THESE STRANGE NEW MINDS

A closeup look at the large language models that have radically changed computer technology.

The world fundamentally changed when artificial intelligence systems learned to talk, says this intriguing book. It meant that humans no longer had a monopoly on cooperation, knowledge generation and sharing, and conceptualization. Summerfield, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a staff research scientist at Google DeepMind, is well placed to explain the origins and nature of the large language models (or LLMs) that have taken AI systems to a more advanced level. He is wary of this new generation, concerned that they are developing faster than the means of human control. While acknowledging that LLMs can be very useful at organizing and providing information, the author provides plenty of examples of dangers they could unleash, including fake legal cases or stock market crashes. Developers have tried to prevent these risks by providing more context for AI responses, but that raises the issue of AI systems reflecting the biases of the programmers. The fact that LLM-informed systems can communicate with each other also means that some things occur without human involvement. Does all this mean that the systems “think?” Summerfield’s conclusion: Whatever they’re doing looks a lot like it. The key problem is that we are plunging ahead with ever-smarter systems without understanding their impact, and Summerfield thus calls for coordinated research into the field from developers, regulators, and governments. “The era we have just entered—where AI can speak, both to us and to each other—is a watershed moment,” Summerfield writes. “We don’t yet understand what it will mean for humanity, but it’s going to be exciting—and slightly terrifying—to find out.”

A clear-minded, accessible examination of how AI systems work.