One of Bill Thurston's answers on MathOverflow should be required reading on this and a lot of related topics. When basically asked "How do I cope with the fact that I'm no Gauss or Euler?" he replied:
> The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves... mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining --- they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians.
Ongoing relationships and cooperation is how humanity does its peak stuff and reaches peak understanding (and how humans usually find the most personal satisfaction).
LLMs are powerful precisely because they're a technology for concentrating and amplifying some aspects of cooperative information sharing. But we also sometimes let our tools isolate.
Something as simple as a map of a library is an interesting case: it is a form of toolified cooperation, you can use it to orient yourself in discovering and orienting library materials without having to talk to a librarian, which saves time/attention... and also reduces social surface area for incidental connection and cooperation.
That's a mild example with very mild consequences and only needs mild individual or cultural tools in order to address the tradeoffs. We might also consider markets and the social technology of business which have resorted in a kind of target-maximizing AGI. The effects here are also mixed, certainly in terms of connection / isolation, also potentially in terms of environmental impact. A paperclip maximizer has nothing on an AGI/business that benefits from mass deforestation, and we created that kind of thing hundreds of years ago.
The question is if we're going to maintain the kind of social/cultural infrastructure that could help us be aware of and continue to invest in the value the social/cultural infrastructure.
Or, put more simply, if we're going to build a future for people.
> The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves... mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining --- they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians.
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematici...
Ongoing relationships and cooperation is how humanity does its peak stuff and reaches peak understanding (and how humans usually find the most personal satisfaction).
LLMs are powerful precisely because they're a technology for concentrating and amplifying some aspects of cooperative information sharing. But we also sometimes let our tools isolate.
Something as simple as a map of a library is an interesting case: it is a form of toolified cooperation, you can use it to orient yourself in discovering and orienting library materials without having to talk to a librarian, which saves time/attention... and also reduces social surface area for incidental connection and cooperation.
That's a mild example with very mild consequences and only needs mild individual or cultural tools in order to address the tradeoffs. We might also consider markets and the social technology of business which have resorted in a kind of target-maximizing AGI. The effects here are also mixed, certainly in terms of connection / isolation, also potentially in terms of environmental impact. A paperclip maximizer has nothing on an AGI/business that benefits from mass deforestation, and we created that kind of thing hundreds of years ago.
The question is if we're going to maintain the kind of social/cultural infrastructure that could help us be aware of and continue to invest in the value the social/cultural infrastructure.
Or, put more simply, if we're going to build a future for people.