Princeton’s ‘AI Snake Oil’ author says the real fear isn’t thinking machines—it’s that AI exposes who already knows how to think
FORTUNE — Narayanan’s critique is not that generative AI is useless, or that workers should refuse to use it—and he stressed that his “snake oil” criticism largely does not extend to generative AI.
He said he views AI as a potentially transformative technology that knowledge workers can already use to research, challenge assumptions, analyze data, and build software. His warning targets a different class of AI claims: systems marketed as capable of making high-stakes predictions about people.
Hospitals, insurers, human-resources departments, and criminal-justice systems have all adopted or considered machine-learning systems meant to forecast future behavior or outcomes. Narayanan is skeptical of those applications because the future is inherently hard to predict—and because dubious forecasts can drive consequential decisions about hiring, coverage, bail, or policing.
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