The Forgotten Use Case of Artificial Intelligence

Latest developments in AI computing reflect a massive technological shift towards cheap and accessible intelligence. Developers like myself are able to access various language model API’s and begin leveraging intelligence in all our applications.

As developers, we are prone to tool-building and tool-using behaviours. The natural instinct when presented with a new technological innovation is ultimately: what can I do with it? Such was undoubtedly the case with ChatGPT; months after its release, AI tools completely flooded the market as investors rushed to capitalize on the innovation.

The instinct to build tools around the advancement of large language models leads to a glaring oversight by developers, but ultimately by the general public as well. AI models fed with the worlds data have the ability to raise the collective consciousness of the world. Fed with sufficient data, LLMs are capable of successfully abstracting general language patterns and human behaviours; this implies that the LLMs are successfully forming simulated representations of the world.

This was Elon Musk’s aim with xAI – to create an unbiased and truthful large language model that can be used to explore fundamental human truths and beyond.

At a moments notice, you have access to an entity that has more knowledge density than anyone you could ever hope to meet. Although this tool can be easily appropriated to build amazing tools, there is a simple, forgotten use case that many have long-since left behind.

Conversing.

Although this claim sounds quite rudimentary, I invite you to think about it further. If I asked you 5 years ago if you could talk to a hyper-intelligent AI that contained within it a large percentage of the worlds knowledge and patterns, would you deny the opportunity to speak with it?

In that scenario 5 years ago, what would you have asked it? What ideas would you want to bounce off it? What would you want to know? Furthermore, I doubt that asking it to return JSON would be high on the list of things you’d want it to do.

Although AI-enabled applications are fantastic and saving us plenty time, we have apparently grown all too accustomed to accessible artificial intelligence. Aside from thinking about what it can do for you, consider the valuable insights you might gain by conversing with it. Your next revelation may be a few keystrokes away.