Looking in the Discourse search function, I see that 2018 was the last time that anyone posted in this forum about AI, and some things about AI have changed since then. The 2025 IAPCT conference featured a presentation about AI, and of course PCT is relevant to any discussion of intelligence, artificial or otherwise, but my post doesn’t concern the PCT implications of AI. Rather, I want to suggest a way to think about what AI actually is.
An idea that has recently occurred to me is to think of AI as a set of ultra-processed communication products similar in many respects to the ultra-processed food products on the shelves of our grocery stores. It seems to me that AI has much the same relationship to everyday face-to-face communication as boxed, ultra-processed foods have to home cooking from fresh ingredients.
- Like ultra-processed foods, AI products are sold to us by large corporations that manufacture their products using processes that are largely opaque to consumers (and, in the case of the AI, also appear to be somewhat opaque to the producers).
- Like ultra-processed foods, AI products are manufactured from long lists of ingredients, some of which may be artificial, adulterated, or even harmful.
- Like ultra-processed foods, AI products are sold as helping to reduce the time and effort needed to accomplish essential tasks.
- Like ultra-processed foods, some AI products, such as AI companions, may be “sweetened”with fawning acquiescence or “salted” with sexual references in an effort to make them habit-forming or even addictive. The corporate objective for both of these types of ultra-processed products is to maximize profits by inducing users to buy increasing amounts of them.
- Like ultra-processed foods compared to meals from the kitchens of talented cooks, AI products often seem bland or lacking in individuality compared to prose or artwork turned out by good writers and artists.
I imagine that we could go on drawing parallels between these two kinds of ultra-processed products, but these are probably enough to put my point across. Much of the hype about AI these days concerns possible parallels between AI “brains” and human brains, but some of this hype might be demystified if we started thinking of AI as just another consumer product–a very powerful tool for some purposes, to be sure–instead of a new kind of sentient being.