You change yourself in order to make the agent look smart
1995 (Journal of Consciousness Studies). Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer, wrote this 1995 essay, Agents of Alienation, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies on how software agents change their human users.
More from Jaron Lanier · AI and culture · AI and philosophy · Before ChatGPT
Who else?
What it refers to: Intelligent agent software such as Microsoft's Bob and Apple's Newton, which differs from a plain editor or filter program only in the psychology of its user.
Other voices
- “Programs wanting things, knowing things, expecting things, believing things” Edsger W. Dijkstra,
- “Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart” Thomas Carlyle,
- “The computer claims sovereignty over the whole range of human experience” Neil Postman,
- “Oh my god, this computer seems to understand” Ilya Sutskever, Builder,
- “Far more afraid of machine stupidity than of machine intelligence” Sendhil Mullainathan,
- “No human understands any other human” Joseph Weizenbaum,










