The AI Mirror, Shannon Vallor
The AI Mirror, Shannon Vallor
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The AI Mirror
How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

Author: Shannon Vallor

Narrator: Kim Niemi

Unabridged: 9 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/03/2024

Synopsis

For many, technology offers hope for the future—that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome—not by us, but by our machines. Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors, they reflect the same errors, biases, and failures of wisdom that we strive to escape. Our new digital mirrors point backward. They show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time.

To meet today's grave challenges to our species and our planet, we will need something new from AI, and from ourselves.

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

About Shannon Vallor

Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where she directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute and former AI Ethicist at Google. Her work explores how new technologies reshape human moral and intellectual character and includes advising government and industry on the ethical design and use of AI. She is the author of Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on July 03, 2024

Some titles tell you nothing about the book itself - but The AI Mirror puts Shannon Vallor's central argument front and centre: that artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI such as ChatGPT, is not intelligence at all, but rather holds a mirror up to our own intelligence. As Vallor points......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on August 25, 2024

I've written a rather long review if you are into that sort of thing. The AI Mirror challenges us to reconsider the current trajectory of AI and its role in our society. Vallor argues that AI machines, by their very nature, look backward, limiting our ability to confront new and unprecedented challe......more

Goodreads review by Fred on January 19, 2025

I found all kinds of insight and information about artificial intelligence in this well-researched tome. It's not a long book in terms of pages, but it took me a while to absorb its message, which can be summed up as: AI doesn't innovate. It doesn't create, rather it reflects our knowledge as well a......more

Goodreads review by Adam on September 17, 2024

This was a really interesting read, there were lots of interesting perspectives and insights on Artificial Intelligence and their relationship with humanity. The issues I had with the book were mostly with it's structure. The book is split into an introduction and seven chapters across roughly 200 pa......more

Goodreads review by Andre on January 29, 2025

Despite 3 stars this really is a book you should read. 3 stars because it really should just be a white paper, not an entire book, even a small one. The author loses track of her main arguments in an attempt to fill space. And what are those arguments? Mainly that AI is not destined to become an aut......more

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