The Age Of Thinkers

I have been reflecting upon the term 'thinkers' as I continue to understand the world around us. Philosophy is seated at the nucleus of this journey. The recent Cambrian explosion of LLMs (Claude, ChatGPT etc) has enabled many inventions at scale. I hope these inventions will make the world a better place than before.

Parallely, many in the technological world seem to march with the idea of "creating a god". This makes me curious if atheism has peaked since the advent of Electricity and Gutenberg Press, if so, it wouldn't surprise me. Nevertheless, i find this narrative of 'creating a god' innocently foolish. These are intelligent tools and we are tool makers, as we have always been over the course of the history.

The barrier to creating 'things' has plummeted enormously and we will witness birth of many inventions and thereby 'inventors'. Observing the arc of breakthroughs, we have marvelled at the inventions in the past and now with the advent of LLMs, this seems to only raise the bar, or even worse, set unrealistic expectations. That being said, i am neither worried about the cambrian explosions nor the expectations, what i am deeply concerned about is the 'inventors' itself. Engineers and Scientists can very easily create the tools which they have always wanted to and test their hypothesis but the question we need to ask is, what are we building for

I don't think its about 'what' and 'how' anymore, rather if the question itself is being asked correctly. Thinkers have been at this intersection reflecting upon the nature of the questions and we need more of them

These systems are rightly termed as genuises in a datadcentre and the last thing we need is a world of docile innovators with no ability to question the very innovations they may lead.

Inventions are relative and time is the best predictor.¹