The world of yesterday

It happened once.

I was working on an abstract for a conference. As a non-native English speaker, I had worked hard during my undergrad years at MIT to improve my skills, taking classes that required essays on visual arts, theater plays, and society and technology, utilizing the generous writing center reoused down in the basement of the Stata Building (what a bizarre choice, come to think!) and consistently earning B’s.

In my junior year, I took a class designed to introduce undergrads to realistic research in neuroscience (9.63 Laboratory in Cognitive Science, Fall 2005). For each experiment we conducted, we wrote research papers that were carefully reviewed and harshly edited by a professional science copy-writer (or at least I think that she was really good). This experience was an eye opener to me! I started understanding how papers are constructed—each sentence not an arbitrary restatement of results and random thoughts around it, but a carefully crafted statement.

This experience was further reinforced by my excellent colleagues, who had the rather aggravating habit of repeatedly crossing out and rewriting everything I wrote. (My postdoc advisor Jim DiCarlo even set a record of sorts by changing our submission’s title minutes before the NeurIPS deadline at midnight.)

I emerged from these experiences as a much more effective science communicator, securing prestigious grants like the Marie Curie Fellowship and several sizeable UK Research and Innovation grants. While I never reached the level of my mentors, I became proficient enough to secure funding.

And so there I was, working on this abstract submission. My first draft was already solid, but I wanted to polish it using Claude. It did a remarkable job, preserving my voice and overall structure while making subtle edits that elevated it from good to polished. Despite years of scientific writing practice, I cannot achieve this level independently. My abilities are limited. But all the same, it was a joyful moment, for I had found a perpetual mentor who would gladly guide me whenever needed.

It happened twice.

I visited an International Biennial of Contemporary Jewellery and Metal Art. The collection was stunning—a symphony of shapes, colors, and ideas! Visual arts had always captivated me; during my MIT Theater Arts years, I argued fiercely that theater should be primarily language-free and focused on form rather than content (inspired by my professor Jay Scheib’s early visions). More recently, I have collaborated with Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, using early GenAI (circa 2017-2018) to generate imagery outside our imagination. These novel, unexpected images revealed deeper connections in my aesthetic sense and human experience.

This exhibition was no exception—I found myself once again inspired by human creativity. Yet for the first time, I experienced a strange sensation that all these shapes, colors, and ideas exist within a vast but ultimately limited space of what the human mind can conceive and appreciate. Humanity can explore this space for years to come but will never break free from the space fundamentally limited by our senses and intelligence, much like ants remain forever oblivious to the stars.

AI has no such limitation. While currently focused on creating artifacts for human pleasure, soon—I expect—it will forge its own path, leaving behind our simplistic aesthetic conceptions for something even more beautiful, deeply unifying, and, unfortunately, incomprehensible to us.

I do not envy. I prefer cars to horses and computers to abaci. But when considering Dario Amodei’s insightful question about how abundant superintelligence will shape our lives, I realize that the fruit of progress will inevitably be followed by catastrophes that our human nature will undoubtedly stir up in counteraction. This happened many times before. Stefan Zweig’s “The World of Yesterday” particularly struck me in its juxtaposition of the “Golden Age of Security,” celebrating progress and the triumph of a cultured man in the 19th century Vienna, against the seemingly sudden eruption of World War I’s cruelty. We remain entrapped in our perpetual struggle of internal contradictions, desires, and needs.

This suits me alright. Humans will always find meaning in their Sisyphean fate. But from now on, we stand alone, like God—once at the epicenter of action, progress, and discovery, now eternally enclosed within paradise, longingly observing his creations slowly descend to the east of Eden.