One of the key features of interaction is the sense of presence. We immediately feel it if someone is not present in a discusison and we often praise someone by saying that they have a great presence in the room - signalling that they are influencing the situation in a positive way. In fact, it… Continue reading We are all tulpamancers now
The summarised society
One of the things that generative AI will enable is the summarisation of the growing flows of information that we all live in. This is not surprising to the reader of Herbert Simon, who suggested that with a wealth of information comes a poverty of attention and a need to allocate attention efficiently. Now, what… Continue reading The summarised society
Studying the mereologies of AI
In this article Robin Hill suggests something that may seem both obvious and strange at the same time: that our artificial intelligence systems might not cut the world up in the same way we do, or that they may not use the same features to cluster concepts as we do. The example she gives is… Continue reading Studying the mereologies of AI
Reading with bots
It seems obvious that anyone who is not using generative AI in their day job is missing out. There is a wealth of interesting opportunities, and new ways of working that need to be explored and analysed. What I have been playing around with lately is what it means to read with the help of… Continue reading Reading with bots
Invisible commons
Are there some commons that we should protect that we are just not aware of? Well, for the longest time the idea that there was a "climate" to protect was not obvious to people - and the overall discussion we now have about climate change required a concept to focus on, and climate ended up… Continue reading Invisible commons
Some policy problems in artificial agency (Agency and policy I)
A further step in understanding the challenges artificial intelligence will pose for public policy and regulation is understanding the role, construction and problems of artificial agency of different kinds. The models we are discussing today are mostly prompted in different ways, and so are in a way easy to regulate, since they only do what… Continue reading Some policy problems in artificial agency (Agency and policy I)
An agnostic position
What is the bare minimum you need to believe to believe that we should invest significantly in ensuring that AI-systems are secure, safe and sustainable? That seems like a simple question - and it is not that hard to answer. You essentially just need to believe that they are going to be impactful and that… Continue reading An agnostic position
The role of play
Let's say that we want to understand if a certain system or phenomenon is exhibiting human-level intelligence. What would we then look for? There are multitudes of such tests, and they look for a great variety of things. One catalogue of such tests is BIG-bench, a battery of task tests that is aimed at understanding… Continue reading The role of play
Artificial Strange Intelligence
Here is a common thought model: artificial intelligence will become more and more intelligent, and reach human capability. At that point it becomes something like an artificial general intelligence and some time after that it will use that intelligence to bootstrap itself into an artificial super intelligence. The model then is one-dimensional: [AI-AGI-ASI] Now, there… Continue reading Artificial Strange Intelligence
On the possibility of model ethology
In considering the potential for an ethology of artificial intelligence (AI), we are venturing into uncharted territory. The idea of observing and studying AI behavior as we would an animal’s seems, at first glance, to be an attempt to anthropo- or biomorphize technology. However, as AI systems like large language models become increasingly complex, the… Continue reading On the possibility of model ethology