AI is a technology rapidly diffusing through culture as a medium of experience. Like all major shifts in our media environments in the past, this will introduce a new set of metaphors for talking about ourselves and our perceptions of reality. This note briefly looks at (1) prior mediums and...
Introduction The recent news of Microsoft and Google integrating their large language models into their respective productivity suites marks a significant milestone in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI has been used for autocomplete and recommendations for a number of years, this new development has the...
AI is a technology rapidly diffusing through culture as a medium of experience.
Like all major shifts in our media environments in the past, this will introduce a new set of metaphors for talking about ourselves and our perceptions of reality.
This note briefly looks at (1) prior mediums and their metaphors for change, and (2) our current anxiety over “alien” and “other” as a striking similarity to the fifties when the zeitgeist of flying saucers materialized against the backdrop of atomic weapons and the Cold War.
History may not repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.
Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism that the “medium is the message” is as vital... (read 1089 more words →)
Thank you for your thoughts. I tweaked the text to refer to the post-internet era as the Symbolic Age, which is congruous with your lens of the age of knowledge.
It's a metaphor centered on psychology, but at the risk of losing that point, I have taken your feedback and made the premise clearer up front (AI is a technology on its way to becoming a medium) and chosen a less loaded label that preserves the intent: "The Symbolic Age."
Cheers. Thank you for that recommendation.
The recent news of Microsoft and Google integrating their large language models into their respective productivity suites marks a significant milestone in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI has been used for autocomplete and recommendations for a number of years, this new development has the potential to revolutionize how we perceive ourselves and our relationships with one another. This essay explores the potential benefits and concerns associated with granting AI systems unrestricted access to personal data, and its implications for our understanding of the human psyche.
Knowledge graphs are a powerful tool for organizing and... (read 1535 more words →)