Large Models should not be viewed primarily as intelligent agents, but as a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated.
[…]
Our central point here is not just that these technological innovations, like all other innovations, will have cultural and social consequences. Rather we argue that Large Models are themselves best understood as a particular type of cultural and social technology. They are analogous to such past technologies as writing, print, markets, bureaucracies, and representative democracies. Then we can ask the separate question about what the effects of these systems will be.
https://henryfarrell.net/large-ai-models-are-cultural-and-social-technologies
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