Directing more compute towards solving our hard problems

We need to start directing more AI compute towards solving our hard problems. Let’s not think generated JPEGs and AI girlfriends are the best we can do with this technology.

Solving hard problems is not going to be autonomous; we're a ways off from instructing an AI to "just solve the problem." Instead, we can facilitate a collaboration between humans and AI, where each fills in the weaknesses of the other.

Using creative and outside-the-box thinking, the human directs, instructing the AI about which areas of the latent space to explore.

Using tool calling and recursive calls on its context, the AI connects and synthesizes, drawing patterns and conclusions from its curated context window.

Together, we’ll discover new ideas and solutions.

The interesting thing is that this requires a change in the way most of us think. This is influenced by the ideas of Iain McGilchrist and his thesis that Western society has become unbalanced towards left-brain thinking.

Partially due to the modern higher education system, people are molded into specialized cogs primed to take someone else’s orders and implement someone else’s vision. No judgment on it, and it’s not our fault, but it’s something we need to recognize. There is an opposite pole to this energy. Those opposite skills need developing. It is creativity. Seeing the bigger picture.

The idea is that we have some rebalancing to do so that we can be effective with this new companion humanity has created. That’s a good thing. We'll be strengthening our weaknesses and working towards fullness and wholeness.

Let me leave you a few words from The Kybalion that inspired some of this thinking.

The principle of polarity

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled."

The principle of rhythm

"Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates."