Remarks on...
Cognition, creation, and artificial intelligence
Brought Forth...
Cognition, “the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses” (a “perception, sensation, idea, or intuition resulting from the process of cognition”) is considerably different than creation, “the action or process of bringing something into existence” (a “design, formation, forming, modeling, putting together, setting up, making, construction, constructing, fabrication, fabricating, fashioning, building; production, generation, origination, devising, invention, initiation, inception, shaping, hatching”).
What’s interesting here is that in order to perform cognition, we need to use from an apparatus to process it through (e.g., our body and extended mechanisms like phones and computers) for the kind of translation that is followed by an interpretation [that can be observed and/or used up and/or experienced] to happen.
And performing cognition in this way takes on the dependency of that of what is being used to perform cognition with, that of the apparatus or the body performing cognition and perception with.
What is artificial intelligence (AI) doing its cognition from? First off, it needs to use from a certain infrastructure that can support the “kinds of cognition” an AI system can do/perform. This “certain infrastructure” starts from the energy generation and supply necessary in order to allow any kind of processing to take place, and here we’re talking purely energy processing, the foundation kind necessary to support movement, the translocation of “information” from one place to another and from one thing to another. The kind of “movement'“ processing that goes all the way up to the hardware systems supporting these energetic movements and the software systems created to read them and transform them into higher level concepts, which in order to work, need to be coupled with a model to do that. And from that one or many models, create other systems that can use from those then “foundation” models (like AI’s large language models, LLMs, for example); literally systems that can be made/turned into a variety of applications that can then be used by us.
Show-How...
All of the above is to say: there is a base of physics (i.e., energy), hardware (i.e., processor/transformer of energy), and software (i.e., translator and interface) that, together, allow a simple [yet, sophisticated] movement to take place: the communication of information.
And the information that AI systems are communicating now, the majority of it, is largely based on language, which is high-level information. But that is just the start of it. As of now, there are companies creating different AI models that communicate other layers of information, that are aided by language, yes, but that start from physics as a foundation, such as real world weather/climate-change “AI information gatherers” addressing/mitigating different kinds of impact, done/worked-up by [hardware–software combo] sensors that support that activity, for example, or such as “AI engineers” that “study” the real world to identify and propose “blueprints of creation,” application tools that support hardware building at scale and, as an "AI employee,” work hand-in-hand with the engineering team to make it happen.
All of the above is also to say: we can draw a parallel to the physical constituency we’re doing our cognition from—the human body.
In the same way that artificial intelligence is constrained and liberated by the “design” of its hardware, software, and avenues of communication, human bodies are constrained and liberated by their design as well.
It means we can take full advantage of what’s best in both worlds. And we can do that by focusing on what liberates the design, what moves it onward and forward, advancing it.
On the side of AI, that’d be the new physics and designs we can draw around it and from it. On the side of our body, we can start by objectively discerning its memory body—everything that is “learned” by every single cell of the body, starting from hereditary/genetic memory all the way up to the processing of those electromagnetic signals that reach the brain and come back into the body’s systems, transformed into biochemical releases, which in turn, have the power to “institute” our states—and getting hold of controlling it. And that takes what it takes; a whole new system.
On the other hand, we can start by playing with a resource that is readily available to us, but that is largely underrated: attention. Notice that artificial intelligence only “took off” once a certain direction of “attention” was brought in and implemented. And that’s not without good reason.
Cognition is to do with perception. And perception is to do with the apparatus being used to perform perception with. And to “perceive,” there is a need of something to drive it, and that is attention.
Also, notice that the outputs of attention are limited by the machinery or apparatus being used to perform it through, e.g., a computer, a system within a computer, and, in the same way, the body, and the systems within the body. Again, notice that “attention” in both of the examples above, that of a computer or a body, comes as an input.
And that’s where it gets interesting: attention is transferable. And that is to say, a system driven by attention can be transferred.
And that opens to next best thing after cognition: creation.
One can use from a system and the attention driver within a system to create. But creation is independent of the system. It goes/runs through the systems of the body, for example, but it happens independently of it. It is more of a “broadcasted” communication. [And here we can compare it to non-local communication, or non-locality—the dynamics of movement validated in quantum mechanics (refer to the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics)—but that’s for another time.]
Good to Know...
Cognition or creation?! Both differ in that the focus of your attention shifts to different modes of activity. Though both complement each other in that they start from opposite ends [within a spectrum] and meet halfway to decide the direction again.
If you come from cognition (e.g., the outlook of the learner) and meet with creation (e.g., that one insight that, after investigating deeper through your learnings, makes you want to move everything, change everything; take action) the direction can shift from one to the other if that’s what you decide to.
And that’s up to you. The change in direction changes a more fundamental force: the pace and stride of your movement. And the movement here is that of attention.
As you shift toward action, you shift the dynamics of how you operate attention with. Said differently, as you shift more and more toward action, the focus of your attention shifts in dynamics. And, consequently, the activities you take on are different.
That doesn’t mean you cannot combine the two—the kind of attentive volition necessary to conduct “operations” (the workarounds throughout the day and weeks that unveil right before you get to see what you set your pace for right in front of you), and the attention necessary to instigate new ways of interpreting and describing what’s in front of you because it came from something never heard of before, “something you brought purely from ‘insight’,” one might say, “or have you not?!”