On rare occasions in this life, you come across a work of art that truly moves you; that resonates with you on a visceral, primordial level. A work of art that connects with something buried so deeply within your psyche, it feels it was made for you. In beholding it, you feel outside of yourself, as if you’ve transcended the limitations of the physical realm and made contact with something mystical, archetypal, true. A work of art that changes you.

For me, that art is this oil painting of a sullen humanoid cabbage drinking whisky on the rocks.

This modern masterpiece was bestowed upon us by DALL-E, the image-generating AI. Over the past few weeks, it has become our primary focus to feed DALL-E the strangest prompts we can imagine. The results? Surprisingly good.

Make no mistake, dear reader: DALL-E isn’t replacing human artists anytime soon. It presented us with its fair share of weird, uncanny valley, glitch-in-the-matrix-y images, like this one (which was supposed to be “sweet potato chasing an avocado with a car”):

But other images (like my friend, the cabbage) not only accurately captured our nonsensical prompts, but rendered them so well that a human easily could have been responsible. 

In short, DALL-E has got us reflecting on just how far AI has come — and on how far it still has to go. We’re now at a point where many bots have gotten good enough at what they do that it’s possible to forget an algorithm was responsible. But what is missing when we let AI make our decisions for us? And how could its ubiquity reshape our behavior? In today’s newsletter, we’re sharing some perspectives on these questions.

Until next time,

AI is helpful — but only if it works perfectly. Machine learning can only make our lives simpler if it’s able to accurately predict our behavior. That's not always so easy. One study on smart thermostats found that people actually spent more time fiddling with the temperature if the AI’s predictions were just slightly off.

Garbage in, garbage out. We live in a biased world, meaning many AI are trained using biased datasets. This has led to situations where an AI’s decisions just replicate the biases that they were supposed to eliminate, like gender bias in hiring. 

Technology can rewire our brains. Our brains are constantly adapting to our environments, and evidence shows that technology is already changing the way we think. One study found that regular use of GPS weakens spatial memory. As AI becomes more widespread, it remains to be soon how its presence will sculpt our minds.