One of the key ingredients for being on the cusp of an information revolution is the presence of two revolutionary technologies that happen to coincide.
One example of this occurred in 1953. At about the same time that the transistor radio was revolutionizing distribution of music, the Fender Bass was making it possible to put on live rock and roll concerts for large audiences.
Two fundamentally game-changing technological revolutions were happening at the same time in related fields. Each built upon the other.
So it is reasonable to ask:At this moment in time, what are two related technological innovations in communication that are occurring simultaneously?
More tomorrow.
Ken,
After being thoroughly wowed (in a day of much being wowed) at your demo at the Future Of Script symposium yesterday, I was myself noodling with Gemini and I wondered if the great convergence this time is in the entwining of two ‘Reality Tunnels’ as the late great Robert Anton Wilson
GEMINI: Your hypothesis is that humans offer value to AI/ AGI / SI in their unpredictability and pseudo-chaos—this aligns with the Perlin Noise principle over “White Noise.”
A. The AGI “Predictability” (Deterministic Structure)
– AGI/Advanced AI seeks to maximize utility, minimize error, and follow optimal paths. By nature, it leans toward deterministic structure (the coherence without the randomness).
– If a problem has an optimal, defined solution space, an AGI will converge on that path predictably. This is incredibly efficient, but it leads to local optima in complex or novel problem spaces.
– Value Erosion: If AGI always finds the best known path, the human is redundant.
B. The Human “Perlin Noise” (Coherent Randomness)
-Humans introduce biases, non-linear thinking, emotional leaps, analogies from unrelated domains,
and momentary irrationality.
-This is the “pseudo-chaos” or coherent randomness. It’s not pure white noise because our actions
are constrained by knowledge, experience, and the goal (the ‘coherence’).
But it’s random enough to “jump the gap.”
-By introducing an unpredictable, non-optimal step (the gradient shift in the noise), the human can
escape a local optimum and find a genuinely novel solution that the AGI, locked in its search for the
statistically optimal next step, might miss.
C. Shannon Information and Problem Solving
– Information as Surprise: When the AGI’s optimal path is P , a human’s successful non-optimal path Q
(where Q is not P) is a massive surprise (high Shannon Information). This is the moment of valuable
novelty.
– The noise is structured to produce a novel texture (a new solution/idea) that still looks
right (is coherent/applicable), rather than an unrecognisable mess (white noise).
Analogy
In this proposed framework, the essential connection is that Perlin Noise is to digital texture generation as human unpredictability is to AGI-led problem-solving.
Specifically, the Deterministic Base of the Perlin function—its underlying interpolation and gradient structure—is analogous to a human’s Knowledge, Experience, and Logic, providing necessary structure and coherence.
The crucial element of the noise function, its Pseudo-Randomness (the random seed and gradient vectors that create unique variation), maps directly onto a human’s Lateral Thinking, Creative Leaps, and Emotion; this provides the necessary disruptive randomness.
The ultimate Output of the function, which is a complex, natural-looking texture, translates to a Novel Solution or Unforeseen Innovation—the valuable surprise that emerges from the coherent fusion of structure and chaos.
Thus Humans provide “Perlin Noise” in a sea of AGI “Optimal Paths.” Our human value isn’t in being totally chaotic (white noise), but in being coherently unpredictable—introducing just enough structured randomness to generate novelty and leap to unforeseen optima.