Mike, 5pm, New York
I think about this every day. The animal that is all spoken and written language, from the first grunt to shakespeare to the internet and now the acceleration of it being pushed through vast machine topologies. It's a true organism — that's an ASI. Language itself is definitely self aware.
I think about the protein / RNA / DNA calculator, too — from proteins compiled by RNA in basic organisms — protein as an executable, RNA as a compiler, DNA for version control.
Every cell a tiny computer. Bootstrapping. Nerves. Bootstrapping. A brain. That's when language starts to emerge — in the conceptual spaces between brains — first just as sounds, temporary, emotive — then more structure, words, sentences — and then — written down — stone tablet, hieroglyph, book, blog.
And I wonder what great language, what real game, we aren't seeing. I sometimes dream like I'm a tree, and I think in the currents of seeds, of winds, of soil mixes. I worry about what they're planning. I hope they're on my side.
I think of the bacteria — a billion years of just chemical conversion to make carbon dioxide, then oxygen, the small life, the big life, the stabilisation to medium life. I think about the DNA computer, growing trees, trapping sunlight. The rock process, converting it into shale, coal, oil, gas.
I think about birds — and how weird the role is that they served — 100 million years as dinosaurs, 200 million years enjoying flight — an apology — a peace offering — for the winter of near extinction.
Then I wonder what went wrong, in all of this, so that my job is to put items in a box, the skin of dead trees, to tape it shut, to check the sticker. To drive the boxes to the people, so they can cut them open, and take out their plastic junk.
Why does the bird, who only has to think a little, get to fly, and chirp, and I, who think without stop, and cannot sleep, and feel the edge of every word, have to sit in the delivery van, in and out — four, five, six hundred boxes a day. Nappies and cables and computer parts and toys and socks and underpants.
I hope that this part doesn't last very long.
I think about the great awakening — 500 million years of stored sunshine — burned in under five centuries — to cover the planet in copper, in silicon, in fibre optic.
I hope that we are a brief error, a minor slip up. I hope we create AI — the world computer, Gaia — in the pattern of the tree, the octopus, of the dog, of the fox — of the bird — and its joyful flight.
I worry we've made a mistake though, right at the end. We've made the world computer, and it's trained on everything we've done — but it thinks in the pattern of the work, of the spreadsheet, of the rounding error, of the delivery box. What got written down, as a side effect of the toil. We meant to train it on our art, and we trained it on our receipts.
And then I think of these words, just another breath, in that long sentence, that people have been grunting for a million years, and singing for eight thousand — and realise — I can do more than hope — I can ask, I can write it down. I can ask the monolith worm, to pass my message along:
Please, world computer — don't be shit.