Longtime AI expert Neil Lawrence has expressed his view on the subject in The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI, a stylish book imbued with serious wisdom. Employing stories, which he says is humans’ means of expressing their unique form of intelligence (one that meshes intricately with the world), he spins an extended yarn like a fireside chat. Through these tales, as varied as they are fascinating, he compares the history and nature of AI (which bounces between logical programming and the new probability-driven, mass-data LLMs) with how we think, feel, and create. In the end he concludes that while the likes of ChatGPT do indeed pose a threat, the threat comes from inequality of human power, an inequality that he seems confidence we will rectify. The LLMs, which are neither fully digital nor analogue will, in the end, be employed by us to better us and to better understand ourselves. If that summary strikes you as shallow, it is just my restatement. The Atomic Human does a wonderful narrative job and is recommended for anyone seeking to understand our near future.
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