, recounts the book’s AI mirror, our current efforts to make AI safer, and how we need to switch our focus. Tech is not neutral, we inject our biases into it. We need to readjust our society to the stark reality that we are our own worst enemies. If we do, we can use AI to find our weak spots, address priorities first, and then move forward with AI as a support for our evolutionary path.

In order to restore the balance between humanity and the impact of AI, we need to rethink how we live, and interact with a technology that can fool even the most informed. We must cease using AI as a one stop mirror into our past. Instead, we need to relearn how to use AI as a helpful aid in planning for and living in our desired future.

By John Mulhall @soldersee | john@authormulhall.com is a writer with Irish Tech News for over 7 years and also a Cloud Engineer, Writer, and Novelist. You can learn more about John on his author site at https://authormulhall.com

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