The Interface Illusion
The technologies we design to serve us inevitably shape us in their image. In creating systems that mimic intelligence without understanding, we've constructed elaborate mirrors reflecting our limited conception of thought rather than transcending it. The paradox lies not in the machines' capabilities, but in how readily we redefine intelligence downward to match what we've built.
True understanding requires an inner world—a context beyond statistical correlation. Yet we mistake the map for the territory, confusing the symbols of thought with thought itself. When we celebrate machines that appear to think, we reveal more about our willingness to simplify our definition of thinking than about our progress in replicating it.
This pattern extends beyond artificial intelligence to all human-machine relationships. We begin by building tools to augment our capabilities, only to gradually modify our behaviour and expectations to accommodate their limitations—a subtle inversion that transforms tools back into masters.
Perhaps the most profound insight isn't that machines cannot yet think like humans, but that in our eagerness to claim victory, we have begun to think more like machines.