Over 27 Months Later, This Is Still the Best Assessment of AI

In May of 2023, a media relations manager for Taylor & Francis Group invited me to interview the author of a new book on artificial intelligence (AI). I read the book that the publisher sent to me, (free book! can’t beat that!) and I enjoyed its profound insights that exposed the central design assumptions of AI.

Speaking with the author was a lot of fun and very enlightening. The author is a wonderfully intelligent and perceptive woman with whom I recorded a 52-minute interview.

Yes, a woman. Not a Tech Bro. A woman trained in the humanities who offers a view of AI from outside the Tech Bro manosphere. She’s Dr. Eve Poole, OBE, who, among many other accomplishments, wrote the book Robot Souls about problematic developments in AI. It’s an important book that deserves much more attention than it has received.

Dr. Poole’s basic thesis in the book is that AI is being programmed by people who are using a limited definition of intelligence. That limited vision is programmed into the source code of AI models and that central design flaw leads to the limited results of the AI slop that we see today. She goes to explain how we can better think about intelligence and what it means to be human and how being clear on these concepts will help develop better forms of AI.

I posted my interview with Dr. Poole on YouTube.

I published on this very platform, a link to the interview with a text transcript.

Sadly, both were largely ignored. Of course, the Tech Bros ignore it because Dr. Poole is a woman, an advocate for gender equality, and not hostile to religion, but most of all because Dr. Poole is pulling back the curtain on some of the mistakes being made by the AI Tech Bros. In fact, my positive review on Amazon of Dr. Poole’s book and my book on politics made me a target of right-wing bros who hacked and sabotaged my Amazon account.

There has been so much hyperventilation, both positive and negative, about AI in the past few years. None of the myriad articles and videos have matched the plain and direct wisdom offered by Dr. Poole. What she says about the “junk code” that the programmers are leaving out is the key to solving the slop problem of AI. Dr. Poole also demystifies the potential threats of AI to us and our society. I recommend her book, Robot Souls.

You can listen to interview here on YouTube and/or read the text transcript on this very platform.

(Affiliate links to the book are included.)