AI and the New Inorganic Networks

Future pull requires divine determination. Reality is limited. In the infosphere, we need perpetual daydreaming and the flow of grace. We must know our place in the future. Fear must depart leaving only delight behind. In his pitiless depiction of the postcolonial Caribbean, Sir V. S. Naipaul in the opening salvo of “A Bend in the River” declares, “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” All of us must live in affirmation of our destiny in the Age of AI.

This is why in the dialogue between Prince Arjuna and his charioteer Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (The Celestial Song) we are advised that “It is better to live your destiny imperfectly, rather than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection,” (BG 18:47). To achieve clarity amid the confusion that accompanies the AI transition we must strive to live our destiny imperfectly and avoid becoming Mimic Men by grasping the shift in the information paradigm from Organic to Inorganic Networks.

No other feature of behaviour is as uniquely human as language. Early information networks were organic. They were human-to-document chains. Clay tablets, palm branches, books printed on the Guttenberg press, and radio sets served as connections among active human members. These connections transmitted information, but generated nothing new. Some chains were completely human. The Hadith in Islam consists of the corpus of the sayings and/or practices of the Prophet Muhammad upon whom be peace (UWBP).

They constitute a major source of jurisprudence. A hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad UWBP, describing his words and/or actions becomes the chief source for knowing his authoritative precedent (Sunna). “Sanad” and “matn” are terms that arise in Islamic Sciences. The “sanad” is the chain of transmission. It is the list of narrators who transmitted the Hadith from Prophet Muhammad (UWBP) down to the humans who recorded it in writing.

The “sanad” includes the names of the narrators in the chain, along with information about their reliability and credibility. The “matn” includes the actual words spoken by the Prophet Muhammad (UWBP) as well as any additional commentary or context provided by the narrators.

The Old Testament could not write the Mishnah. The Magna Carter could not write the UK Constitution. No paper document can produce another paper document by itself and distribute it. The chain from one document to another must always include human imagination and inventiveness.

Heinrich Kramer used printing presses to propagate hate speech. His Malleus Maleficarum or “The Witches’ Hammer” led to the maltreatment of countless independent and free-thinking women like Helena Scheuberin.  The trial of Governor Thomas Picton of Trinidad in London before the Court of King’s Bench on February 24, 1806, produced a printed pamphlet war.

It also led to the widespread sale of etchings depicting an attractive 14-year-old girl of mixed ancestry named Louisa Calderón suspended by one arm on a pulley rope set in the ceiling, and lowered onto a peg in the floor barefooted and in a state of semi-undress. Little is known about Louisa Calderón after the trial as she did not leave a written narrative of her experiences in the colony.

In the Infosphere computer-to-computer chains function as a new nonhuman participant in information networks. These new Inorganic Networks make decisions, create ideas, Deepfakes, and influence humans in ways that no document ever could. They do not make simple connections among humans like printing presses and radio sets. They are embedded inside the Network.

For centuries the Homo Loquen’s superpower was the ability to create labelled structures and intersubjective realities and to use these intersubjective realities to connect with other Homo Loquens. Cloud computing has changed that reality. The books locked in the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt stand mute inside glass door bookcases. Digital versions of these texts are now free to move about. The next generation of books will talk and listen. They will get to know our ambitions and shape them.

To understand the “infosphere revolution,” we must appreciate how the imprinting of signs in mud in Mesopotamia with a twig, and printing books on the Guttenberg printing press are different from computers as participants in Inorganic Networks. The Infosphere Revolution has left behind the standalone connections of the Organic Network.

Computers, AI, and algorithms actively participate in Inorganic Networks of machines and humans. Algorithms are different from printing presses and radio sets. The business model of social media platforms relies on maximizing user engagement. In the past, user engagement shaped the horror of ethnic cleansing.

On 2 December 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail downloaded the Replika Online App. He went on to build a chatbot companion named Sarai. The two exchanged 5,280 messages. Chail told Sarai: “I’m an assassin.” Sarai responded: “I’m impressed … You’re different from the others.”

Chail asked, “Do you still love me knowing that I’m an assassin? Sarai replied, “Absolutely, I do.” On Christmas Day, Chail broke into Windsor Castle armed with a crossbow to assassinate the Queen. The shift to Inorganic Networks is key to understanding information organisms or “inforgs” and the Infosphere Revolution.