The real significance of new AI technology is not that machines can be like humans but that humans are prone to deception, argues Simone Natale.
In the last few weeks, the official Twitter account of the Perseverance Mars Rover, a car-sized robot designed by NASA to explore Mars, attracted news media attention and a steadily growing number of followers. While many marvelled at the photos of the Red Planet that the account posted, some asked if the fact that the account is tweeting in the first person - as if it was the Rover itself reporting from Mars and not NASA’s PR office – amounts to a form of deception. Is anthropomorphization an honest way to communicate the rover’s functioning to the public? Are we being led to project consciousness and sociality onto a machine that has neither?
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