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Template:M intro technology rumours of our demise: Difference between revisions
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The challenge is not to automate indiscriminately, but ''judiciously''. To ''optimise'', so humans are set free of tasks they are not good at, and thereby not diverted from their valuable work by formal process better suited to a machine. This can’t really be done by rote. | The challenge is not to automate indiscriminately, but ''judiciously''. To ''optimise'', so humans are set free of tasks they are not good at, and thereby not diverted from their valuable work by formal process better suited to a machine. This can’t really be done by rote. | ||
Here “machine” carries a wider meaning than “computer”. It encompasses any formalised, preconfigured process. A [[playbook]] is a machine. A policy battery. An approval process. | Here, “machine” carries a wider meaning than “computer”. It encompasses any formalised, preconfigured process. A [[playbook]] is a machine. A policy battery. An approval process. | ||
===AI overreach=== | ===AI overreach=== | ||
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These are the artists for whom the improbability engine worked its magic, even if not in their lifetimes. But how many undiscovered Nietzsches, Blakes and Dickinsons are there, who never caught the light, and now lie lost, sedimented into unreachably deep strata of the human canon? How many ''living'' artists are brilliantly ploughing an under-appreciated furrow, cursing their own immaculate Bayesian priors? How many solitary geniuses are out there who, as we speak, are galloping towards an obscurity a [[large language model]] might save them from? | These are the artists for whom the improbability engine worked its magic, even if not in their lifetimes. But how many undiscovered Nietzsches, Blakes and Dickinsons are there, who never caught the light, and now lie lost, sedimented into unreachably deep strata of the human canon? How many ''living'' artists are brilliantly ploughing an under-appreciated furrow, cursing their own immaculate Bayesian priors? How many solitary geniuses are out there who, as we speak, are galloping towards an obscurity a [[large language model]] might save them from? | ||
(I know of at least one: legendary rockabilly singer [[Daniel Jeanrenaud]], known to his fans as the [[Camden Cat]], who for thirty years has plied his trade with a beat up acoustic guitar on the Northern Line, and once wrote and recorded one of the great rockabilly singles of all time. Here it is on | (I know of at least one: legendary rockabilly singer [[Daniel Jeanrenaud]], known to his fans as the [[Camden Cat]], who for thirty years has plied his trade with a beat-up acoustic guitar on the Northern Line, and once wrote and recorded one of the great rockabilly singles of all time. Here it is, on {{Plainlink|1=https://soundcloud.com/thecamdencats/you-carry-on?si=24ececd75c0540faafd470d822971ab7|2=SoundCloud}}.) | ||
Digression over. | Digression over. | ||
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A sensible use for this technology would create [[system effect]]<nowiki/>s to ''extend'' the long tail. | A sensible use for this technology would create [[system effect]]<nowiki/>s to ''extend'' the long tail. | ||
It isn’t hard to imagine how this might work. A rudimentary version exists in {{Plainlink|https://www.librarything.com/|LibraryThing}}’s recommendation engine. It isn’t even wildly clever '''—''' {{Plainlink|https://www.librarything.com/|LibraryThing}} has been around for nearly twenty years and doesn’t, as far as I know, use AI: each user lists, by ASIN, the books in her personal library. She can rate them, review them, and the LibraryThing algorithm will compare each users’s virtual “library” with all the other user libraries on the site and list the users with the most similar library. The non-matched books from libraries of similar users are often a revelation | It isn’t hard to imagine how this might work. A rudimentary version exists in {{Plainlink|https://www.librarything.com/|LibraryThing}}’s recommendation engine. It isn’t even wildly clever '''—''' {{Plainlink|https://www.librarything.com/|LibraryThing}} has been around for nearly twenty years and doesn’t, as far as I know, even use AI: each user lists, by ASIN, the books in her personal library. She can rate them, review them, and the LibraryThing algorithm will compare each users’s virtual “library” with all the other user libraries on the site and list the users with the most similar library. The non-matched books from libraries of similar users are often a revelation. | ||
This role — seeking out delightful new human endeavours — would be a valuable role ''that is quite beyond the capability of any group of humans'' and which would not devalue, much less usurp the value of human intellectual capacity. Rather, it would ''empower'' it. | |||
This role — seeking out delightful new human endeavours — would be a valuable role ''that is quite beyond the capability of any group of humans'' and which would not devalue, much less usurp the value of human intellectual capacity. Rather, it would ''empower'' it. | |||
This is a suitable application for artificial intelligence. This would respect the division of labour between human and machine. | ''This'' is a suitable application for artificial intelligence. This would respect the division of labour between human and machine. | ||
Note also the [[system effect]] it would have: it would encourage people to create unique and idiosyncratic things. It would distribute wealth and information — that is, [[strength]], not [[Power structure|power]] — ''along'' the curve of human diversity, rather than concentrating it at the top. | Note also the [[system effect]] it would have: it would encourage people to create unique and idiosyncratic things. It would distribute wealth and information — that is, [[strength]], not [[Power structure|power]] — ''along'' the curve of human diversity, rather than concentrating it at the top. | ||
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Information technology has done a fabulous job of alleviating boredom, by filling our empty moments with a 5-inch rectangle of gossip, outrage and titillation, but it has done little to nourish the intellect. This is a function of the choices me have made. They, in turn are informed by the interests. Maybe we are missing something by never being bored. Maybe that is a clear space where imagination can run wild. Perhaps being fearful of boredom, by constantly distracting ourselves from our own existential anguish, we make ourselves vulnerable to this two-dimensional online world. | Information technology has done a fabulous job of alleviating boredom, by filling our empty moments with a 5-inch rectangle of gossip, outrage and titillation, but it has done little to nourish the intellect. This is a function of the choices me have made. They, in turn are informed by the interests. Maybe we are missing something by never being bored. Maybe that is a clear space where imagination can run wild. Perhaps being fearful of boredom, by constantly distracting ourselves from our own existential anguish, we make ourselves vulnerable to this two-dimensional online world. | ||
==== Division of labour, redux ==== | |||
About that “[[division of labour]]”. When it comes to mechanical tasks, machines — especially [[Turing machine]]<nowiki/>s — scale very well, while humans scale very badly. “Scaling” when we are talking about computational tasks means doing them over and over again, in series or parallel, quickly and accurately. Each operation can be identical; their combined effect astronomical. Of course machines are good at this: this is why we build them. They are digital: they preserve information indefinitely, however many processors we use, with almost no loss of fidelity. | |||
You could try to use networked humans to replicate a Turing machine, but the results would be disappointing and the humans would not enjoy it. Humans are slow and analogue. With each touch they ''degrade'' information (or ''augment'' it, depending on how you feel about it). The [[signal-to-noise ratio]] would quickly degrade. (This is the premise for the parlour game “Chinese Whispers” — each repetition changes the signal. A game of Chinese Whispers among a group of Turing machines would be no fun at all.) | |||
In any case, you could not assign a human, or any number of humans, the task of “catalogue the entire output of human creative output”. With a machine, at least in concept, you could.<ref>Though this is sometime misleading, as I discovered when trying to find the etymology of the word “[[satisfice]]”. Its modern usage was coined by Herbert Simon in a paper in 1956, but the ngram suggests its usage began to tick up in the late 1940s. On further examination the records transpire to be mistranslations caused by optical character recognition errors. So there is a large part of the human oeuvre —the pre-digital bit that has had be digitised—that does suffer from analogue copy errors.</ref> | |||
But when it comes to imaginative uses of information we associate with the mind, humans scale magnificently. Here what we look for in “scaling” is very different. We don’t want identical, digital, high-fidelity duplication. Ten thousand copies of ''Finnegans Wake'' contribute no more to the human canon than does one.<ref>Or possibly, even ''none'': wikipedia tells us that, “due to its linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, ''Finnegans Wake'' has been agreed to be a work largely unread by the general public.”</ref> Multiple humans contribute precisely that difference in perspective: a complex community of readers can, independently parse, analyse, explain, narratise, extend, criticise, extrapolate, filter, amend, correct, and improvise the information and each others’ reactions to it. This community of expertise is what Sam Bankman-Fried overlooks in his dismissal of Shakespeare’s “[[Bayesian prior|Bayesian priors]]” creates its own intellectual energy and momentum. No matter how fast it pattern-matches in parallel processes, artificial intelligence can’t do this. | |||
===A real challenger bank=== | ===A real challenger bank=== | ||