LLM Mindset Myth #5: Implementing AI is PURELY TECHNICAL

The cordyceps is a type of fungal organism, a weird relative to the mushroom. Like all fungal organisms, the cordyceps releases spores to reproduce. Its adaptive strategy is unusual, however - the spores, ingested by an ant, will grow inside the ant and eventually take over the body of the insect, effectively “driving” the ant as a means of locomotion it would not otherwise have. The cordyceps will steer the now-zombified ant to a high tree branch where it will release its spores, the altitude maximizing the area over which to scatter them, increasing the likelihood of ingestion by another ant, perpetuating the cycle.

This life cycle is the inspiration for the creatures in the popular game/HBO series The Last of Us, where much larger and more complex cordyceps variants take over human bodies. For this viewer, it is this element of the creatures that render them especially creepy - this volition/autonomy-robbing capacity - that inspires greater dread than other entrants in zombie lore. The essence of these fungally inhabited creatures, more than other zombies (the rage virus of 28 Days Later, say, or the toxic waste of Return of the Living Dead) all of which involve their subject getting overtaken by some pathogen that causes the self to be erased, then driven by impulses not natural to the once-human host. But with a cordyceps-style creature, there seems to be some implication of a self displaced, or perhaps subsumed by the will of the organism inhabiting us - there is the sense, in other words, of a self still being trapped inside there someplace, as mute and helpless witness as the creature you’ve unwittingly become lumbers around causing mayhem. To my mind, it’s more unnerving to contemplate the prospect of an imprisoned consciousness, robbed of its agency, than a consciousness that, having been replaced, is simply gone.

As with zombies, so it is with technology. Many of our anxieties surrounding technological advances have to do with our sense of becoming reduced to bystander status by them, of our status, worth, and purpose - our fundamental selves, essentially - getting diminished by the expansion of their capabilities. We experience the growing sophistication of technology NOT AS AN ENHANCEMENT BUT AS AN ENCROACHMENT.

With Large Language Model AI (LLM,) which we’re correct to surmise has entered virtually every area of our media and communications, can for many of us inspire a similar kind of zombie-style unease. We may be forgiven for succumbing to the notion that more and more of what we hear and read and see is not authored by humans, but is the product of what we imagine to be a technological cordyceps, an ongoing campaign of capacity-theft, of some unholy hybrid entity that has hijacked our human channels of expression. If, as noted previously throughout this LLM Mindset Myths series, the use of language is an ongoing endeavor of attempting to impart intent and meaning, then in this cordyceps conception, there is a usurping of this of meaning-making, the piloting of intent gets shanghaied by a meddling technological intercessor. Given the present state of AI, however, this is NOT what’s taking place. This sense of stolen volition, of a helm wrested from our hands arises where our instructions, overall objectives, or underlying reasoning are less than thorough or clear. The LLM is not making off with meaning, it is doing its best with what it’s been given.

Which reintroduces the power of tinkering. Rather than issuing a single set vague or contradictory directives to the LLM, better to tweak in drafts, in conjunction with the LLM - map out objectives and approach, rely upon the speed and power of the LLM to provide a series of refining assists along the way. This form of interplay is what the LLM is actually for - iterative improvement to OUR (not its) work product, subject to human oversight and course correction. In other words, AI is not a cordyceps that steers the husk of us around, it is a passenger on the organism of our thoughts. If the intention underlying our communication is the shark, the LLM is the remora hitching a ride on the belly of our ideas - a symbiotically beneficial stowaway that isn’t steering anything. It’s the difference between A) ordering “LLM: execute second quarter marketing strategy” without providing any context or guidance - a sure recipe for useless gibberish; and B) requesting a series of drafts on particular documents, scripts, workflows, processes, timelines, etc. for achieving your broader objective and, in conjunction with the LLM, revising each of these for consistency and clarity - an expedited pathway certain to yield better, more useful results.

The introduction of any powerful technology always involves operational, ethical, design, idiomatic, and cultural considerations in order for it to function as intended, and there will still be unforeseen consequences and ramifications no matter how deliberate and thoughtful its introduction has been. Human actors of different disciplines must remain attentive to AI’s proposed uses, and remain so as it grows more commonplace.