Epistemic Status: I think the axes are straightforward enough. I'm not particularly sure about the names, happy to hear other sorts of suggestions.

Scholarly Status: Push/pull systems have been discussed before. I'm sure there's other naming for this sort of thing in the engineering/design literature, but it probably hasn't been optimised as well to fit in with the terminology of Superintelligence. This was another fairly quickly written post.

This article builds on ideas from this one, but that one is not a prerequisite.

In Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom proposed the terminology of oracles, genies, and sovereigns. These metaphors are clear and have achieved some popularity. I recommend this post by Katja Grace for an overview and some further thinking.

This terminology might be incomplete. I think that oracles have a close parallel to genies, but there's no information-only parallel to sovereigns. Here, I propose two options.

Oracles

To reiterate from Superintelligence, an oracle is a system that answers questions. We have similar systems now, though they are weaker than what Bostrom considered. When you enter search queries into Google or many other search programs, you are using them as oracles. Pure functions don't modify the external world and are used to in-essence answer particular queries. Some consultants are asked to solve particular questions or problems. These all represent types of weak oracles.

Informers

In comparison to an oracle, an informer is a system that actively pushes select information to recipients. AI assistants are starting to veer into this territory. They suggest particular actions without being prompted.

Some sorts of prompts given by Siri include:

"Dinner with Josh looks important! Turn on Do Not Disturb until the end of this event!" - link

"Call in to Portfolio work Session. Event at 10:00 AM found in Calendar" - link

"Tell Mum Happy Birthday!" Birthday found in Contacts" - link

A relevant suggestion that surprised one user.

Technical systems also have many sorts of push messaging systems. These would also count under the informer category, though they are more boring. Modern recommender systems (like Youtube and Facebook recommendations) are arguably examples of informers.

Controllers

Lastly, we have the controller. The controller is the extreme form of the informer. At this point, prompts are available for nearly all of hu...

Beyond Questions & Answers