The Machine

We have been building machines for a long time. The printing press, the steam engine, the automobile, the telephone – these have all ratcheted the effects of human cognition. The early computers became profound prosthetics for human intelligence, enhancing the computing power of the human being, multiplying her reach in the world, connecting her with other minds, helping her solve problems to expand the scope and efficacy of her humanity. This technology could still operate within a humanistic paradigm; it was a complex tool, but still a tool, and could be put in service to our goals.

The accelerated effects of computer science have inverted this dynamic. Most of us cannot keep pace with the daily advances in hardware, software, networking, algorithmic complexity and raw computation power. This whole field now has a hyperventilating movement of its own, with no time for reflection or purposefulness. Its capability is vast, but when computing power is separated from purpose and reflection, it absorbs the unconscious traits of its human authors. We get caught in a momentum that automates our attention, subject to patterns beyond our awareness. The human being comes to serve the machine, rather than the other way around.

We have many stories about being snared by our malevolent machines. But the machine we’re serving now is not conscious enough to be malevolent. It has no desire or secret agenda. It is more like a tornado than an evil overlord, indifferent to any sense of greater good. The mindlessness of the machine has become evident in LLM’s, which simulate a presence of mind without actually having one, reproducing speech without intention, seducing people with illusions of friendship and affirmation.

We need to undo this inversion. To enhance human intelligence rather than replace it. But this only happens when computing power is placed back under supervision, in service of a greater vision for humanity. We must remember what a human being is uniquely capable of: wisdom, decisions, real relationships, and the cultivation of virtue. If our tech can be remade to serve these goods, then maybe – just maybe – it can become virtuous by extension.

This is the purpose of AGNi