To the editor: I totally agree with guest contributor Moti Mizrahi (“The real danger of AI is treating it like a human,” March 19).
He writes: “Today’s chatbots are designed to mimic us. They speak in the first person, respond with empathic phrasing and adjust their tones to match ours … But none of this indicates personhood, consciousness or even comprehension.”
Here’s a simple test I use to determine if an AI application has human-like intelligence: Can it create an original joke that is actually funny? I have asked my favorite AI app, Perplexity, to do this multiple times, and the resulting jokes have never been funny. Not once. I read the jokes to others and they respond with puzzled stares.
Mizrahi concludes, “It is a tool, even a useful one, but fundamentally limited … AI is not a person. It doesn’t think, care or understand.” I heartily agree.
Spike Kaplansky, Sherman Oaks