WIRED Ghost Stories
Five hauntings from the other side of technology
Nobody should be afraid of technology. And yet, as we’ve evolved from stone tools to the printing press to telephones to computers, a creep factor has crept in. The explanation is simple enough: The harder it is to tell how something works, the more likely we are to fill in the gaps. A clockwork mechanism is complicated, but anyone can study the turning gears. Something like ChatGPT? Well, it might as well be ghosts on the other end. ❡ When the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle first referred to a “ghost in the machine” in 1949, he wasn’t talking about computers. Nor, in fact, was he being serious at all—Ryle was mocking the idea that some immaterial force could affect the physical world. But history doesn't care about context. Today, his phrase is summoned whenever your TV turns itself on, or Siri starts...
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