Alison Gopnik: abstract characters like Don Quixote always shaped human behavior
AlisonGopnik · x · 2026-09-04
Cognitive scientist Alison Gopnik responds to Raphael Millière's thread on AI characters influencing people: abstract text-based characters, even collective ones, have long shaped behavior — Don Quixote, the first novel, is itself about how novels make people act like novels.
Related event: Millière vs. Gopnik: AI Agents, Causal Power, and the Intentional Stance(5 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- AI agents are erasing work-life boundaries: managing agents on commutes, vacations and at 3am — bendee983 · 2026-10-21
- Stanford's Kundaje: genomic AI models must test cell-type specificity to expose real weaknesses — anshulkundaje · 2026-10-21
- a16z: Superhuman AI hardware design is the easy part — manufacturing is the hard one — a16z · 2026-10-21
- a16z's Casado says AI can't do a VC's job — but it can do everything around it — alvelda · 2026-10-21
- Kent Beck: Let the Genie Carry the Toil, But Keep the Struggle — josh_wills · 2026-10-21
- Nearly $3B mapped: the money behind the AI existential risk ecosystem — KeyNaive2982 · 2026-10-21