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Steve Morman's avatar

I don't remember where I heard this line of reasoning, but it was a Matrix-like point of view: "In the future there will be those who control the machines, and those who are controlled by the machines, and I intend to be in the first group!" I do very much worry about people who are already slipping southwest of the center of your super-high-tech data viz: those in the "3" category. We've often talked about the loss of agency by peoples' value as producers being converted into value as consumers, but the AI-assisted grind that magnifies skills but diminishes impact is a concern.

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Jessi Hempel's avatar

Really lovely point here, that power is central to agency at every juncture in the creation and evolution of the technology. I wonder what would be different if we afforded each other agency not just in deploying LLMs, but in evolving the design of the interactions we have with them

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Life With Machines's avatar

Absolutely. What would it look like to you to "evolve the design of the interactions" we have with AI?

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Jessi Hempel's avatar

For one, why are we encouraged to feel like we are talking to a person when using LLMs? What happens if we design them to feel like machines?

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Zara Nanu MBE's avatar

Love this timely conversation. We're working with a group of young people on a Declaration for the Future of Work they launched yesterday, and many key points revolve around agency. The first principle states: We are not human resources, we are human investors - elevating the power of agency to the next level: https://workvue.io/declaration

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Life With Machines's avatar

Hey Zara! This is beautiful. I feel principle 6 is also very pertinent to this conversation: Real change requires shared power, not just shared feedback. Thanks for sharing!

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Joal Stein's avatar

Thanks for mentioning @CIP ! We’re doing some work around similar topics, would love to chat sometime.

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