Go searching for the quote “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”, and Google is likely to tell you with full AI-driven confidence that it comes from Maya Angelou. It won’t cite an original source, but it will confidently follow up with bullet points under self-important headers like “Meaning of the Quote” and “How to Apply It”.
■ Perhaps Google omits a reliable attribution because it isn’t from Maya Angelou, at least not originally. The indispensable website Quote Investigator helpfully identifies the originator as one Carl W. Buehner. The misattribution is failure enough: Knowledge worth keeping is worth keeping well, and errors confidently delivered can easily eclipse or squeeze out the truth.
■ But it’s almost worse to be “told” by a computer program what to think about a quotation that is fundamentally about human feelings. The entire point of a quotation like this is to cause reflection. Reflection is a process that takes place internally; it is not a list of bullet points to be memorized.
■ Information technologies make it ever easier for us to figure out how to do things and understand why they happen. We have entered an age of the “Teach-Yourself Economy”, in which the motivated learner can figure out how to do countless things through independent study. The barriers to “how to” have fallen in so many places and in so many ways as to be truly astonishing.
■ As it becomes easier to figure out “how”, though, it also becomes much more important to thoughtfully consider “why”. Aphorisms and proverbs exist because we humans need to reflect on meanings and reasons. That’s far different from merely regurgitating explanations or suggestions in “how-to” format.
■ There’s a temptation to call it reductionism when Google (or any other service) uses AI to offer purported explanations for deeper thoughts on what makes for meaning. But it’s really something even worse: A misdirection. Nobody needs a checklist entitled “How to Love Grandma” -- but we often do need to be reminded that real and abiding care for others is quite central to the meaning of life. Any sense of “intelligence” that doesn’t distinguish between the two and know better than to put the wrong one first probably shouldn’t be called intelligence at all.
