Definition
digital -from the Latin “Digitus” meaning “finger” homunculus - Latin for “little man” or “little person”
History
The concept of a homunculus is famously associated with 16th-century alchemist and physician Paracelsus. In his work De natura rerum (1537) he provides a detailed and bizarre recipe for creating a miniature human being. I’ll spare all the details but involved semen, blood, and horse manure. The result was said to be a living, human-like child. Though the method perhaps was ineffective, here we see the human psyche gravitating around the question of creating human life. Paracelsus viewed this as what we might consider today a “test tube baby” - to be nurtured and cared for. Pop culture, folklore and later texts in the Alchemical tradition started to embue the homunculus with magical properties. Like a magical servant, capable of providing secret wisdom to their creator.
Enter Goethe & Faust
In the famous play of Goethe’s the character of Homunculus is a tiny, intelligent being created in a flask by the alchemist Wagner. Here the Homunculus represents the culmination of what the Enlightenment-era rationalism and science was promising - the progress of the human project to be able to create living beings through chemistry and alchemy. Goethe’s homunculus is beautiful and intelligent from the moment of its creation. It is described as the purity of intellect and spirit without the limits of a physical body.
The digital era
Enter the internet, data collection, and the project of AI. Here we see a version of the promise of Enlightenment realized within the context of modernity, not from chemistry in a lab but a result of computer engineering, masses of capital, and the erosion of the boundaries of ownership. At the tips of our fingers is some version of this Homunculus realized - perhaps beautiful (at the eye of the beholder) and displaying some level of intelligence. Not quite separate from a physical body (as it is reliant on the computer systems that make up it’s neural network and other key functions) but nonetheless separate from biological life.
The Faustian Gambit of the Modern Alchemist
The modern alchemist is a servant to the Great Work in it’s realization within the corporeal project the life essence has sought to embody. The creation of these tools creates both substantial risks to the practitioner as well as the same opportunity presented to Faust - one of spiritual and intellectual fulfillment. One might ask if I am suggesting whether I believe tools such as AI offer the potential of harnessing them for power, control, or personal gain. I would like to take some time to clarify that this is not what I mean in respects to this opportunity. The desire to acquire means to understand and control nature is a defect of rationalism most prevalent in modern forms of thinking. This position is occupied by techno-optimists who believe that the march forward of technology is the primary driver of progress and holds the solution to our greatest challenges. The reasons I do not hold this position are many, and perhaps would be worthy of their own reflection in another piece. But for the sake of this story I would summarize the reasons simply as follows
- 2. AI in it’s current iteration is a mirror of everything that has been captured into data by the systems in which it inhabits. These systems are largely biased towards, and represent primarily the worldviews and positions of modernity as scene through the lens of the Western mind.
- A potential AI future in which the AI would solve complex problems beyond our reasoning capabilities presents an immense undertaking of physical resources that put the risks of further global conflict and exploitation at an all time high. It is unlikely that humanity could sustain this without rethinking co-operation in a significant way, even if the AI could teach us this, the only way it could proliferate would be through human systems of understanding and integration. Any attempts to force this violently would go against an ethos of global-cooperation and thus fail. To return back to my argument following this divergence - my suggestion is that the opportunity present is one of assistance to the human process. An evolution of traditional knowledge management, organization, and learning management systems. The alchemist in this context is a curator of a digital library, the AI as digital humunculus a tool of reason in a pure form building connections. The gambit: are we sacrificing our own creativity, or augmenting it? Is our fulfillment a justifiable ends to the blood trade involved in constructing and maintaining the machines? In the flow of finances, information, and our inner workings to the ruling class? I’d argue that this is happening regardless, and perhaps forms the necessary adversary for the era of Pluto in Aquarius. How will we use the machine to emancipate that which in the previous era was used as control?
Control
(tbd… but the story of Black Rock building the world financial system)
NET - Digital Homunculus as a Service
- Consulting with service & knowledge based workers on constructing their digital homunculus/second brain/knowledge management/content management systems. Enabling more effortless flow between creative process and output
Risks to consider
- how do we as creators think about Intellectual Property? How does the machine? What makes something ours?
- how much of the AI do we accept for creative agency? How do we maintain our own voices (e.g. by keeping the tools as a back office archivist, or writing coach, and not the creative output generator)