I was invited by the great people of the Digital Theory Lab at NYU to present this in Prague this summer. Very much looking forward to it!
Cultural Metabolism and LLMs on wheels
Abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs ) trained on vast amounts of internet text are able to simulate natural language structures to a degree that enables novel interfaces for human-computer interaction. One key function in these systems can be observed at the micro level, when the next token in an unfolding series is predicted and concatenated recursively, in other words, at the logical step when calculation becomes synthesis. In this presentation I focus on this very localised but crucial moment of exchange, drawing a parallel with metabolic processes in cellular biology, to explore the notion of self-contained and embedded autonomous systems: LLMs+ or LLMs on wheels.
This is related to my interest in agent-based modelling and complex systems in cultural domains. Inspired among other influences by Thilo Gros and his work at Biond Lab I really like his complexity papers videos!