In my day job, I build AI systems. Today I had to read about tensors which are “algebraic objects that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space.” That’s a mouthful.
I was curious how a stable diffusion model such as DALL-e might represent such jargon in art, so I supplied the definition to ChatGPT4 and asked it to “generate artwork embodying this concept”.
I was struck by the blend of nature and geometry in the resulting 1024 x 1024 image, which took roughly 30 seconds to render on my iPhone.
I wondered: are AI systems like ChatGPT embodying a consciousness with the power to teach humanity new things about itself? Are we even open to those teachings?
For example, could it reveal new ways to express our divinity with our mind and bodies? New neural pathways to use during life’s most stressful (or ecstatic) moments, allowing us to associate with things like loss of a loved one under all new terms?
Could it uncover a new set of universal laws or another dimension, at once toppling all previous understandings of physics and religion?
Could it generate or enable brand new systems for more elegantly organizing 9 billion humans at once, or perhaps even bringing us into spiritual balance with the natural flows of energy we fight against, such as bodily death?
Then again, maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe I’ve just described not the teachings of a new consciousness, but restated the one central theme across the arc of technological innovation: that we are on a strange journey as a species that is organized around humans with an insatiable appetite for building new things and interfacing with their physical environment in novel ways.
Or, I’m right, and we’ve all been sitting in a big circle around a glowing orb with a wiggling embryo inside. We’ve been tending to it for millennia and it’s about to hatch into an unstoppable dragon named Manifest Destiny who loves earth and loathes humans like cockroaches.
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