Tom Chatfield ‘s Wise Animals is a fabulous book. (A big thank you to Simon Roberts for the recommendation)
This, from Daniel Dennett via Emile-Auguste Chartier, made me think.
“One could then say, with complete rigour, that it is the sea herself who fashions the boats choosing those which function and destroying others.”
It made me wonder about all the black-box anxiety about the power of AI and of our ignorance of its workings. If that ignorance is seen as fundamental to us as humans, and no different to that of shipbuilders ignorance of the sea, one could perhaps argue the following.
It is not the good ship AI that is frightening, it is our ignorance of the swells and currents and depths of ourselves as a species, the sea of us, that scares.