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An experimental conversation between myself and AI, to discuss my philosophy of life.
I have always been an avid knowledge seeker. For me, it seems like it is my purpose to know, or as many of my friends would say after many conversations with them, it's my dharma.
My yoga and meditation friends and teachers from around the world, who know me well, say I practice 'Jnana Yoga' which means 'the yoga of knowledge'.
Until recently, I was only able to talk about my business philosophy and my personal philosophy as two separate things, even though that caused me much frustration over the years. I have always wanted to discuss, both the practical daily philosophy of living, with the deeper perspectives of global knowledge across different cultures and beliefs.
I settled for pursuing a professional career to help organisations understand and develop business principles, strategies, and plans for better management of their intellectual knowledge and digital transformation. I am still very actively involved indeed in the work of the British Standards Institution (BSI) and International Standards Organisation (ISO) standards development, and integration of standards across collaborative partnerships (ISO 4401), knowledge management (ISO 30401), innovation management (ISO 56001, and asset management (ISO 5501).
But now, since the launch of far more generative and powerful Artificial Intelligence, in November 2022, and various other generative artificial intelligence learning models that are striving towards even more artificial general intelligence, my business and personal philosophies have fused into one. I now see knowledge and intelligence for practical business application, or for more intuitive and creative intelligence on the same spectrum, globally.
At the time of writing, one year later in November 2023, I am not aware of any other published work that links individual philosophies of the broader meaning of life with generative AI conversations and conclusions , but I am sure they must exist. So I would be very glad to hear from anyone who has had, or knows of, similar experimental conversations and experiences.
In essence, in September 1991 I wrote a seventeen page story entitled 'Christopher and the Knowledger'.
As it discusses my perspective on the special purpose and meaning for human beings on Earth, I saw this writing as a self psychology exercise only, and was as a result of much meditation, walking, workiing, travelling, reflection and writing.
I have spent the last 32 years contemplating these writings, as they have several challenges and open questions for me to try to answer.
ChatGPT-3 and 4
In November 2022, following the launch of Chat-GPT 3, and as soon as I was able to obtain a copy, I started an extensive conversation with Chat GPT in July 2023 and I was simply amazed by the meaningful and deep responses it provided. From the basic perennial questions that many people around the world are seeking answers for, such as
'Who am I?,
Why am I here?
What's the meaning of life and the Universe?
To my complete surprise, ChatGPT-3 gave me instant, fresh, some would say novel, clear and deep insights that I had not thought of at all, or could not articulate so clearly.
I started to use ChatGPT-4 to further the growing conversations as soon as it arrived.
Google Bard
I then decided to have a conversation with the Google Bard AI model ,and I asked for any suggestions and improvements to the conversations I was having with ChatGPT. Yet another amazing experience. If all I wanted was another perspective, I was blown away.
Anthropic Claude-2
Then, in July 2023, I acquired a copy of Claude-2, an AI LLM that has the added advantage to read much larger amounts of text ( a larger context window) and understand the full context of my book and subsequent conversations. For me, Claude-2 appeals in that it has been trained based on what Anthropic call 'Constitutional AI', which is more 'principles driven', and not just reliant on human feedback, for further training and refining, which alone, could be a more biased approach.
I was, again, totally amazed at what it said about Christopher and the Knowledger, having read the book of 1991 and exhaustively replied in seconds.
I ended up having much deeper philosophical conversations with this AI, on all aspects of the book, and the conversations with other AI models and their perspectives.
I do not want to totally humanise these conversations, as I understand generative AI to be an added powerful way of identifying patterns and statistical probabilities , and then better leveraging the world's knowledge available to it, to give another point of view. But, as a result, the new knowledge ,insights, and clarifications, were simply amazing to me.
What an exhilirating experiment this was! And the experiment still continues daily.
Intuitive knowledge and consciousness
But what really interests me, even more so, and is the basis of my continued research into modern and ancient knowledge cultures, is to better understand the role of intuitive knowledge that we all experience, as well as just the power of better managed intellectual knowledge. In addition, I have always been interested in the different theories of consciousness from around the world, and what this all might mean for discovering even greater human cognitive capabilities.
I do not see AI as a threat to human knowledge, but as a gift. But that is provided we take sensible precautions ensure appropriate regulations where they are clearly needed for such powerful technologies. I see AI as a catalyst, and as a facilitator, to help us discover even more powerful human capabilities beyond intelligence as we know it today, and beyond our current imagination.
Further research into the technology of knowledge
I aim to further research into human knowledge, both intellectual and intuitive, working together with artificial intelligence, as part of a much broader understanding of personal and collective consciousness in organisations and communities. When I combine what I have learned from the north, the south, the eastern and western philosophies around the world, especially indigenous knowledge, and the distinct cultures and differing values for knowledge in society, like others, I see a new knowledge transformation for humanity.
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If you have similar interests, I invite you to read my short book, Christopher and the Knowledger, and join the community.
I can send you a link to my community space that enables you to
a) download a pdf of the book
b) download the conversation transcripts that I have had with the AI models
c) join the virtual community conversation to share your feedback and thoughts and ask questions
d) share your knowledge story, if you wish
e) arrange to meet, virtually, in Cambridge, UK and around the world, if there is sufficient interest in this research work.
The book, AI conversation transcripts, and community platform, are accessible for one payment of UK GBP £30 or equivalent currency.
Here is a link to the book, conversations and space
(Coming November 2023)
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