Thanks for the link! I remember I first became aware of Heather Ralston from something you sent in an email. Good to be reminded of here again. Some cogent insights in that video (which I'm still watching now).
I'm not that philosophically educated to understand the first sentence in the last paragraph, but now I'm wondering if there exists something like "primal" or "unalloyed intelligence".
It's true that language is grafted onto each of us in a way as to make the notion of the "Human Animal" almost oxymoronic, the book Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark champions the argument that we're already Cyborgs (I think Heidegger and Lacan, among many others are saying something similar), and opens up room to say that we've been Artificial Intelligence all along; however, to conflate that with the LLMs of today is to miss the fundamental cut away from Nature, the Gap or Negation, that constitutes what we, as Humans, do that sets us apart from this positivistic, functional, instrumental from of "Intelligence." You're right to say something like "We've been AIs the whole time," but to fail to account for the fundamental contradiction or negation at the core of the Human Subject is a mistake far too many people are making today. We diminish and reduce ourselves to our symbolic identities and roles when we forget that the very thing we do is overcome these as Humans.
I notice the line between human intelligence and AI isn’t as big as people think. Both run on patterns and memory. Ours comes from a lifetime of experience instead of a giant dataset. The whole “meat-based language model” thing made me laugh because it’s pretty spot on.
In my own work I see how the mind creates stories automatically, like its own little algorithm. Underneath that is something much quieter. For myself, using AI has never felt inauthentic. It’s just been another tool, the same way music producers use software or mixers to get the sound right.
I like your take on using AI intentionally instead of fearing it. It can definitely show us more about how the mind works and as a useful resource.
Exactly!
https://youtu.be/fj2mWv4P8hU?si=6sqVUQyAjKBwenl-
Thanks for the link! I remember I first became aware of Heather Ralston from something you sent in an email. Good to be reminded of here again. Some cogent insights in that video (which I'm still watching now).
Fascinating observation!
I'm not that philosophically educated to understand the first sentence in the last paragraph, but now I'm wondering if there exists something like "primal" or "unalloyed intelligence".
It's true that language is grafted onto each of us in a way as to make the notion of the "Human Animal" almost oxymoronic, the book Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark champions the argument that we're already Cyborgs (I think Heidegger and Lacan, among many others are saying something similar), and opens up room to say that we've been Artificial Intelligence all along; however, to conflate that with the LLMs of today is to miss the fundamental cut away from Nature, the Gap or Negation, that constitutes what we, as Humans, do that sets us apart from this positivistic, functional, instrumental from of "Intelligence." You're right to say something like "We've been AIs the whole time," but to fail to account for the fundamental contradiction or negation at the core of the Human Subject is a mistake far too many people are making today. We diminish and reduce ourselves to our symbolic identities and roles when we forget that the very thing we do is overcome these as Humans.
I notice the line between human intelligence and AI isn’t as big as people think. Both run on patterns and memory. Ours comes from a lifetime of experience instead of a giant dataset. The whole “meat-based language model” thing made me laugh because it’s pretty spot on.
In my own work I see how the mind creates stories automatically, like its own little algorithm. Underneath that is something much quieter. For myself, using AI has never felt inauthentic. It’s just been another tool, the same way music producers use software or mixers to get the sound right.
I like your take on using AI intentionally instead of fearing it. It can definitely show us more about how the mind works and as a useful resource.
We are each a large-
language model housed
in a meat machine,
in the dreamlike
hyper-identity of our
body-mind ego self.
—Matt Cardin, The Living Dark