Compare these two iconic movie scenes.
The Matrix: “I know Kung Fu”
In The Matrix, Morpheus plugs Neo into training simulations that allow him to achieve mastery level skills in minutes.
WALL•E: “cupcake-in-a-cup”
In WALL•E, we first see humans living life like sloths: confined to chairs, watching screens, with blended sugar meals (“cupcakes in a cup”)
Why am I juxtaposing these two scenes?
To me, they represent the two extreme ways which humans approach AI:
Rapid upskilling to learn more and perform faster, smarter, better.
Outsourced thinking, handing over all human agency to AI.
The latter is a big fear for AI skeptics. They see a society where people stop thinking because they just listen to whatever ChatGPT tells them to do. After all, if AI is supposed to be smarter than them… why not?
The other approach is more intentional and empowering. Humans always had access to vast sums of knowledge (ie libraries and The Internet). However, it still took a lot of searching, sifting, and synthesizing to find the right facts, for the right context, and apply them in the right way.
AI shortcuts this process in a profound way. It’s like having 24x7 access to the smartest people across every field imaginable. LLMs can do the heavy lifting of connecting the dots in ways that can help us get to more of those Eureka moments. It’s the perfect embodiment of the data, information, knowledge, insight, wisdom, impact meme below.
Of course, LLMs are still a far cry from Morpheus being able to download skills into Neo’s brain (which is what Neurolink will eventually do).
However, if you approach AI like Neo (trying to rapidly acquire skills), you can run circles around people taking the WALL•E approach of being spoonfed blended answers without taking the time to understand WTF they are consuming.