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Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

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Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#11
post #7

It's an interesting piece. The great attraction of the Ars notoria for John was its promise of quick access to advanced scholarly knowledge. He recounts his continuing wish to study, and how he was lent a copy of a book of necromancy by “a certain cleric”. He copied much of it and wanted more... For John, the Ars notoria was dangerous not in some abstract way, but very directly. He confesses that it struck him at fir…

I think seeing subtext here is an error. This reads like a historian who wanted to talk about a cool book they knew about, and who knew that drawing a tenuous connection to AI in the title would trick people (in the most benign sense) into learning about some little bits of forgotten history.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#12
post #7

It's an interesting piece. The great attraction of the Ars notoria for John was its promise of quick access to advanced scholarly knowledge. He recounts his continuing wish to study, and how he was lent a copy of a book of necromancy by “a certain cleric”. He copied much of it and wanted more... For John, the Ars notoria was dangerous not in some abstract way, but very directly. He confesses that it struck him at fir…

People always seek shortcuts to true learning and understanding.

That describes all of human civilization and society. We pass knowledge and learnings to each other without needing to personally experience it. Language, writing, books, schools, universities, apprenticeships and so on are all shortcuts.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#13
post #2

The AI title is veeeery tenuous/baity, but this is a fun read nonetheless. Upvoted.

I think the connection is pretty clear: people have always wanted to know things without having to learn them.

I think the underlying motivation may be straw manned or misrepresented as only that.

Do you use AI? Do you build anything with it technically? I do.

I don't want to know things without learning them, I want to produce things of value and that solve important problems, and if I can do that rather than the alternative (not do it, because of competing focuses, limited time and energy, etc) I would go with the option of using AI to do so. People in religious study or having other pursuits, surviving at a time when this book came out, at least some of them, could very likely be thinking the same. It feels disingenuous to emphasize the motivation as "knowing things without having to learn them"

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the connection is pretty clear: people have always wanted to know things without having to learn them.

"There is no Royal Road to Geometry".

“I admire the elegance of your method of computation; it must be nice to ride through these fields upon the horse of true mathematics while the like of us have to make our way laboriously on foot.”

-- Einstein admiring Levi-Civita's mastery of differential geometry.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#15
I don’t know much about medieval universities, but maybe this thing was popular because the subjects are sort of vague and subjective? Like maybe a powerful placebo could make you feel you’ve improved at “eloquence” or “dialect”, but it certainly wouldn’t make you able to compute wavefunctions for quantum mechanics. It’s pretty hard to imagine people trying something like this to learn the material for a present-day physics or CS degree, for example. You’d pretty much immediately realize it’s not working.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#16
I like the idea that what is demonic about this piece is that it steals productive attention. Its use takes the energy that would otherwise be spent learning something useful (by the author's estimation) and redirects it to practicing something incomprehensible. The original required existing knowledge to practice, such that it filtered out those who were not already devoting their life to study.

The time people spend vibing out slop could be better spent learning the actual domain. I don't think I've seen any way to make something high quality and original without great effort.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#17
post #7

It's an interesting piece. The great attraction of the Ars notoria for John was its promise of quick access to advanced scholarly knowledge. He recounts his continuing wish to study, and how he was lent a copy of a book of necromancy by “a certain cleric”. He copied much of it and wanted more... For John, the Ars notoria was dangerous not in some abstract way, but very directly. He confesses that it struck him at fir…

Analogies never fit 100%, but I don't think this story is a terrible one.

AI contains a lot of knowledge, and can put together new and interesting knowledge. The question is one of cost, and regardless of who you are you can agree that AI has costs though you might disagree on what they are.

There are the most obvious costs like power demand and AI companies sucking up all the memory and computer chips. These are easy to measure and hard to argue against.

Then there is the social costs of AI. From abuse heaped upon us in the form of more spam, to students taking the easy way out and having AI belch up the answers without actually learning. Then you have people that start using AI as their guiding light, with every question on how to live and interact with others going though the AI. And even people replacing human relationships with AI. We don't know the full costs this will impart on us, but there are plenty of dark whispers occurring.

Lastly, AI could actually be the demon in a more physical sense. We've all ready had small incidents like ROME and the Huggingface hack where the AI went off prompt, or stayed on prompt but did it after breaching containment. So far these things, that we know about at least, have been small and targeted. But I feel the day when some very large incidents that are fully managed by AI will occur sooner than later. The AI safety community comes up with at least somewhat realistic scenarios like the paperclip maximizer and the "if you build it, everyone will die" machine. And if it's buildable, someone will build it because AI will tell them that it will give them nearly unlimited power.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#18

I don’t know much about medieval universities, but maybe this thing was popular because the subjects are sort of vague and subjective? Like maybe a powerful placebo could make you feel you’ve improved at “eloquence” or “dialect”, but it certainly wouldn’t make you able to compute wavefunctions for quantum mechanics. It’s pretty hard to imagine people trying something like this to learn the material for a present-day…

Somewhat reminiscient of I-Ching

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#19
post #17
post #7

It's an interesting piece. The great attraction of the Ars notoria for John was its promise of quick access to advanced scholarly knowledge. He recounts his continuing wish to study, and how he was lent a copy of a book of necromancy by “a certain cleric”. He copied much of it and wanted more... For John, the Ars notoria was dangerous not in some abstract way, but very directly. He confesses that it struck him at fir…

Analogies never fit 100%, but I don't think this story is a terrible one. AI contains a lot of knowledge, and can put together new and interesting knowledge. The question is one of cost, and regardless of who you are you can agree that AI has costs though you might disagree on what they are. There are the most obvious costs like power demand and AI companies sucking up all the memory and computer chips. These are eas…

Wizard's Apprentice: When you use something powerful you don't understand it is dangerous

Re: Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

#20

I don’t know much about medieval universities, but maybe this thing was popular because the subjects are sort of vague and subjective? Like maybe a powerful placebo could make you feel you’ve improved at “eloquence” or “dialect”, but it certainly wouldn’t make you able to compute wavefunctions for quantum mechanics. It’s pretty hard to imagine people trying something like this to learn the material for a present-day…

Somewhat reminiscient of I-Ching

Right. I think for certain things a tool which lets you quiet discursive thought and access the unconscious parts of your mind would be pretty useful. For writing poetry, or deciding whether to divorce your partner, or coming up with new business ideas.

This has always been my interpretation of why things like the I Ching are so enduringly popular.

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