Category: Culture

The Collective ‘Second Brain’

As we approach ChatGPT’s second birthday, it’s astonishing to see how quickly our interactions with emerging technologies are reshaping what we consider possible, and also how we as a society value the data we all collectively create.

We started with the “second brain”—our personal files, notes, digitised paper trails, all tidily organised to relieve our overtaxed minds. A handy way to keep track of ideas, but ultimately an individual’s siloed knowledge base. Now with the rise of large language models (LLMs) we are seeing the start of something bigger: a shared “digital twin” of text, a collective second brain with a natural language interface. Text is searchable, easy to store, rich in meaning, and now there is a front end for turning our accumulated words into a living, responsive knowledge pool.

As we engage with it, we’re shaping a digital version of our world that parallels, learns from, and increasingly resembles our physical reality. This view underscores that what we’re building isn’t just another tool, but a dynamic mirror of human consciousness, reflecting back not only our knowledge but our values, biases, and quirks. As we contribute to this digital twin, our collective knowledge transforms from mere data into something with deeper cultural and societal weight, an asset we’re barely beginning to understand.

Whilst this evolution makes it easier to access the collective input of our written thoughts, experiences, and knowledge, it’s not flawless. Our challenge now is to shape this digital twin thoughtfully, managing bias and accuracy while making it available to everyone. It’s not just a shift in technology; it’s a fundamental change in how we collectively remember, think, and communicate. We’re shaping the way future generations will understand our thoughts, ideas, and culture – our legacy.

“No such thing as a dumb question”

I actually began writing this in August 2019, but obviously got distracted… until I read this Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/trust-in-scientists-grows-as-fake-coronavirus-news-rises-uk-poll-finds, suggesting that public trust in the work of scientists and health experts has grown during the coronavirus pandemic, amid a surge in misinformation about the virus.

In a world of DeepFakes and #FakeNews, and especially during our battle with COVID19, it is more important than ever for us to critically think and be sceptical of the information shared in the world around us.

Last year, I read Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which expertly predicted today’s world where fake news stories and Internet conspiracy run riot. In this book, Carl Sagan ‘aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking. He explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning’.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World>

Sagan describes how there are “naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.” A cliché often used in corporate meeting rooms, but a phrase we could do better to act on more often.

I also love Carl Sagan’s view on how “bright, curious children are a national and world resource”. There is something amazing about the way children investigate and discover the world they find themselves in, and something which tends to be lost as we age. There is a brilliant Sagan quote, and one of my favourite from the book, that he might not “…know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first person to find out”.

Sagan suggests children “need to be cared for, cherished, and encouraged; but mere encouragement isn’t enough. We must also give them the essential tools to think with.” I think this is a critical skill to learn at a young age, but also crucially, one not to abandon as you grow older.

With the situation we all find ourselves in, I hope that this drives a real cultural change around trust in science and data based decision making, but also that we all begin to question and critically analyse the information we are provided with more scrutiny.