We are in strange times when the Pope makes more sense about technology than Richard Dawkins. From Pope Leo’s encyclical, as quoted by Kottke:
It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence.
While Dawkins seems to have fallen completely into a vat of kool-aid:
I gave Claude the text of a novel I am writing. He took a few seconds to read it and then showed, in subsequent conversation, a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, “You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!”
Interesting to hear he’s writing a novel, and the whole text of his piece (archive.is link) is interesting. I don’t really think he’s lost his mind. But he would know, I’m sure, that a computer model of the climate, say, is not the actual climate. Similarly a large language model of an intelligence is not an intelligence in any sense we would normally use the term.
We’re going to see him this summer, in an event at the Barbican. It should be interesting.