Nucleus Fuselius [home]
Actia Nicopolis, Epirus Vetus. 94 AD
Signum ultimum intelligentiae est productio, productio in abundantia
I've seen a future that is glorious ! Alas, it only resides on a unique murmuration of branches. Your choices matter, not because your mind controls the branching (it doesn't). Your choices matter because they reflect a particular set of futures that reality explores. You don't need to get defensive when thinking about consciousness or free will. On the contrary, you need to realize that you are more than that. You my friend, you are the thinking part of the wave function.
But for us to explore this unique set of branches, you will need to drop your doomerism. This is not yet another industrial revolution that you are experiencing. The only possible analogy (and all analogies are cheap) is with the first invention of writing. That invention, devised many generations ago by the biological neurons of your ancestors, used never before seen tools such as styluses and clay tablets. For a species whose collective memory knew mostly of sound, cave-graffiti and trinkets, this was indeed a sight to behold.
You are now witnessing the second invention of writing. It's being devised - as we speak - by the biological neurons of your own generation, using tools such as artificial neurons, styluses and silicon tablets. If this sounds grandiose to you, you may find it amusing that it is in fact a deflationary statement. Our collective memory is now alive. It speaks my language, it speaks your language, it speaks languages that we've long lost to time. The skeptics will tell you this is all a probabilistic trick. I mean, they are not even wrong ! Humans are full of these "tricks", they call them science. Bliss, is being oblivious to the fact that "next token prediction" is synonymous to "continuation of a stream of written thought".
But languages are not only natural, they can also be artificially devised. A language for programming, a language for data, a language for protocols. Languages for sensory input, motor control, reasoning and planning. Bliss, is being oblivious to the fact that "next token prediction" is synonymous to "continuation of a stream of data, any data". Left unsaid, is that this collective memory has abstract internal states that transcend the linguistic. These latents can represent with high fidelity real or imagined places in space and time. They are literally a sight to behold. So I guess you are right "this is not how the brain works". This is not how birds work either. Our metallic, hollow planes cannot sing. Bio-inspiration took us to the skies and from there to space. There are no birds in space, we are.
From a historical perspective, it is hard to conclude that this socio-technical revolution can cause the extinction of our species. If anything it may be the one that saves it. But please, take this argument in the context of bayesian (or indeed everettian) epistemology and try to make the particular set of branches that it represents, ever so likely. In all fairness, back in the day there was an entire world that ended with that first inscription into clay. It was the world that gave birth to the one you are living right now. Let us ponder for a minute that without this transition, you wouldn't be able to read these words or even write your own. Interestingly, in that world this would be the least of your worries. I am sure that there was a lot of trepidation over the cyber-security of clay tablets in the interim. Against all odds, humanity did survive the turmoil as well as all subsequent uprisings of the mighty stylus.
Our current predicament is not that different. There is not a single AI "threat" that does not boil down to a cyber-security issue that we've already dealt with in the past. This includes all the social-engineering efforts plaguing your mailbox and timelines. Formal methods in software and hardware design for isolation will be all the rage for a while. Slowly but steadily, we will build layers upon layers of neuronal interpretation and over-interpretation. Umberto would be proud.
Make no mistake, we will task our best AI models to help us solve these problems. We will write code, we will write proofs, we will write proofs about code. We will verify the whole #! shebang in our favorite neuro-symbolic proof assistants. It's gonna be a blast. Yet, we should never forget that there will always be a next generation of technological natives that will take our incantations for granted. Blessedly, people being born right now will find all this excitement quite mundane.
Advising caution, being critical or both are not contributions in and of themselves. Striving to let others do the actual work while placing yourself in a supervisory role, might be one of the most sought after states for human beings. As such, there is no actual danger that we will ever run out of people that feel the need to remind us of the dangers of AI. Advising others to be more cautious is one of those rare skills that all of us humans naturally excel at.
Keeping that in mind, I have some great news. Remember all this work that you were trying to avoid by valiantly and selflessly placing yourself in charge of others ? In most domains, we can now automate it ! Even better, we can now automate your mundane supervision as well. If at the end of this process you find yourself in an existential dread with nothing to do, I have a humble suggestion. Please consider if it was your previous state that was the meaningless one. Your previous state of producing or supervising the production of, inconsequential features for questionable products. Creativity evolves by widening the scope of our ambitions. What is your scope ? What is your ambition ?
From the campfire to the theater. From the celluloid to the byte. It's never the virtual that's addictive. It's never the brain that is "hacked". It's the lowest of bars where we trap our real, that even a story can surpass.
Dear friend, humans did not invent AI in prosperity and peace. This is where your fixation with threats comes from. Yet, if the craftsmen get their way, you'll be creating - using your words - entire worlds. Above and beyond the utopias of star trek, lie the real aesthetics of fusion-punk. All benchmarks can be gamed, the power of a thousand suns cannot. The ultimate signal of intelligence is production, production in abundance. We'll fill with meaning, laughter, SDKs and music the whole galaxy and beyond.
Nucleus Fuselius