What is the future for AI? I invite you to take a broad view so that you can see further, and to listen quietly for the clues that are all around us.
What of this broad view? I recommend the new book from Barry Smith ( https://www.routledge.com/Why-Machines-Will-Never-Rule-the-World-Artificial-Intelligence-without/Landgrebe-Smith/p/book/9781032309934), for many reasons, but in this case as a great description of seeing ourselves as complex dynamical systems. He makes a great case, and also describes how we are in effect nested ecosystems of dynamical systems. Within our brains nested systems, our brains within our bodies, our bodies within a wider ecosystem of physical niches and cultural complexity. Where is this going I hear you ask?
As you will have heard me say in the past, AI systems are crafted artifacts indeed I say an artform, and we as the artificers. Not just in coding and building them, but also in using them as they become part of daily life in so many ways. For a great introduction to this world view read some of the many books from the great Andy Clark (latest book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313594/the-experience-machine-by-clark-andy/9780241394526 but Also why not read his latest paper … https://psyarxiv.com/8xgzv/ )
Where does this lead us? So, the broad view on AI is as the creation of many folks in a social context – think the guys at the Dartmouth meeting in 1956 going forwards (and back into the forbearers in philosophy and technology). What we call Artificial Intelligence is in effect both the broad set of technologies, and how they are being used across society. The ripples of how this is impacting society you can feel in all the debates swirling around us in the media, and in the coffee bar and subway train right now in our daily lives.
More than this, I feel that the most sensitive instrument for divining how this technology and its social uptake is shaping up is in how it is informally described by those most attuned to daily life, most aware of, and integrated with its social currents. That is the very young just making sense of and getting up to speed with our world.
Are you ready for some lyrical cultural context? Some conceptual refreshment from #JabeOnAI? Sure you are. Wait! Jabe, you are really just being a ….“Sidewalk social scientist, don’t get no satisfaction from your cigarette”. 11:59 Blonde. Parrallel Lines. Album 1979.
Well, it is hard not to be part of this zeitgeist. Part of this ecosystem within an ecosystem. I think back to a pivotal year of my youth 1979. This was not just the date of the release of Parallel Lines by Blondie (the new wave / punk band), but also the publication of GEB by Douglas Hofstadter https://www.waterstones.com/book/godel-escher-bach/douglas-r-hofstadter/9780465026562
“Without a doubt, GEB inspired more young people to pursue AI than any other book. I was one of those young people.” Melanie Mitchell, “Artificial Intelligence, A guide for Thinking Human”. 2020 https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/294649/artificial-intelligence-by-mitchell-melanie/9780241404836 Keeping good company. I really like the passage about Hofstadter’s meeting in 2014 with a bunch of folks at Google. Check that out. I digress.
Coming back to the poet punk rockers from Blondie, there is another quote that leads us on in our journey of discovery. Blondie guitarist Chris Stein told NME. “As (sci-fi author) William Gibson said, the body language of how people used to smoke cigarettes has now become cell phone manipulation. It makes for a whole culture that is less centred, maybe, whereas no place that people are drawn to because they’re always connected to somebody else.”
There is lots to unpack from that quote. One thing, is seeking to learn of the wider impact of a technology that is intimately enmeshed into the ecosystem of society, by quietly observing the minutiae of daily life, and how we use technology, and how it gets absorbed into folksy way of being on “the street”. Soon we will have a sense of how Large Language Model AI is being absorbed into the zeitgeist, and you will find out from speaking to Generation Z and Generation Alpha and the language they use to describe their interactions with Vector Spaces of concepts.
It reminds me of a quote from a great artist, that I am about to garble …
“two hundred years of american technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. but it was the minds of 11 year olds that could see that potential.”
Craig Stecyk, 1975 https://artinthestreets.org/artist/craig-r-stecyk-iii
See also on Craig,
https://beyondthestreets.com/blogs/articles/c-r-stecyk
http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/post/29363196454
I paraphrase this quote from Craig Stecyk as …
“Two hundred years of semantic technology has unwittingly created a massive digital playground of unlimited potential. But it will be the minds of 11 year olds that can see that potential”
As an example of how to listen for this subtle indication of what is happening in the widere ecosystem of society, a few years ago, I noticed something when listening to my kids and their friends. Amongst adults I had become accustomed to folks saying – Ok, I will “google that”. Reflecting the dominance of that platform as other tools such as Alta Vista fell away. In the late 2010s something began to shift, speak to Generation Z and they never say they are going to “Google” something, they always say they will “Search it up”. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=search%20it%20up
Which reflected a profound change in the overall ecosystem.
My contention is that we will see something similar in the next 5 years as the technology impact of Generative AI shakes out, and I will be looking to observe my younger kids as they grow into this world new world of ubiquitous AI. How they interact with it, and how they speak unselfconsciously about its practical use. From this we can learn much and in particular I am interested in how the idea of vector space gets understood in the wider society. You really do need to be a ‘sidewalk social scientist’.
Or as the great William Gibson says “The street,” according to Gibson’s famous phrase, “finds its own uses for things” (Gibson [1987]:186).
Now we have to reflect on how we live with this technology, or as Debbie Harry says … “Get a pocket computer, try to do what you used to do, yeah” Blondie, Picture This. 1978.
From when there was no such thing as a pocket computer; how do you do what you used to do? Or maybe you can’t remember how … Douglas Coupland: ‘I no longer remember my pre-internet brain’ https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/douglas-coupland-internet-brain/index.html
The future of #ArtificialIntelligence, look to the street to understand it …