How do we decide what makes a tool good and what kinds of tools we should aim to make? Read on for a new quality criterion for tools (their accuracy and precision in transmitting skilled intent) that helps answer these questions.
Hi Vaughan, these thoughts strongly resonated with me. The three aspects of control (skilled understanding, clear intent, high fidelity tools) are useful for describing the shortcomings of generative AI tools today. They have limited understanding at best (due to gaps in their ability to represent not-knowing as you have described in your other work) and are limited by language in setting intent in ways humans don’t have to be. That said, part of what makes generative AI tools so compelling is that they are much more high fidelity for people not steeped in programming than anything available to them before.
There are some interesting parallels here with what Cesar Hidalgo described in his wonderful book Why Information Grows that are worth exploring further. In any case, these are exciting times given the ability of these tools to improve our ability to approach these questions more skillfully.
Hi Vaughan, these thoughts strongly resonated with me. The three aspects of control (skilled understanding, clear intent, high fidelity tools) are useful for describing the shortcomings of generative AI tools today. They have limited understanding at best (due to gaps in their ability to represent not-knowing as you have described in your other work) and are limited by language in setting intent in ways humans don’t have to be. That said, part of what makes generative AI tools so compelling is that they are much more high fidelity for people not steeped in programming than anything available to them before.
There are some interesting parallels here with what Cesar Hidalgo described in his wonderful book Why Information Grows that are worth exploring further. In any case, these are exciting times given the ability of these tools to improve our ability to approach these questions more skillfully.