I was reading this Wired article The Real Demon inside ChatGPT last week.
There is an AI hype building towards that interstitial design sense of Placemaking by being in architectural control of buildings but not the streets, or sidewalk building in the paving slabs but not the cracks in between.
That all the value is in the big blocks, like the datasets or the algorithms.
Yet it is the gaps where meaning, emotion and ethics exist.
Lending our humanity
The prompts required to use AI are where we lend them our humanity.
The AI cannot hold perspective or context. They need that from people. What seems to be a mechanism of strength (use the prompt to do so much) is in fact evidence of the weakness.
The AI cannot understand or perceive the gaps. It knows the blocks but needs to draw off our humanity to bridge the gaps, be in the cracks, work with the interstitials.
The God Of Gaps
What this however, does remind me of is The God Of Gaps theological problem. As science, like physics, genetics or astronomy, created bodies and blocks of theory then research then proof, religious people tried to defend God’s existence by pointing at the unprovable or unproven gaps between scientific models and realms. The God Of Gaps became a trap. The gaps shrank as science went further and deeper into the reality of the universe. God in the interstitial became thinner and thinner.
The Humanity Of Gaps
That humans can take comfort in their sentience (body, perspective, opinion, consciousness) in the gaps between the datasets may only be a temporary strength.
The AI lack so much at the moment and may never learn to be in the gaps. However, a Humanity of Gaps is not enough. It didn’t work for God. It is a tempting narrative but it is a trap.