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at Edge Lanna
https://app.sola.day/event/detail/11873
November 8, 2024
2:00 PM - 3:PM; and 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
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We seem to have trapped ourselves in an old paradigm of AI - one fixated on creating "intelligent agents" that we'll then need to defend against or control. Even when we talk about decentralization, we often only imagine the multiplicity of centers, not the dissolution of centers itself.
Perhaps this is because intelligence has only appeared to us in the form of organisms - compact entities that think and act. But this fails to fully confront the radical implications of the Cognitive Copernican Revolution -- there are vastly more ways to organize intelligent information processing than as unified agents. We're like medieval astronomers, still trying to explain everything in terms of perfect spheres.
What if we could accelerate in a different direction? Instead of agents, imagine intelligence as a liquid capacity - more like electricity or water flowing through society. This isn't about slowing down or playing defense; it's about accelerating toward an architecture where intelligence naturally resists consolidation into distinct entities or power centers.
Instead of debating what kinds of artificial minds should govern or assist us, we could be constructing an intelligent infrastructure that suffuses and sustains human affairs - less like building new organisms we'll need to contain, but more like niche construction of an intelligent beehive for humanity. Picture something closer to a Solarian ocean - that vast, planet-spanning sentient ocean from Stanisław Lem's Solaris that doesn't just think but creates and sustains an entire ecology of meaningful forms - with humanity as its marine life.
The future of AI might not be about artificial agents at all, but about creating an intelligent environment that naturally nurtures and accelerates human flourishing.