Simon Willison’s Weblog

For some time, I’ve argued that a common conception of AI is misguided. This is the idea that AI systems like large language and vision models are individual intelligent agents, analogous to human agents. Instead, I’ve argued that these models are “cultural technologies” like writing, print, pictures, libraries, internet search engines, and Wikipedia. Cultural technologies allow humans to access the information that other humans have created in an effective and wide-ranging way, and they play an important role in increasing human capacities.

— Alison Gopnik, in Stone Soup AI