Episode 5: Metaphors for AI, with Shannon Vallor

[upbeat music] Welcome back to Dreaming Against the Machine. I'm your host, Adam Becker. I'm still not used to seeing strangers online talking about my work. You know, I'm, I'm just this guy. But when I see someone who I've heard of talking about my work, that's always a nice surprise and a kind of thrill. And that's how I encountered this week's guest, uh, Shannon Vallor, a philosopher of AI and author of the book The AI Mirror. Uh, I was familiar with her work, but I didn't know her, and then one day I logged on to Bluesky and was surprised to see her there talking about my book, More Everything Forever, and I sent her a message and decided that it'd be a good idea to have her on the show. But she's the first guest that we've ever had that I'd never even spoken with until we talked on the show, and I really wasn't sure how it would go, but we had a blast. She's thoughtful and engaging and funny, and I think you're gonna enjoy it, so let's get to it. [upbeat music] Shannon, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.

Thanks for having me. Really excited for the conversation.

Shannon, why don't you introduce yourself? I don't have your title right in front of me. I know who you are, but I don't think I could rattle off your title from memory.

It's kind of a mouthful. Uh, so I'm the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. So I am a philosopher by training, so I'm appointed in the philosophy department, uh, but I work in an interdisciplinary institute called the Edinburgh Futures Institute, uh, where I work with folks in philosophy, law, computer science, social sciences, uh, looking at, uh, a range of issues around, uh, ethics and technology, and I co-direct a center there focused on these kinds of questions called the Center for Technomoral Futures.

You also wrote a book, The AI Mirror.

Yep. So my first book, uh, in 2016 was called Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, and then in 2024 I wrote a book that was focused really on AI and the generative AI wave that was just breaking. Uh, and that book's called The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, and the title's a little bit of a trick, uh, because I don't think that machines actually think. Uh-

Yep

... but it's about also the ways that AI and the ways that we think about it and the ways it's marketed to us encourage us to develop more machine-like ways of thinking ourselves.

Say a little more about that. I, I have to admit, uh, very sheepishly, I know about your book, but I haven't read your book. I want to read your book. Um-

Great. I hope you do

... well, or, or rather-

But yeah

... your more recent book.

Yeah. I never judge-

Yeah

... anyone for not having read, uh, my work, 'cause I have a stack of books, uh-

Yep

... including by friends, that I have yet to get to, so there's a lot out there. Yeah.

Exactly, yeah. No, I feel like there are people out in the world who do judge their colleagues and friends for not reading their books, and I don't like those people and I don't want to be one of those people. [laughs]

Yeah, that's not cool.

So, yeah.

Not cool, man.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah,