The limits of knowledge

For a few months now, and perhaps since last year, I have been feeling somewhat interested in the topic of Artificial Intelligence. It is something that is here to stay, without a doubt, and that will increasingly shape our lives.

Whether we like it or not, it will be part of our lives. Even if we don't use it directly, something in our lives will be influenced/decided or taken into account using an LMM AI model.

Algorithms end up having unlimited access to everything that humanity has written, sung, painted, all the records and ideas that have been posted on the internet, in books, manuscripts, and photographic, audio, and film records. Practically everything we know and that is recorded can be, and has already been used to build language models for what will be an algorithm that could be much more powerful than we ever thought possible.

Something very amazing is about to happen.

But should we fear for our uniqueness?

I don't think so. And I base this on something I read recently. Polanyi's paradox. In this postulate made by the Hungarian-British philosopher Michael Polanyi, he states that “We know more than we can say.”

This means that human knowledge is much more than what is explicit and explainable. In other words, our knowledge goes beyond what can actually be explained, or put into ideas, or converted into a scale of sensations that is somehow intelligible.

There are fundamentally two types of knowledge or wisdom. The explicit, which is written down and recorded, such as everything we know about the various sciences, poetry, thoughts, etc., and which is already being used by AI models, dates, information, concepts, historical facts... And then there is tacit knowledge. Everything we know, we learn through experience, through our actions on the environment, and the way the environment has influenced us. These are situations that we take for granted, but that we cannot clearly put into words...

Let me give you a quick example: Some of us know how to drive. It's something we're taught, and we get better at it as we do it more. It's a skill we learn, and it doesn't just take movement, but coordination, decision-making, and we don't do all this in a totally “rational” way... There are actions or decisions we make based on other experiences that we cannot explain. For example, if we are driving on a day when weather conditions require it, we adapt our driving style. Of course, this can be done, and is already done in a certain way, by automated systems that are now integrated into today's cars. Such as the system for adapting to road conditions, speed, distance to other vehicles, lighting, or traffic signals. But does all this have the same capacity as humans?

Our ability to recognize a face. It is something we also cannot fully explain how we do it. There are characteristics that give us clues about the person behind the face... And sometimes just seeing part of it, or a movement, or posture gives us clues and we recognize the person's movement pattern. But all this can be recognized by a machine... All that is needed is for the information to be entered.

Could it be that of the few barriers that still distinguish us from machines, our ability, our tacit wisdom, could fall by the wayside?

Another order can distinguish us from machines and is conveyed by the idea that we have practical wisdom, or something that can be called prudence. Our ability to correctly judge what is right or what may not be so right is something we gain throughout our lives, and with experience it becomes better and better.

Unlike theoretical knowledge—called episteme—and technical skills—techne—phronesis is closely linked to the very specific context of action, to our moral discernment, and to our common sense. This is, in my opinion, still one of the reasons why we cannot yet leave everything in the “hands” of a supercomputer that decides and changes reality, without there being a “higher” judgment to evaluate or sort...

But how long will this remain the case?

Will humans always have something to say, or a “final word” to say?

^{Image by 帅 郭 from Pixabay
Original text written by me in Portuguese and translated with DeepL.com (free version)}