How philosopher Shannon Vallor delivered the year’s best critique of AI

The author of ‘The AI Mirror’ worries about what we’re doing to our moral muscles as we grow more reliant on machines.

A few years ago, Shannon Vallor found herself in front of Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor’s hulking mercury drop of a sculpture, better known as the Bean, in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Staring into its shiny mirrored surface, she noticed something.