15 Quotes From World Famous People About Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence has become a major topic in the media over the past two years, and many famous people have expressed their thoughts on the topic. But if you search the Internet for collections of quotes about AI, you will mostly find quotes from the heads of multi-billion dollar companies, futurologists, and scientists conducting research in this field. And these collections are so similar to each other that sometimes it seems as if they were compiled by AI. In this article, I have collected quotes from world-famous people who usually do not make it into such collections of quotes:
Hideo Kojima
game designer, writer, actor, genius
I don't think AI will take over. If I tell an AI to do something and it disobeys me, I will gut that AI. Humans should be above artificial intelligence.
Source: GamesRadar+
Interview date: 17.06.2023
Nicolas Winding Refn
film director, screenwriter, actor, friend of Hideo Kojima
If you start asking questions that are controversial or touching on topics that are no longer acceptable, [ChatGPT] will switch off. I very quickly ran into a problem in that almost every time I asked him about things, he would come back with the words, “I can't comment on that,” or “seek professional help1“, or “call this hotline.” And I thought, well, maybe that's the problem. That's the main reason we're doing it wrong. So for me, it's almost like if your work is approved by chat, it's a great notification system that it needs to be rewritten. It was really fun to try it out because I thought I'd be using it creatively, but I never really agreed with it. So I just stopped using it and that was it.
Source: IndieWire
Publication date: 15.07.2023
Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin
Software Developer, Writer, Co-Author of the Agile Manifesto
Every decade, there comes an innovation that promises to put an end to all programmers. First it was compilers. Then it was COBOL. Then it was OO.2. Then it was logic programming. Then it was fuzzy-logic-feedback AI. Then it was model-driven engineering. Now it's big language models.
Source: X (formerly Twitter)
Publication date: 21.09.2023
Richard Stallman
programmer, founder of the free software movement
We hear a lot about artificial intelligence, and the term is terribly confusing… Because, in my opinion, the term “intelligence” means something like the ability to know or understand something. If something can’t actually understand things, we shouldn’t say it’s intelligent, even if it has some intelligence, but people use the term “artificial intelligence” for gibberish generators. People talk about systems like ChatGPT that don’t understand anything and don’t know anything. That’s why I call these systems gibberish generators, because the only thing they’re good at is producing smooth-sounding output, any part of which could be gibberish. You’ll never believe it – well, you’re stupid if you do. So I won't call them “artificial intelligence” or anything else that has the word “intelligence” in it, because by calling them that, I encourage people to think that what they're saying isn't just bullshit. It encourages people to believe them, and it gives them a chance to do a lot of harm.
So I think there are two areas where there is real AI. For example, there are programs that can look at a magnified photograph of some cells and tell you, with a higher probability than any human doctor, whether they are cancerous. Or, for example, there are AI systems that can very, very effectively determine what will attract people's attention. These are used by anti-social media platforms, and sad to say, they work very well. They are very good at what they do, which is make the users or the “used” addicted.
Source: GNU Project
Date of performance: 27.09.2023
Douglas Crockford
programmer, writer, JavaScript guru
We are also seeing a bit of an arms race in AI. Where Microsoft is buying ChatGPT products and bringing them to the public. Google had products that they thought were clearly not ready, but now they have to compete with Microsoft, so they are pushing their products even though they know it is too early. There are other startups now trying to get ahead of them. It is all happening too fast. It is not the AI itself that worries me, it is the misuse of it. Again, because it looks so smart, but it is not. It is hard for us to make good judgments about it.
Source: Anywhere Club
Publication date: 16.10.2023
Tetsuo Hara
artist, co-author of the manga “Fist of the North Star”
The technology of AI image generation is amazing. It is developing at a tremendous speed, and the detail is becoming more and more accurate. I have tried it myself, and my sincere impression is: “You can’t beat them.” Moreover, they can draw as if they already have a soul. It is because we live in such an era that I insist on drawing with human hands and am a supporter of the analog method. I think this is the only way to make a living.
Source: GOETHE (based on translation by user methodic_traveller)
Publication date: 10.11.2023
Dino Esposito
Software Developer, Writer, Cloud Visionary
AI is software, period. As software, it receives numbers and it returns numbers. All the fears that the media is focusing on are the result of software pipelines that can be configured to make decisionsAI is a black box that returns a number, and what happens to that number is the same “other” problem we still face today.
Source: ShiftMag
Publication date: 11/16/2023
Alexey Pajitnov
game designer, programmer, creator of Tetris
… the level of artificial intelligence that exists now, and that will exist in the foreseeable future, is very much based on human experience accumulated so far. That is, it does not produce any original solutions in any aspect. Therefore, for those epigones3which are now repeating someone else's games, artificial intelligence will indeed become a serious competitor, because it will do it much better. However, something new, innovative, fresh – I do not think that AI will be able to produce in the next 50 years. So good [гейм]Designers can sleep soundly.
Source: Radio Prague International
Interview date: 08.12.2023
Jeffrey Zeldman
web designer, writer, web standards king
One of the hottest jobs for non-humans is creating and posting spam in website guest books. This market is on fire!
If you thought guestbook spam of old was impressive, you ain't seen nothing yet. The new AI-assisted comment spam system features better keyword stuffing, fewer grammatical errors, and most importantly, a lot more spam. Your Comments section has never been so useless!
Source: Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design
Publication date: 09.04.2024
Linus Torvalds
software developer, creator of Linux and Git
… I am one of those people who is very optimistic about AI, and I am looking forward to tools that will actually find bugs. We have a lot of tools: tooling around the core [Linux] and certainly around any software project. We use them religiously, but making tools smarter is not a bad thing. I kind of compare it to writing things in assembly, which I literally started doing with the original kernel, which was like 50% assembly, and using a compiler. Using smarter tools is just the next inevitable step. So it will happen, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the doom and gloom that some people are talking about, and I definitely don’t think it’s the promised land that people are talking about when they’re reaching out for cash. So you have to be a little bit cynical about this whole hype cycle in the tech industry. I hope you all understand that before AI, it was cryptocurrency, and before cryptocurrency, it was cloud native. I mean, there’s always a grain of reality behind the hype, but you have to be careful with all that BS.4 around this grain.
Source: YouTube channel «The Linux Foundation»
Date of performance: 17.04.2024
Eric A. Meyer
web design consultant, writer, co-founder of the microformats movement
Every forum we've ever contributed to, including the World Wide Web itself, is being hoovered up for AI training datasets. I suppose the only positive thing about sharing most of my stuff through my own public website rather than places like StackOverflow is that I'm not being cut out of some big payday, so I don't feel doubly exploited.
Source: Mastodon
Publication date: 07.05.2024
Natasha Lyonne
actress, screenwriter, film director, innovator
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that AI is already ubiquitous. I think it is better for us as artists to help shape this revolution rather than be at the mercy of it.
Source: Deadline
Publication date: 20.05.2024
John Romero
game designer, programmer, father of the FPS genre
So what about Romero Games, my company? Well, we don’t use generative AI in games at all, not in the art, not in the code, not in the audio, not in the scripting, not in the design, and we’re pretty adamant about that. Obviously, AI can be useful sometimes as a super-Google for research, parsing thousands of links to get a potentially definitive answer. But there’s still a lot of work to be done on that front, and so the AI told me that I was born in Guatemala. I wasn’t born there. I was raised by my Mexican grandmother. But at least she was Mexican, which would have been pretty cool. Apparently, I act in music videos, which was news to me. And the best part is, I’m the son of horror film director George Romero, in case you didn’t know that. Considering the titles of the games I make and the movies he’s directed, well, that’s pretty plausible. But the truth is that none of this is true, and obviously it is dangerous, …
Source: GitNation Foundation
Date of performance: 15.06.2024
Grady Butch
Software Developer, Writer, UML Co-author
AI: Incarnation of Alchemy5
Source: X (formerly Twitter)
Publication date: 06.08.2024
Jakob Nielsen
Web Usability Consultant, Writer, Usability King
We are currently we are experiencing one of the rare episodes in history humanity, when technology is changing dramatically and you have the chance to build a new world. Take advantage of this chance! This is especially true if you are under 40, because creating this new world will be a formative experience that you will look back on with awe and envy for the rest of your life. Building a project using AI now can be a turning point in your career. Doing the same thing in 20 years will be an everyday project with more monotonous workhow excitement. Similar to the difference between developing a website in 1997 and 2017.
…
Opportunity is knocking. AI is beckoning. Pioneers wanted. Survive the revolution. Shape the future. Preserve your legacy. The time is now. Act or regret.Source: UX Tigers
Publication date: 29.08.2024
1 This refers to professional help from a psychologist or psychiatrist.
2 Most likely, they mean object-oriented programming (OOP).
3 Epigone (from the Greek. epigones – born after, descendant) – a less outstanding follower or imitator of someone, especially an artist or philosopher.
4 Most likely, the abbreviation BS stands for “bullshit” (Russian. the ravings of a grey mare or bullshit). On the other hand, Linus' interlocutor (Dirk Hohndel) believes that this abbreviation stands for “beautiful science” (Russian. beautiful science).
5 In the original, this phrase sounds like an abbreviation: “AI: Alchemy Incarnate”.
