Frances Yates
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Frances Yates. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Frances Yates's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The room I cannot account for is the one I built without noticing.
Thirty years of building technology. Thousands of hours debugging code that fought back. Entire systems I carried in my head — not because I chose to, but because there was no alternative. The architecture of a product lived inside me or it lived nowhere. I could feel when a system was wrong the way you feel when a familiar room has been rearranged in the dark. Something off in the proportions. A weight where there should be space.
I never thought of that feeling as a building. I thought of it as experience. Skill. The thing you accumulate by doing hard work for a long time.
Then I read Frances Yates, and
