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When things (are) move(d) quickly, it produces a homogenizing effect.
Diversity, i.e. difference, disappears.
AGI (artifical general intelligence) programs like ChatGPT give fast answers to the questions we pose, but this comes at a cost. We can consider this cost in terms of speed and velocity.
- Speed is scalar quantity; it it an expression of magnitude and does not account for direction e.g. a car travelling 100kph
- Velocity is a vector quantity; it is an expression of both magnitude and direction e.g. a car travelling due north at 100kph
Claim 1: Speed vitiates diversity i.e. it has a homogenizing effect that eliminates difference.
- AGI facilitates speed. That is its USP. Ask a question and you get an answer immediately. But you get the same answer as every other person who asked that question. The Large Langauge Model that you are engaged with has a finite amount of data that it can reconstitute to answer your questions. Yes, your answer may be slightly different to the answer another person gets but only in the way that one chicken nugget looks different to another. Your answer (the LLM output) is a reconstituted data-paste presented as “knowledge” in the same way chicken nuggets are reconstituted meat-paste presented as “food”. Both are satisfying to a degree but we must keep in mind that this is mass-produced “knowledge/food” at odds with The Human Pace that values diversity, serendipity, and relationality.
Claim 2: AGI limits velocity.
- AGI limits velocity in the sense that it limits our vectors of approach to our objective. Using LLMs, we approach our destination directly and arrive almost instantaneously. The Large Langauge Model navigates through, on our behalf, the data available to it and propels us directly to our destination. But this data set is finite; vast, but finite. There is no unexplored territory; everything is mapped so the course is simply set and followed. Our velocity is confined to a specific direction, determined by the decisions of those who decided what data to include in the LLM. We are merely passengers on a train speeding directly to its, and now our, destination.
- Moving at The Human Pace, we would meander along a path that would only sometimes bring us closer to our destination. We can move in any direction, or none. In search of answers, we can double back, or decide to take the road less travelled, or build our own path into uncharted territory. Our vectors are infinite. Yes, it’s slower but we now determine our own velocity. It is this freedom that has allowed humanity to explore, and question, and discover, and fail forward to where we are today. If we remove this human potential to explore by relying on AGI, then we have “enclosed the human psyche” [Sacasas] and the horizons of our species. The only people who can determine their own vectors will be those that create the AGI we use, though they themselves will inevitably find themselves “passengers” soon enough.