I’ve been reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy recently, a near-future sci-fi epic of terraforming, ecology, politics, big history.
One of the intriguing background details in this story is that everyone has a personal AI.
Your AI can think with you, riffing on possibilities, helping spark creative breakthroughs.
Your AI keeps a running a log, and fine-tunes itself on everything you’ve been thinking about.
You can talk to your AI, like Siri. You can also read it, like a book, and add notes to it, like a notebook.
Your AI can do research for you, ambiently crawling the net for things you’re thinking about, reporting back.
Your AI can talk with other AIs, negotiating with them to get information you need.
Your AI can do complex calculations and spot high-dimensional patterns… the kind of thinking computers are good at.
The data in your AI belongs to you. It is end-to-end encrypted. Only you can access its locked contents. Yours for life. You might even pass down a personal AI to your kids, like sharing an old journal, but interactive.
An AI networked notebook. A second brain.
These personal AIs from KSR’s Mars Trilogy are the closest thing I’ve seen to Subconscious in fiction. It is pretty much the vision we’ve been building toward from the beginning.
A notebook that thinks with you, enchanted by AI, and powered by a decentralized knowledge graph that stores thoughts the way your brain does.
Your Subconscious can think with you, riffing on possibilities, helping spark creative breakthroughs
Every note fine-tunes your Subconscious to think more effectively with you.
Your Subconscious can do research for you, ambiently exploring the decentralized knowledge graph for things you’re thinking about, reporting back.
Your Subconscious can talk to other’s Subconscious. You can follow others to expand your second brain. Every follow adds new synapses to your Subconscious.
Your notes belong to you. They are signed with your cryptographic key, and can be end-to-end encrypted. Only you can access the locked contents. Yours for life.
An AI networked notebook. A second brain (or a second subconscious).
We are minutes away from a world where everyone has their own AI.
You’ll be able to riff with your AI, sparking creative breakthroughs. No more creative block. It will magically organize ideas into useful collections. It will help gather research. It will crunch numbers, generate variations. You’ll probably bring your AI to school, to work. You’ll think with it, it will think with you. The more you think with it, the smarter it will get. The smarter you will get together. A creative partner.
The computer is only the arc of a larger circuit which always includes people and an environment.
(Gregory Bateson, 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind)
AI as Augmented Imagination. People and AI collaborating together to reach new creative heights.
Subconscious is a notebook that thinks with you, enchanted by AI, and powered by decentralized protocols.