It’s been 20 episodes now on this journey as part of exploring my ‘technocentric’ view of human progress and innovation, where both ‘artefactual’ and ‘institutional’ developments fall under the purview of the word ‘technology’ defined in its broadest sense. We started at the ‘very beginning’ by exploring the first tools devised by man, made of what we’d now think of as crude stone. Let’s step back and see how far we have come and what lies ahead.

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This is an AI-generated typical 2-person dialog that summarizes the core ideas I covered in my 10-part ‘econ’ series (2024) about AI and Economics.

Reading the actual articles themselves can be even more enjoyable, I promise.

This is a brief dialog between Bryan and Brenda that summarizes the core ideas of my article of the same title in my 10-part ‘conc’ series (2024) about Fundamental Concepts in Generative AI.

The whole series, and each article therein, can be found using the links below:

AI Fundamental Concepts

* Are Language Models just Parrots?

* What is AI - The improbable story of the probabilistic revolution

* What is the Meaning of?

* How AI does meaning, semantic space

* It’s Meaning Cats and Dogs

* The innards of AI: Where meaning lives, semantic distance

* To Geek or not to Geek

* The idea behind structure, structured data

* Seek and Thou Shalt Find

* How AI finds what you want: retrieval-augmented generation

* Ask and Ye Shall Receive

* How to get the best out of the AI genie: prompt engineering

* Of Parrots and Parallel Worlds

* From next-word prediction to coherent language construction: AI chatbots

* When AI goes to Work

* Betwixt creativity and consistency: Enterprise AI challenges, evaluations (evals)

* Putting it All Together: AI in Action

* From Generative AI theory to reality using a real-world example

* The Complete AI Canvas: Our Concept Journey in Review

* Recapping our journey through the essential concepts of Gen AI

PS: Bryan and Brenda and the content of their dialog are all AI-generated (NotebookLM by Google) all based on my original work.

Be ready for a high dose of meta irony as this is an AI-generated summarization of my explanation of how AI works with the AI voices using ‘we’ to mean humans!

Reading the actual articles themselves is even more fun, I promise.

If you liked it, you can support my work doing any of the below. Please

This is a NotebookLM-generated typical 2-person dialog that summarizes the core ideas I covered in my 10-part ‘conc’ series (2024) about AI Fundamental Concepts, specifically Generative AI.

Be ready for a high dose of meta irony as this is an AI-generated summarization of my explanation of how AI works with the AI voices using ‘we’ to mean humans!

The whole series, and each article therein, can be found using the links below:

AI Fundamental Concepts

* Are Language Models just Parrots?

* What is AI - The improbable story of the probabilistic revolution

* What is the Meaning of?

* How AI does meaning, semantic space

* It’s Meaning Cats and Dogs

* The innards of AI: Where meaning lives, semantic distance

* To Geek or not to Geek

* The idea behind structure, structured data

* Seek and Thou Shalt Find

* How AI finds what you want: retrieval-augmented generation

* Ask and Ye Shall Receive

* How to get the best out of the AI genie: prompt engineering

* Of Parrots and Parallel Worlds

* From next-word prediction to coherent language construction: AI chatbots

* When AI goes to Work

* Betwixt creativity and consistency: Enterprise AI challenges, evaluations (evals)

* Putting it All Together: AI in Action

* From Generative AI theory to reality using a real-world example

* The Complete AI Canvas: Our Concept Journey in Review

* Recapping our journey through the essential concepts of Gen AI

PS: After I mentioned to it that I was the author of the series, NotebookLM’s characters keep saying “Ash said” quite a few times more than I expected, but I trust that’s still better than the default “according to the source material”.

Reading the actual articles themselves can be even more fun, I promise.

If you liked it, you can support my work doing any of the below. Please

The last 4 episodes have had the intention of setting the stage for what I am talking about in this series. Let’s take stock, let’s briefly recap what I’ve said so I can now present my plan for what’s to come next on here over the next few months.

This journey is fundamentally about....

So, next begins the real part of the journey! In so far as this is a historical outline of human progress, I have found it convenient to divide this into 5 stages or sections:

* Pre-Modern [PM]

* Renaissance & Enlightenment [RE]

* Industrial Revolution [IR]

* Information Age [IA]

* AI Age [AI]

Having decided on this, the...Visit Ash's substack to read the full article.

In the previous episode, we looked at the birth of industry - large-scale mechanized production, as part of the story of the Industrial Revolution that began in Britain in the late 1700s. Towards the latter part of the Industrial Revolution, some erudite and expansive mind surveying and chronicling the breadth and scale of change and progress this movement had wrought could be forgiven for proclaiming that ‘all technological progress as might be conceived by the wit of man has already so been definitively implemented by his ken. We are the peak of civilization!’

But of course, those words would turn out to be rather vain, even look foolish in time. Let’s explore why.

Imagine a time-travel scene in which somehow Charles Babbage is transported, perhaps along with the admirable Ada Lovelace, a hundred years in time, to meet fellow-Briton Alan Turing.

Turing, with great flourish...

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In previous episodes I have laid out the broad theory of the technocentric paradigm including the ‘duonomy’ therein - artefactual and institutional, which I touched upon in light of the historical development of technology as a whole. Let’s next jump into the first great acceleration, where, for the first time in all human history, these forces came together to enable the most consequential revolution of them all!

If you think my reference to The First Great Acceleration sounds familiar, that’s because...

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I have previously ranted that the term ‘technology’ is often misused, solely to mean ‘computer technology’ or worse whatever digital device one is holding and perhaps fumbling with at a given moment. To take a wholesome view instead, I’ve proposed a much broader definition of this term. Let me now get into the details of this along with why this seeming quibble matters and how it’ll enhance our objectives in the current journey.

Defining the Distinction

At the onset of this series, I proposed that...

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Voice and images generated by AI.