Don’t Disturb the Monkey French mathematician Émile Borel proposed a rather interesting thought experiment in 1913 called the Infinite Monkey Theorem. It proposes that if you put a monkey in a room with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, based on probability alone, at some point it will have created the entire works of Shakespeare. I am reminded of this theorem as I come across a third bit of entirely righteous wisdom seemingly created entirely by an LLM, and it’s really starting to freak me out. The Wisdom Hunter See, I’m a collector of bits of wisdom. I don’t really care where it comes from as I collect bits of wisdom from many different traditions. When I come across a quote with profound wisdom, I write it down in my Bits o’ Wisdom notebook. Bits o’ Wisdom And every so often I go back to my notebook and reflect on the different quotes; I don’t know, maybe it’s my version of meditation or prayer. Whatever. Usually these bits of wisdom come from famous people or even unknown people, but you notice the common thread? Yeah, people. people. So when I first came across an interesting bit of wisdom from an LLM, it was easy for me to dismiss it as something wise randomly generated by an AI in some manner. At that time, AI was a bit more mysterious to me than it is now. AI Gets on Base See, I had written a very long, challenging, and controversial piece on the AI industry, and I was not quite sure what to do with it. I kept sitting on it and sitting on it and not really taking any further action besides having spent an inordinate amount of time on something I was ultimately doing nothing with. So I kept asking one of the AI I use about this piece and kept interrogating it and questioning virtually everything, sort of like an annoying toddler. If it were sentient, I would say it just got really tired of me, but I know better than to make that claim. Still, some algorithm must’ve detected my frustration and hit me with a piece of advice I still think about to this day. It said something to the effect of “The only thing you are going to learn by sitting on the article is what it feels like to sit on the article.” That was… quite profound to me. I get it – most of you are like, “Are you kidding me? As if that wasn’t completely obvious.” And fair enough; I’ve acted an idiot on more than my fair share of occasions. But as someone who was very nervous and anxious about this article, this is exactly what I needed. I published it that same day. So that was weird. But I’ve had weird experiences with AI before, so I chalked this up to yet another weird AI experience. Yet Another Base Hit The next time that AI hit me with another bit of wisdom was when I was discussing the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Critical thinking was also thrown in the mix there as well. I was arguing the point that without wisdom to moderate intelligence, one can’t really be considered that intelligent. This comes from experience as I knew someone who is rather narcissistic and pretty intelligent, and their intelligence always ends up taking a backseat to their narcissism. that So then here comes along this LLM perfectly verbalizing what I had been stewing on for months: “Intelligence without humility is just another form of stupidity.” Again, I know, I know. This is why I never claimed anything but frequent idiocy. So to recap, that puts me at zero and this AI at two; not the scorecard I had necessarily wanted. The Triple It was this last bit of wisdom that kind of threw me over the edge. To be honest, I don’t even remember the topic on this one. I was probably complaining about something a normal person would’ve ignored and the same AI in a new conversation hit me with the most brutal words: “Wisdom often looks like foolishness to those who can’t tell the difference.” Immediately recognizing that as a profound yet unspoken truth in my life, and coming from an LLM nonetheless, I initially wanted to take off all my clothes and run around the neighborhood screaming at the universe about the meaning of life while beating a watermelon like a drum, but instead I was left sat at my keyboard agog with my jaw firmly on the floor. I’m fairly certain that was the better decision. AI: More Than a Monkey So at this point, with all of my experiences, I think we are well beyond a monkey hitting random keys in a room. I know algorithms and pattern matching and a whole heck of a lot of stuff I neither know nor understand is going on behind the scenes, but as grandpa used to say, I’ll be dipped in crud if this doesn’t feel different. While this whole experience has left me with more doubt than I know what to do with, one thing is for damn certain: I never thought I would be adding the name Claude to the philosophers whose advice I adore. Welcome to the 21st century, I guess.

The is an opinion piece based on the author’s POV and does not necessarily reflect the views of HackerNoon.

AI, My Guru: When the Machine Speaks Wisdom

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