ChatGPT has most everyone bewildered, as well it should. Are we watching the development of an entirely new form of consciousness? I’m not talking about machine consciousness or even proposing that ChatGPT is “conscious”. What I’m wondering, truly wondering, is the relationship amongst these various social nodes. Between “us” and an algorithm. In fact, the argument as to whether or not ChatGPT (or any ‘Artificial Intelligence’) is conscious is less interesting than observing what is becoming to “us”. What debates, concerns, discussions, arguments, bemusements, humor, examples, experiments, bewilderments, investments, commitments of human and non-human resources, intellectual focus, and the distraction of other topics of concern. That is where the action lies.

That is the topic to be discussed and considered. Join me and a bunch of other futures oriented folks as we jump into the Near Future Laboratory’s time machine and do the Design Fiction thing, asking ourselves: What kind of stuff is lying around in the ChatGPT future?

The human imagination has been pondering the possibility of other forms of intelligence in all manner of cultural idioms — sci-fi film, fiction, science, religion. Even in our dreams.
What makes the bewildering acuity of ChatGPT (and other forms of this early 21st century instance of a kind of mysterious intellect) so, like..you know..bewildering?
Like this catalog cards from half a century ago, that Google, Amazon and others into quaint vintage Ebay items one never sees in their original form (if one ever saw them at all) what will the artifacts of the ChatGPT future make obsolete — and what will fall into their place?
What kinds of normal, ordinary, everyday artifacts will this moment create in ChatGPT future?
Join me and other curious folks at General Seminar N°027 to do some sense-making with Design Fiction! Wed Feb 1st at 10a PST (GMT-8)!
There are still a few seats left!