Embracing cozy tech in opaque realities
Weekly notes on human AI partnerships and beyond
Gary Marcus often returns in this newsletter as a counter reference with his critique of AI, or, better said, his truth about unconditional trust in AI. InĀ this presentation at the AGI summit, he lays out his beliefs in the need for a hybrid approach to reaching something that resembles artificial general intelligence (AGI, the conference's topic). He makes a lot more points on making AI secure and advising on policies; it is worth watching.
A returning topic is the notion of co-performance, that is a way to approach AI as full partners and not only as tools. Hybrid vs. co-performance: Is it the same or different? Is Hybrid a learning system for AI with the agency, or is it that partnership that is key to the notion of co-performance?
Current generative AI can be seen as a dress rehearsal for AGI. What are the dangers of current-generation AI? One to add to his list is people overtrusting its capabilities.
People are indeed the biggest risk. Not the quality of the AI itself. How to relate this to the notion of a CozytechĀ as described by Venkatesh Rao?
In this Venn diagram, it shows how he is thinking about:
āTechnology isnāt technology unless it is unbridled, unrestrained, and āunalignedā toĀ someĀ degree, periodically forcing us to destroy and remake our understanding of ourselves. The point of technology, as far as Iām concerned, is to create and subject ourselves to a co-evolutionary pressure. First we make our tools, and then our tools make us, and thatās a good thing. ā
As I connect Gary's ideas to the thinking of co-performance, it triggers me to take the lens of this cozytech on the level of our relationship with technology and what co-performance is all about. We are growing in a more mature relationship that is not weaponizing technology on the one hand and is also embracing technology as a form of partnership that is balanced. Here is a relation with cozyness, not strange, in my opinion.
āA condition where cozytech has created a new kind of technological substrate for society that is neither a state-governed āpublicā space, nor a Tech-governed corporatist aggregator-platform space. And where the cozyweb has evolved into a more powerful central culture that has emerged out of its current condition of fearful retreat to the margins.ā
Discussing on the role of AI is often reduced to the use of tooling. We need to think further about what it unlocks in the relationship with the tooling. Embracing the cozytech as a lens potentially helps to frame and focus for healthy relations, and preventing too much dependence.
This weekly āTriggered Thoughtā is written as part of theĀ Target is NewĀ newsletter, which offers an overview of captured news from the week, paper for the week, and interesting events.Ā Find the full newsletter here.
About the author;Ā IskanderĀ is particularly interested in digital-physical interactions and a focus on human-tech intelligence co-performance. He chairs theĀ Cities of ThingsĀ foundation and is one of the organizers ofĀ ThingsCon.Ā Target is NewĀ is his āpractice for making sense of unpredictable futures in human-AI partnerships.ā