The Atomic Human

Communication Bandwidth

Human communication: walking pace (2000 bits/minute)
Machine communication: light speed (billions of bits/second)
Our sharing walks, machine sharing …

Trust is not a slogan
Trust is an infrastructure
Autonomy depends on Trust
Trust depends on shared culture

Communication Through Artefacts

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

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bits/min	\(100 \times 10^{-9}\)	\(2,000\)	\(600 \times 10^9\)

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Technical and Intellectual Debt

Technical debt: maintain your system
Intellectual debt: explain your system

Agentic Debt

Agentic AI could pay down technical and intellectual debt.
But it can create agentic debt: delegation without authority/authorship

Agentic Debt

Delegation of workflows without crisp boundaries.
Agentic debt is about unsafe or illegible delegation.

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company: Trent AI
book: The Atomic Human
twitter: @lawrennd
The Atomic Human pages atomic human, the 13 , topography, information 34-9, 43-8, 57, 62, 104, 115-16, 127, 140, 192, 196, 199, 291, 334, 354-5, anthropomorphization (‘anthrox’) 30-31, 90-91, 93-4, 100, 132, 148, 153, 163, 216-17, 239, 276, 326, 342, Blake, William Newton 121–123, Blake, William Newton 121–123, 258, 260, 283, 284, 301, 306, Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam 7-9, 31, 91, 105–106, 121, 153, 206, 216, 350, Blake, William Elohim Creating Adam 121, 217–18, trust 43, 79, 100, embodiment factor 13, 29, 35, 79, 87, 105, 197, 216-217, 249, 269, 327, 353, 363, 369, topography, information 34-9, 43-8, 57, 62, 104, 115-16, 127, 140, 192, 196, 199, 291, 334, 354-5, baby shoes 368, MONIAC 232-233, 266, 343, ignorance: HAMs 347, test pilot 163-8, 189, 190, 192-3, 196, 197, 200, 211, 245, human-analogue machine (HAMs) 343-347, 359-359, 365-368, Human evolution rates 98-99, Psychological representation of Ecologies 323-327.
Sunday Times article “Our lives may be enhanced by AI, but Big Tech just sees dollar signs”
Times article “Don’t expect AI to just fix everything, professor warns”
blog posts:

Dan Andrews image of our reflective obsession with AI

Dan Andrews image of narratives vs statistics

Two Types of Stochastic Parrots

Dan Andrews image from Chapter 3

Dan Andrews image from Chapter 3

Art is Human

the launch of Facebook’s AI lab

A Retrospective on System Zero

Playing in People’s Backyards

Who is Stepping Up?

Lawrence, N.D., 2024. The atomic human: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI. Allen Lane.

Scally, A., 2016. Mutation rates and the evolution of germline structure. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0137