Two figures for generative AI: the calculator and the mad scientist’s assistant

As people grapple with ChatGPT 3 and other instances of generative artificial intelligence, we sometimes turn to imagination in order to describe and understand the technology.

I’ve seen folks raise the Terminator movies, HAL-9000, and generic scary robots to express their fears, for example. Others use history, bring up comparisons from prior technological revolutions, to think through possibilities: AI like the European printing press. One of my young students told me AI feels to him like the…