SNF Agora Institute

Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), along with co-authors Alison Gopnik (University of California, Berkeley), Cosma Shalizi (Carnegie Mellon University), and James Evans (University of Chicago), challenge the idea that large AI models are becoming independent, intelligent agents in a new paper published in Science. Instead, they argue that AI functions as a cultural and social tool, much like writing, printing, markets, and bureaucracies.

Farrell and his co-authors explain that large AI models do not “think” or “understand” the world as people do. Instead, they process vast amounts of human-created information and organize it to make it more accessible. Like earlier technologies that transformed communication and knowledge-sharing, AI influences politics, business, and decision-making.

Farrell sees this article as a crucial step in shifting how people talk about AI. “We need to stop imagining AI as super-powered individual intelligences and start seeing it for what it is, a system that reorganizes information and power” he says. “When we compare large models to economic markets or government systems instead of spinning out speculative science fictional scenarios, we can ask more useful questions. Who controls them? How do they shape our understanding of the world? How do they shift influence and decision-making?”