The prediction, in brief:

The language of “society” is helping to disseminate the idea that machines might be able to think like people and that people may have always thought like machines … Because the constituent agents of emergent AI offer almost tangible objects-to-think-with, it prepares the way for the idea of mind as machine to become an acceptable part of everyday thinking.

Predictor: Turkle, Sherry

Prediction, in context:

In her 1995 book “Life on the Screen,” Sherry Turkle – an accomplished social psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from MIT whose studies centered around people and computers for decades – writes:”The language of ‘society’ is helping to disseminate the idea that machines might be able to think like people and that people may have always thought like machines. As for connectionism, it too has been gleaned for appropriable images. Some people mentally translate the idea of connection strengths between neuron-like entities into the notion of moving things closer together and further apart. Other people translate connectionist ideas into social terms … Although emergent AI [Artificial Intelligence] is more opaque than information processing in terms of traditional, mechanical ways of understanding, it is simultaneously more graspable, since it builds intelligence out of simulates ‘stuff’ as opposed to logic. Because the constituent agents of emergent AI offer almost tangible objects-to-think-with, it prepares the way for the idea of mind as machine to become an acceptable part of everyday thinking.”

Biography:

Sherry Turkle was the author of “Life on the Screen: Computers and the Human Spirit.” and a professor of the psychology of science at MIT. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction

Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)

Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 5: The Quality of Emergence

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 142

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney