# Going Beyond the Mode of General Knowledge By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-07-19 One cannot know everything. The more one dives into the details of a subject; the more one realizes how little they knew before and how little they know about other subjects. But what of the internet and Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT)? Do these technologies "know" everything due to their vast data stores and access to nearly everything written? Ignoring the consciousness issues related to knowing, these technologies perhaps face the opposite problem of knowing too much and often competing information. As a result, we've seen the decline of truth as an observable fact in society. Additionally, if one is deeply knowledgeable in a topic, one will likely struggle to find confirmation of this deep knowledge via these technologies. This is primarily due to what information humans generate and seek en masse and how these technologies are tuned to this versus the discovery of deeper topics of understanding. So, unless one reprograms the internet or Generative AI in a manner to seek deep knowledge, these technologies will only produce surface responses on nearly all topics. They've become the ultimate generalist, but we are in big trouble if they are thought of and used as specialists and holders of all human knowledge. Gone are the nuances, creative connection points, discovery of new things, and coherent synthesis of what might be. General knowledge is usually beneficial, but progress is made elsewhere. It was once generally understood that washing one's hands before performing surgeries was unnecessary. Doctors would still be doing the same thing if one relied only on the internet and Generative AI's general knowledge bank. Today's "AI" and "knowledge engines" possess no fundamental model of how the world works; thus, their "knowledge" is merely the statistical mode of current human opinion. It is a probabilistic engine designed to answer general questions but provides no coherence in how things change and how to deal with paradoxes. It possesses no foundation in philosophy, science, and universal computation. To be truly useful beyond the status quo, technologies must be built based on theories of how and why and not merely the cherry-picked outputs. #### Related Items [[Artificial Intelligence]] [[Society]] [[Knowledge]] [[Science]] [[Philosophy]] [[Computation]] [[Status Quo]] [[Progress]] [[Understanding]]