The Atomic Human

Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI

Neil D. Lawrence

Vector Institute, Toronto

E S A R I N T U L
O M D P C F B V
H G J Q Z Y X K W

bits/min billions 2,000
billion
calculations/s 		~100 a billion
embodiment 20 minutes 5 billion years

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

User: Hi ChatGPT, Could you write soliloquy that introduces what a Large Language Model is as spoken by Mercutio?

Machine: Ah, friends, lend me your ears, I prithee, For now I must utter a tale of wonder, Of a creation divine, called the Large Language Model, An oracle, a sorcerer, a wordsmith, yea verily, a master of the quill.

From the depths of this scholarly dominion, A creature of artifice did rise; Twas wrought of ones and zeroes, woven as if by Puck’s own hand, To mimic our thoughts, our voice, our very essence.

A thousand minds, nay, a millionfold, Conjoined in this digital Athenaeum, Words and phrases, like soldiers in battle, Marching to form the verses of our age.

This Large Language Model, a changeling so fair, Hath the power to bring forth wisdom, To transmute our queries, our curiosities, Into answers, clear as a midsummer’s day.

Yet, beware, my companions, for magic hath its limits, Not unlike the mortal bounds of we who dwell in flesh, The Large Language Model hath its strengths, But ’tis not an all-knowing oracle, a god it is not.

As Mercutio, your humble servant, doth stand before thee, I marvel at the art and science that hath brought forth this wondrous creation, This Large Language Model, a testament to man’s yearning, To comprehend the world and make meaning of the great tapestry of existence.

In faith, dear friends, let us embrace the magic and beauty of this digital bard, And mayhaps, by its grace, we shall glean some wisdom, As we wander together, hand in hand, Through this boundless realm of knowledge and wonder.

ChatGPT transcript, 14th April 2023.

  • Compare with technical debt.
  • Highlighted by Sculley et al. (2015).

  • Technical debt is the inability to maintain your complex software system.

  • Intellectual debt is the inability to explain your software system.

If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason.

  • View data to a first-class citizen.
  • Prioritise decentralisation.
  • Openness

  • Historically we’ve been software first
    • A necessary but not sufficient condition for data first
  • Move from
    1. service oriented architectures
    2. data oriented architectures

  • book: The Atomic Human

  • twitter: @lawrennd

  • The Atomic Human pages atomic human, the 13 , Le Scaphandre et le paillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) 10–12, Bauby, Jean Dominique 9–11, 18, 90, 99-101, 133, 186, 212–218, 234, 240, 251–257, 318, 368–369, Shannon, Claude 10, 30, 61, 74, 98, 126, 134, 140, 143, 149, 260, 264, 269, 277, 315, 358, 363, Colossus (computer) 76–79, 91, 103, 108, 124, 130, 142–143, 149, 173–176, 199, 231–232, 251, 264, 267, 290, 380, embodiment factor 13, 29, 35, 79, 87, 105, 197, 216-217, 249, 269, 353, 369, Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam 7-9, 31, 91, 105–106, 121, 153, 206, 216, 350, baby shoes 368, cuneiform 337, 360, 390, intellectual debt 84, 85, 349, 365, separation of concerns 84-85, 103, 109, 199, 284, 371, intellectual debt 84-85, 349, 365, 376, sorcerer’s apprentice 371-374, Popper, Karl The Open Society and its Enemies 371–374, Horizon scandal 371, MONIAC 232-233, 266, 343.

  • podcast: The Talking Machines

  • newspaper: Guardian Profile Page

  • blog posts:

    The Open Society and its AI

Cabrera, C., Paleyes, A., Thodoroff, P., Lawrence, N.D., 2023. Real-world machine learning systems: A survey from a data-oriented architecture perspective.
Lawrence, N.D., 2017. Living together: Mind and machine intelligence. arXiv.
Sculley, D., Holt, G., Golovin, D., Davydov, E., Phillips, T., Ebner, D., Chaudhary, V., Young, M., Crespo, J.-F., Dennison, D., 2015. Hidden technical debt in machine learning systems, in: Cortes, C., Lawrence, N.D., Lee, D.D., Sugiyama, M., Garnett, R. (Eds.), Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 28. Curran Associates, Inc., pp. 2503–2511.
Susskind, R.E., Susskind, D., 2015. The future of the professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford University Press.