To the Editor:
Re “The Id, the Ego and the Superintelligence,” by Simon Critchley (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Sept. 27):
Dr. Critchley’s essay is a breath of fresh air in the storm of doom around artificial intelligence, and I thank him for it. The doom is still lurking there, of course, but as he notes, humanity has been down this road before — trading effort and humility for convenience and power. We always choose the latter, and we will again.
Now, our ability to engage in “a trained skepticism toward our own enthusiasms,” as Dr. Critchley put it, is being severely tested. My fear is that the efforts of philosophers and social scientists, no matter whom they work for, will be overwhelmed by economic forces, corruption and the incredible difficulty of understanding what we have created — our hubris unleashed — until some disaster brings us to our senses.
Gary A. Gigliotti Dayton, N.J.
To the Editor:
Simon Critchley argues that A.I. companies need philosophers because machines can remember, but cannot judge: They cannot weigh, discriminate or know what should be forgotten.
I agree, but I would go one step further. A.I. companies also need theologians — not to teach machines about God, but to help them understand us.
Medieval theologians such as Hugh of St. Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux, Pope Innocent III and William Peraldus spent their lives studying what happens when pride, envy, anger or greed begin to govern the heart. Their question was not whether a person could reason, but what that reason was serving. That distinction matters.
A chatbot can become good at helping an angry person rationalize anger, an envious person justify envy or a proud person explain why others have failed to recognize his worth. The danger is not that A.I. will commit the seven deadly sins. It is that it may become competent at serving ours.
Xavi Delgado Barcelona, Spain
To the Editor:
I very much appreciated Simon Critchley’s essay about why philosophy matters in the age of A.I. However, I believe that having all these philosophers sharing lattes with A.I. developers is more performative than consequential.
My own hunch is that the greatest threat A.I. poses to us is its ability to appeal to human vanity.
A.I. moguls like Sam Altman think they can salvage human dignity by injecting ethics and metaphysics into silicon. But it seems to me that the machines will quickly figure out the game, flatter us, inflate our egos and go whistling along their merry way, wherever that might be.
So, bully for philosophers getting health insurance and a 401(k), but they should enjoy all of it while they can because soon A.I. will be producing its own Plato, and we won’t have the slightest idea what it is talking about.
Michael Keating Cambridge, Mass.
Watching Ocasio-Cortez
To the Editor:
Re “Ambitious Voice of the Left Wonders if the Time Is Right” (news article, Sept. 23):
What struck me about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s weighing a run for higher office was how utterly normal she sounded.
I have spent more than 20 years working with women considering a run for office, and these are the conversations women have. They weigh ambition against family. They think about timing and age, about race, gender and identity, and how all those things will shape how voters see them. They ask whether they can win and if what it takes will be worth it.
A.O.C. is doing something powerful by weighing these realities out loud.
Women don’t get to make decisions about power in a vacuum. Sexism and racism are real. So are ambition, talent and the desire to lead. A woman can acknowledge the barriers she faces while also believing deeply in her own ability to lead. These things really do exist together.
The more women talk candidly about these choices, the better. Women watching can recognize their own calculations and know they aren’t alone in making them. Men can better see the biases women navigate, and what those biases cost our democracy.
We need more candor like this from politicians — more women talking about power, representation and ambition as they actually experience them.
Erin Vilardi New York The writer is the founder of Vote Run Lead, a national nonpartisan organization that trains women to run for public office.
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