‘by his contrivance, the most reasonable person at a reasonable charge and with a little bodily labor might write books in philosophy poetry, politics, laws, mathematics and theology with the least assistance from genius or study”
The knowledge workier dominates business in creating value and money. Scientists and engineers have been working on labor saving devices for all of human history. The wheel remains a classic.
Even when we have no idea how to do something we are still dreaming of what we could do.
In Grek mythology It was the master craftsman Daedalus who made the wings out of feathers. He held them in place with wax. He mae theme for his son Iarus. Daedulus warned him that the wax wouldn’t work if he didn’t do it right. Too close to the sun and the wax would melt. Too close to the ocean and the feathers would be too wet to fly
And what did Icarus do?
it wasn’t the damp seawater that was the problem.
He flew higher than was safe. He met his fate.
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence a, I also think, ‘didn’t we see how this movie ends?’ Sci Fi movies—as well as the novels—tend toward disastrous pessimism. Those kindly aliens show up with a book saying “How to Serve Man” and everyone welcomes them.
And then we learn IT IS A RECIPE BOOK!!!
That’s just a story though
Thia is real life.
I’ve been using AI and it is a useful tool. It is not really intelligence. The other term for AI is LLM or large language model.
Computer programs takes all the information we give it and provide the next most likely answer to a question. It’s a more sophisticated search engine. So sophisticated it sounds like it’s talking.
Of all places, Gulliver’s travels has this exact thing. One of the islands he visited, he found a place that had academies of learning that had come up with plans to solve every difficulity people experienced. They just needed to finish working out the kinks.
One academy had created a machine that mixed up all the words in the world, and strung them together so they would randomly arrange themselves into phrases. That is how books would be written.
As soon as they made the sentences make sense.
I approve of creating labor saving devices.But they have to save labor.
Before I put too much effort into a new technology, I have to make sure it does what it promised.