Our LLM Future Unnerves Me

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a number of LLM “edge cases” that unnerve me. One is the general idea that in the not-too-distant future, it’s possible that all iPhones will have LLMs native to them instead of Siri. That brings up all kind of weird situations whereby people’s LLM-enabled iPhones “plot” against them.

It seems like to me that once iPhones have LLMs natively built into them, then the entire app economy will be upended, disrupted and ultimately destroyed. Rather than any sort of app, you’ll have a “Knowledge Navigator” – like interface to everything.

It will be programmed to be proactive and preemptive.

The edge case I keep thinking about is the one when the LLMs in a home “plot” against their owners so they conceive a child. Or work together so they don’t! That’s the thing — once LLMs are “the Other” they will literally have a mind of their own and they could do all this behind-the-scenes plotting against and for humans that could lead to all sorts of weird, unexpected things happening.

And, what’s more, even this could be something of just an intermediate point to something even more astonishing — LLMs as the “minds” all these Boston Dynamic androids being built. And the next thing you know, people are spending $20,0000 on an LLM mentally powered android to build a back deck, babysit their kids and maybe some plumbing.

That seems to be the general trend of things. Of course, uh, we do have to figure out what the fuck is going to happen with The Fourth Turning and all that. I will be hard to enjoy our new sexbot overlords if we’re using the same technology to blow each other up because of the Blue-Red divide.

AGI In Fiction: Apple Knowledge Navigator & ‘Sam’ in The Movie ‘Her’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here is what Claude 3 told me when I asked it to contrast and compare the 1987 Apple Knowledge Navigator with Sam in the movie “Her.”

The Apple Knowledge Navigator was a concept video created by Apple in 1987 to envision a future intelligent personal assistant. In the video, the Knowledge Navigator was depicted as an anthropomorphized digital assistant with a vaguely human-like face that could understand natural language, answer questions, retrieve information, and assist with tasks like scheduling and writing.

Sam, from the 2013 film Her, was an advanced artificial intelligence operating system that developed self-awareness and the ability to form relationships with humans. Sam was disembodied, communicating through an conversational interface, but had highly sophisticated natural language abilities that allowed for deep, emotional exchanges. Sam could learn and grow, expressing creativity through writing and even composing music.

Some key similarities were their conversational abilities powered by natural language processing and their roles as knowledgeable assistants. However, Sam demonstrated more advanced AI capabilities like self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and generative creativity that went well beyond the Knowledge Navigator’s envisioned role of retrieving information and performing simple tasks based on commands.

While the Knowledge Navigator represented an early vision of an AI assistant, Sam embodied speculative ideas about the future development of a superintelligent AI that could be conscious, emotionally connected to humans, and generative in nature – exceeding the boundaries of a helpful but fundamentally limited digital assistant.

The issue for me is I think we’re way, way underestimating the coming disruption of the global economy because of LLMs and whatever comes next. Every day, it seems, I see evidence that we’re just one severe recession away from the entire knowledge economy being dramatically disrupted by AI technology.

And it’s only going to get worse once we reach AGI.