AI’s Impact on Knowledge is Revolutionizing Our Insights

AI tools have advanced to a point where they can navigate the vast expanse of the internet. Although LLMs may not fully grasp context, they treat all online posts and comments as factual data. As AI evolves, it might start to “read the room,” learning from individuals’ responses to its outputs. However, this could lead to AI reinforcing harmful beliefs, which is a concern for societal well-being.

Despite these potential drawbacks, AI can access and process an immense volume of information, far beyond human capabilities. Unlike responses influenced by limited knowledge or corporate agendas, AI’s answers are derived from years of accumulated data. This includes everything from front-page news to overlooked comments in an article thread, offering fresh perspectives.

The quality of AI-generated answers may raise some questions, particularly regarding the reliability of sources. Yet, the speed and availability of these responses are often invaluable, especially when they can expedite projects, enhance conversations, and contribute to successful outcomes. AI’s potential extends to aiding those in less connected, challenging environments, addressing social and economic disparities. Even if occasionally inaccurate, a well-informed individual, aided by AI, might overcome their current limitations.

Reflecting on social and familial influences on decision-making, I recall a scenario where a person didn’t pursue programming due to a lack of encouragement from their circle. This isn’t to suggest replacing personal connections with AI. Instead, AI could offer additional reinforcement, tools, and guidance, potentially inspiring new directions beyond one’s immediate social norms. While not everyone should aim to be an engineer, AI can facilitate quicker success in various fields of knowledge.

AI’s potential extends beyond individual development and business efficiency, particularly in addressing severe global challenges. AI can stimulate innovations in the scientific community by synthesizing valuable insights from online scientific discussions. For instance, in addressing colossal issues like asteroid threats, AI could offer new perspectives by deciphering complex information from various scientific disciplines.

AI may be able to revolutionize healthcare by accelerating the discovery of antivirus strategies through learning from online medical discussions. AI’s ability to rapidly compile solutions can outrun human effort. AI can also tackle global hunger by quickly exploring and implementing innovative ideas from agricultural forums.

As the world has moved to quick bites of information, quick cut videos and snippets news articles, AI may be able to entice someone to read longer text by teasing through its ability to quickly summarize text and video. By summarizing information efficiently and accurately, AI not only improves communication but also extends self-learning, enhancing knowledge democratization across various fields.

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AI Evolution: Shifting from Apps to Integrated Solutions

In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, a significant paradigm shift is underway. The focus is shifting from using multiple, distinct applications for different tasks to embracing AI solutions that integrate data from various sources, streamlining processes and enhancing efficiency. Here I will cover a touch of the path to get here and will delve into the progress and implications of this transition.

In the emerging framework, the operating system is not just a platform for running applications; it has evolved into a dynamic hub that amalgamates content and services from various apps. This integration eliminates the need for users to jump across different applications, providing a seamless experience. The OS now does the heavy lifting, allowing for more streamlined and efficient workflows.

Historically, there have been attempts to create such integrated systems. The Apple Newton, for instance, allowed apps to access information from other applications. However, it faced challenges in adequately controlling Personally Identifiable Information and other sensitive data.

Similarly, Microsoft once proposed the idea that there was no need for traditional file folders, advocating that everything should be findable via the Windows search function. This solution felt ahead of its time, foreshadowed the current trend towards more fluid data management.

The Google ecosystem attempts to offer a solution where users could find anything they created, like documents and spreadsheets. However, it struggles with more complex queries, such as searching for notes from a specific meeting about a particular subject. This limitation highlights the challenges of traditional search algorithms in handling nuanced and context-rich data queries.

The advent of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) with OpenAI has marked a new era. It encourages apps to tie into ChatGPT’s extensive reach, allowing developers to expand their functionalities by calling on multiple data sources and features. This integration signifies a move towards a more interconnected and intelligent application ecosystem.

The ability to schedule a meeting within multiple people’s available time, set to the right length with notes and follow up emails is a simple example of what has taken multiple apps and time previously being a single interface.

A notable example of this trend is the Rabbit AI R1 device announced at the 2024 CES event. It amalgamates information and presents it in a way individual apps would, but it leverages the data and management capabilities of numerous resources via their LAM. Rabbit created a LAM, large action model, that understands and executes human intentions on computers. Being a cloud-based solution, it requires constant internet access, for a speedy response. Highlighting a dependency on network connectivity.

For areas with limited or no internet access, on-device AI capabilities are crucial. While many regions still suffer from inadequate cellular coverage, having on-device processing ensures that essential functions remain available, albeit with some limitations in accessing updated information.

Despite the advancements in on-device processing, the need for updated information remains a critical aspect, inherently tied to internet access. This reliance underscores the importance of developing technologies that can balance on-device capabilities with the necessity of real-time data updates from the internet.

2023 marked the era of AI excelling in generating and revising text, as well as creating images. 2024 is poised to be the year where AI Agents will take on complete workflows.

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Virtual Worlds and AI: Exploring the Boundaries of Reality

There has been talk for several years that the VR and AR goggles will become glasses and even contact lenses or implants. The dream that a virtual reality of the real world could be all around the wearers. 

A limitation has been how much info a person can carry with them without being tethered to a computer, as well battery life and the speed to access the information. The last two years has brought about hardware and software making a large jump forward. Smaller compact chips that are less power hungry and able to run LLMs of data and information presentation. 

While many point back to early helmets and a world in a person’s imagination, technology is showing the imagination component is the creative part and not what is needed to step into a visual sensory environment to explore. These worlds are starting to move quicker to being overlaid in the world around a user so information and gaming is around every corner. 

For about as long as there have been computers, there has been a need to use those computers to explore the limits of the world as we know it. Generally, users frame the box they can work within to be within what they can understand. Part of the ‘what if’ is the thought that the world as we know it is actually a free running game or software test. A line of thinking that wasn’t accepted since a computer needs guidance for what an environment and its inhabitants are. Recently there have been more examples of opening the box a bit for a computer AI to build on the knowledge of the world. It is assumed that humans will keep advancing the AI technology to the point it will start exploring it’s own experiments, outside of what a human is asking for. The concern is that the AI will find humans to be a virus or will want to protect it’s creators but ends up destroying them since the system doesn’t understand a part of the human race. 

What if, instead, the AI chooses the right path to serve and protect the human race and is successful at it. To explore its thoughts on the many scenarios of its tests, the system will create use cases with human-like actors and environments similar to that which are challenged now. Trying different possible solutions, some will fail and the actors will not live a long happy life, helping the system to learn. The system can create many of these worlds to test with, each living many years in seconds of time for the computer, where the actors make decisions based on what they have to use. The system is only worried about the immediate scope of reach for the actors so it doesn’t have to build all the details of the galaxy. Some use case tests will start reaching out to the stars so that the system will expand as the actors explore and the system randomizes what could be found. With many environments, running at the same time, actors will make different decisions with different results. Some tests will fail quickly for the actors, perhaps the program lets the environment continue to run to see what can happen. There will be an almost uncountable environment tests running, all with similar starting points, to see how each will end. 

Perhaps, when people talk about the human race we know around us now, it isn’t a game simulation, rather one of near unlimited tests going on to see possible results for an outside viewer to help them decide how best to serve and protect their world.