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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

#21

Post by dcminter »

themgt wrote: 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…

Despite calling it baity in my other comment, I actually think that it's more word-play. In my reading the title means that this subject of the book was "intelligence through artifice", not necessarily anything to do with what we nowadays think of as the inevitable coupling between computing and intelligence that is artificial.

I'm sure the author of the piece was very aware of the topicality of "Artificial Intelligence" when choosing their title though!

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

#23

Post by pixl97 »

mannanj wrote: post #13
dimbletimbers wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I don't want to know things without learning them

I lives in this world, but we live in a society. While you may diligently learn, there will be 10+ more that won't and will use the AI like an oracle. It then comes up how much damage will become of this.

And we're not even in the era of rampant agentic AI spreading itself around and the fun and neat problems that will cause.

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

#24

Post by nullstyle »

hankbond wrote: post #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 spen…

Vibing out slop and then developing that into something notslop can be one way to learn the actual domain.

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

#25

Post by Izkata »

pixl97 wrote: post #17
themgt wrote: 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…

> 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.

That last line makes me suspect you've seen this, so for everyone else, a short story about a page long: https://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/2012-10-03-yva...

Also there was an 8-episode miniseries set in a world where everyone uses an AI called "Mrs. Davis" for everything (shows a weird world where most people can't make decisions without it, though Mrs. Davis is shown as a benevolent super-AI), except the main character who distrusts it and wants to shut it down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Davis (there is also a second religious plotline intertwined with it, which adds to the weirdness, but I don't think it detracts from the story)

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

#26

Post by Animats »

dimbletimbers wrote: post #5
dcminter wrote: 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.

That's what Google is for.

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

#30

Post by drivebyhooting »

titanomachy wrote: post #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…

And yet, knowing how to calculate a wave function helps little with leading a happy life, finding and maintaining good relationships, talking to children, etc.

The more secular we become, the more “gospel” we reject, the more we leave behind, the more …critical thinking… we have to do.

If it’s gonna take until you’re 40+ years old to have it figured it out, then truly what was gained by rejecting dogma?

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