New book from AI expert Philosophy Professor Shannon Vallor

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous across various sectors, including industry, government, and scientific research. High-profile uses of AI encompass advanced web search engines, recommendation systems, speech interaction technologies, and autonomous vehicles and is increasingly being integrated into a wide array of new applications.

Professor Vallor presents a 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. The book encourages the reader to pursue the technology as way of recovering our sense of the possible. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

The book has already created a great deal of discussion in the press.

“The author urges us to recognise that, far from being the handmaidens of a superhuman intelligence, ChatGPT and similar technologies underpinned by so called Large Language Models (LLMs) are merely “giant mirrors made of code, built to consume our words, our decisions, our art . . . then reflect them back to us”. However real they seem, mistaking them for the beginnings of an Artificial General Intelligence — AGI, ie, machine sentience — is misguided, because “these mirrors know no more of the lived experience of thinking and feeling than our bedroom mirrors know our inner aches and pains.”

The Financial Times

The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, published by Oxford University Press is available now.

Professor Vallor will be hosting an event at Topping & Company Booksellers in Edinburgh to discuss the book on Thursday, 20th June, click on the link below to book your place.

Related links

• Professor Shannon Vallor
• The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
• Event - Book your place at ‘Shannon Vallor: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in the Age of AI’ at Topping & Company