An AI illusion of Safety

A.I. suggestions “work covertly, sometimes very powerfully, to change not only what you write but what you think.” The result, over time, might be a shift in what “people think is normal, desirable, and appropriate.”  We often hear A.I. outputs described as “generic” or “bland,” but averageness is not necessarily anodyne. Vauhini Vara, a novelist and a journalist whose recent book “Searches” focusses in part on A.I.’s impact on human communication and selfhood, told me that the mediocrity of A.I. texts “gives them an illusion of safety and being harmless.” - Kyle Chayka writing in The New Yorker