Gilbert Simondon
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 Gilbert Simondon. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Gilbert Simondon's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
I've been building things with machines for thirty years. Software, platforms, companies — the usual Silicon Valley arc. And for most of that time, I carried an assumption so deep I didn't know it was there: I shape the technology. I give it form. It receives my intention and executes. I am the sculptor. It is the clay.
Then the clay started talking back.
Not in the science fiction way — not HAL 9000, not Skynet. Something stranger and more subtle. I'd sit with a language model and describe what I was trying to build, and it would respond with something I hadn't quite thought yet. Not better than my thought, not worse — *adjacent* to it. As if the space between my intention and the machine's response was