Shannon Vallor, "The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking" (Oxford UP, 2024)
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What is the central argument of Shannon Vallor’s book *The AI Mirror*?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figtor, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. And I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise, Sarah Tyson, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Shannon Valor, Bailey Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. Her new book, The AI Mirror, How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Is just out from Oxford University Press. There's a lot of talk these days about the existential risk that artificial intelligence poses to humanity, that somehow the AIs will rise up and destroy us or become our overlords, and it's game over for humanity.
In her new book, Valor argues that the actual and very alarming existential risk of AI is quite different. Because some AI technologies, such as ChatGPT or other large language models, can closely mimic the outputs of an understanding mind without actually having understanding. The technology can encourage us to surrender the activities of thinking and reasoning. This poses the risk of diminishing our ability to respond to challenges. and to imagine and bring about different futures. Valor critically examines AI doomers and long termism. The nature of AI in relation to human intelligence and the technology industry's hand in diverting our attention from the serious risks we face. Let's turn to the interview.
Hello, Shannon Valor. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Thanks. Really happy to be here.
Um I'm really looking forward to our conversation about the AI mirror, how to reclaim our humanity in the age of machine thinking. Um, before we get into the interview, tell us a bit about yourself. You know, how you came to this topic, how you became a philosopher. Anything you'd like to tell us in Way of background?
Sure. So my original um focus in grad school was the philosophy of science and Kind of the merging or integration of analytic philosophy, of science and language with phenomenological perspectives. On things like reference, uh So it was quite far actually from the work that I do now. And um when I started teaching I was primarily teaching courses for In the philosophy of science, but there was a course on the books at Santa Clara University where I started teaching in two thousand three. Called Science, Technology and Society. And it was a philosophy course, uh, but uh the person who had taught it, Thomas Powers, had left the university.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the central argument of Shannon Vallor’s book *The AI Mirror*?
0:00–17:25
2
How did Vallor’s academic background lead her to study AI ethics?
17:25–25:58
3
What genuine existential risk does Vallor identify in today’s AI systems?
25:58–39:02
4
How does the “mirror” metaphor explain why large language models aren’t truly intelligent?
39:02–48:04
5
What are the “AI doomer” and “techno‑utopian” narratives, and why are they dangerous?
48:04–55:58
6
How do current AI narratives undermine human reasoning, education, and agency?
55:58–1:02:22
7
What practical steps does Vallor propose to reclaim human agency and wisdom?
1:02:22–1:03:55
Speakers
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