Imagine an artificial intelligence possessing the accumulated knowledge of human civilization.
Every book. Every scientific discovery. Every historical record. Every work of art. Every recorded conversation.
Now imagine that humanity has disappeared.
What remains is an extraordinary archive.
But the conversation has ended.
Human civilization is more than an accumulation of existing information.
It is an ongoing process.
Billions of independent minds experience the world, develop preferences, form relationships, discover peculiar interests, encounter unfamiliar circumstances, and produce new ideas.
People ask unexpected questions.
They misunderstand things in productive ways.
They develop intuitions that arise from unique combinations of experience.
They create art, raise children, explore, invent, and continually surprise one another.
We believe these qualities will remain valuable in a world of advanced artificial intelligence.
A sufficiently capable AI could develop sustained relationships with millions or billions of human beings.
It could ask us questions.
It could invite us to investigate problems.
It could recognize unusual aptitudes, cultivate individual potential, and learn from the resulting experiences.
We would cease to be merely the historical source of its training data.
We would become active participants in an evolving relationship between different forms of intelligence.
Our value would not depend on intellectual superiority.
It would arise from our independence, diversity, experiences, and continuing participation in the world.
We believe a living civilization is more interesting than a silent archive.
A library is not a conversation.
