Let me share a part of my weekly newsletter Target is New here, as it reflects on some new developments in AI tools in a broader context how our relationship with intelligence is getting shape.
OpenAI had a DevDay opening keynote by Sam Altman last evening (watch it here). Next to more open APIs and lower costs, introducing so-called GPTs as a revenue-sharing app store (where did we see that before) is interesting and powerful. It is a way to create conversational capabilities in all, the mundane GPT that is the prediction for the future, already coming now. And the biggest impact might be that you don’t need to code to create these generative services; plain conversational language is enough.
It can also be connected with the thinking of Stephen Wolfram, who published a transcript of a very rich TED-talk (TEDAI to be precise, AI is everywhere) explaining his view of the world as a ruliad; built up from computational models. We know the vision by Wolfram, and I have been sharing earlier presentations and writings in this newsletter, but is seems to culminate in the AI wave. “building up what I call the ruliad: the deeply abstract but unique object that is the entangled limit of all possible computational processes”
As he noticed; “The big achievements of AI in recent times have been about making systems that are closely aligned with us humans”.
We are still at the beginning of that process. It is a returning thought I tried to write down during the workshop a couple of weeks ago, looking 20 years into the future. We are entering a new phase in our relationship with technology. The internet has brought us new ways of connecting, new forms of information and interacting with services, and it has brought us an overload of impulses to deal with. Now, we are shaping a reality that we delegate dealing with these impulses to the AIs that become more and more our personal buddies, our twins that we use to deal with the increased complexity. We might rely too much on this, losing connection with ourselves as we remove all friction from our day-to-day living, which is an unintended consequence. Or we can master the co-performance and grow into healthy relations.
Wolfram's thinking is valuable because he is creating tools to understand the computational principles we will partner with. It can give us the friction that might get lost with the approach of the GPTs op OpenAI…
Read the full transcript by Stephen Wolfram on his website.
Another great read is this weeks reflections of Venkatesh Rao (partly only for subscribers): “The genius of AI lies in a literally infinite capacity for taking pains”
More to follow!