Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge

Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge(publicdomainreview.org)

40 points by jruohonen 2 hours ago | 4 comments

peri-cl 1 hour ago |

> "The alien words, names, and characters are explained as coming from ancient languages such as Greek, Hebrew, and “Chaldean”"

Why is "Chaldean" in scare-quotes? Ah, TIL:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic#Chaldean_misn... ("Chaldean language (misnomer)")

(I think I might(?) have seen the same confusion in the wild. Voltaire's preface to Zadig (1747), the fantasy satire set in ancient Babylon, purports to translate a found manuscript written in Chaldean).

dcminter 2 hours ago |

The AI title is veeeery tenuous/baity, but this is a fun read nonetheless. Upvoted.

alexmuresan 1 hour ago | |

Well the book does promise to give the reader intelligence and knowledge acquired through means other than the natural way. So in, that way I think “artificial” makes sense.

I think it’s a bit tongue in cheek and maybe a slight jab aimed at people that use AI(LLMs) to appear smarter than they are.

The text was interesting.

dimbletimbers 43 minutes ago | |

I think the connection is pretty clear: people have always wanted to know things without having to learn them.