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A manifesto-like stream of consciousness exploring a different angle to design.
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A frustration, a premonition and a determination; Early 2025 a coworker at Google asked me what it would look like to have an 'MRI for LLMs'. Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI is used for detailed non-invasive 3D images of soft-tissues, organs and bones; the question of an MRI for LLMs really suggests a public system of interpretability for the blackbox models we trust. Logistics notwithstanding, there hardly seemed a simple and generally useful enough single method for expressing the complexities within an LLM; after all, an MRI is a high-tech tool requiring a highly trained professional. The framing here was askew, but the thought was curious; does being able to see the internals of the system better support the general divergence of independent thought by encouraging an auditing of outputs from LLM chatbots?
Combating the convergence of independent thought became an objective, I came to the foundation that 'intelligent' systems should facilitate an individuals ambition, rather than attempt to predict it or direct it.
Quickly, considering the idea of an LLM MRI brought me to investigate the nature of thought and the structure of the brain; these times, the consensus was that 2025 was to be the year of the personal 'agent'. With my role at the time being centred on ideating for this future, I found myself questioning what shape the world would to take as a result of the convergence of independent thought and expression. What happens when, the primary interaction is text/spoken (dumb), we double down on 'prediction' as the 'future' (reductive), and designers continue pretending responsibility is a choice (disappointing). The answer, today atleast, isn't difficult to imagine; to say the least, it is a mess. The frustration here only compounded since, leading me squarely to the first premonition.