There is a tendency to anthropomorphize a single agent on whose intelligence the users of the program will come to depend. It is this superagent that is often analogized to a butler or personal assistant.
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:”Today, the recentralization of emergent discourse in AI [Artifical Intelligence] is most apparent in how computer agents such as those designed to sort electronic mail or scour the Internet for news are being discussed in popular culture. As we have seen, the intelligence of such learning agents emerges from the functioning of a distributed and evolving system, but there is a tendency to anthropomorphize a single agent on whose intelligence the users of the program will come to depend. It is this superagent that is often analogized to a butler or personal assistant. The appropriation of decentered views of mind is a complex process; decentering theories are made acceptable by recasting them in more centralized forms, yet even as this takes place, some of the decentered message gets through all the same.”
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: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
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 145
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney