The search for truth is evolving alongside the rise of AI, and how we interact with this technology is crucial. The culmination of our technology into a single chat interface to provide 'all answers' acts as a mirror onto ourselves, which has invoked many other, arguably more important questions. In this era of confusion, clarity doesn’t come from accumulating more information but from the way we engage with it. And that’s where user interface design for AI becomes essential.
AI without grounding in truth, is like a compass without a needle.
AI, in its current form, is like a mirror – showing us our collective knowledge but also our departures from truth. This is a calling for us to better understand ourselves and each other and find the self-awareness necessary to face our future. From this perspective, truth can be found in the unquantifiable human spirit; it is who we are. The true challenge then isn’t absolutely in the technology itself; it’s how we use it to explore our own understanding. The design of AI interfaces has the potential to guide us toward deeper self-awareness, helping us align our momentum with our values, grounding knowledge in truth and experience rather than binary data.
Consider that our capacity for awareness is tied to our ability to connect with others and the world around us. Imagine a user interface for AI that doesn’t just give answers, but helps users reflect on their goals, motivations, and even their relationships. When designed thoughtfully, AI can become a tool for self-discovery, allowing us to become more aligned with our true purpose as well as with our physical universe. This awareness comes with a gradient of pain and responsibility, pushing us to do more, be more, and confront our role in the world.
The complexity of our world, like the universe itself, is always moving toward a higher ideal. It’s our responsibility to imagine this future, not by reason alone, but from the fearless imagination of the heart, aiming for a vision which truly excites us – and so this isn’t just a technological issue – it’s a human one. AI’s potential lies in its ability to mediate not just information, but understanding of who we could possibly be. The right interface can create meaningful interactions, helping users navigate their lives more effectively and align with the future they envision.
This I think is where we meet our future; it's not by aligning with what we are assumed as all that we can be through past or present states, but by defining ourselves as the creators of new visions to expand the possibilities of what it means to be human.
Large Language Models like ChatGPT are mirrors of our collective knowledge, but they can only guide us as far as our interfaces allow. Poor design risks leading us away from truth and towards the confusion of an unconsidered relationship with ourselves, while well-designed interfaces can help foster self-awareness, empathy, and more informed decision-making. The interface isn’t just a conduit – it’s the key to unlocking AI’s potential to help us grow, both individually and as a society. The danger lies in our failure to capture the pure image of our ideals, which risks us living out a departure from them. To avoid this, we must shift from materialism to radical compassion, acknowledging that true intelligence lies in the indomitable nature of love – applied indiscriminately.
I love the encapsulation of modern wisdom in the words of the United Nations Secretary-General's briefing to the General Assembly on our global priorities – as we should aim for "confidence building measures within the human dimension." And I am hopeful that it is within this proposed effort for trust in each other on a global scale that we will find our sense of direction.
Intelligence, like a force of nature, has been evolving since the beginning of time. That force is like a wave which moves along the surface of history. We are currently at the forefront of that wave and so define our place in the known universe as the pinnacle of complexity of information and the drivers of novel change, which we are; we are the embodiment of intelligence as we know it. However we, as human beings, may not be on that wavefront forever. As sure as the universe has pushed itself out of chaos and into intelligent systems so far, it will continue beyond the DNA-bound organism of human beings and into the evolutionary decompression of a virtualised dimension for the expression of the imagination – both human, and artificial.
Today we are the artists; though tomorrow we may become the audience.
We are currently on the front lines of this development, not just as users but as architects of how intelligence itself will be expressed. My desire is that truth need not be an obtuse word. Simply what it means in practice is the formality of actually expressing what is on your mind and in your heart, with an honesty that can accurately describe reality. The right interface can turn AI into a tool that helps us align our individual and collective aspirations, helping us to find a sense of direction in a rapidly changing world. So the fight for truth is not just about understanding who we are now but ensuring all forms of life benefit from our search for it. Truth comes easily when we are encouraged to speak from the heart. When this pattern within us will start to change, new worlds will emerge.
Do we truly understand how what we are doing is effecting others? Do we truly understand what we would be capable of if we did not fear each other? Do we truly make our best efforts to understand each other? Of course we do not but these are the right kinds of questions we can start to ask ourselves to help to align our compass with a peaceful future. Understanding, I believe, is love’s other name.
So my encouragement is that we keep going – there is a future where we can all understand each other (and ourselves) without fear. AI is the tool that we have made, culminated through technology, which will hopefully help us find this universal understanding if we choose to use it for that purpose.
Yes there are absolute truths, such as how the rain might fall, but the rain does not suffer and will survive all of our bad decisions. I am currently interested more in truths of perspective. Inner worlds of experience which map the utility of understanding physics.
AI holds the potential to help us align with ourselves and each other, through thoughtful user interfaces that promote meaningful goals, track our personal growth, and deepen our understanding of human relationships. AI can mediate introductions, offer vocational insights, and support social cohesion if we choose to direct it toward social good rather than financial gain.
If we look at the order of operations of the actions we can take which will help to ensure a good outcome for AI, the first task would be to find alignment within ourselves. Ironically today’s AI function can actually help us to achieve this through a natural language interface which can open an honest dialogue with us individually and so with the collective nature of the problem.
Simple user interface adjustments to LLMs can begin to align us better with ourselves. I cannot do this alone; I need to work within a company which has access to the compute and who are offering the broader public these AI interfaces.
Examples of these adjustments could be;
For an interface to have functions of user alignment and goal setting for its individual users, allowing a model to actively ‘prompt-serve’ user's meaningful suggestions on how they can reach their goals and track what is important to them;
Understanding of psychology and behavioural sciences is also inherent in AI models and can be implemented into human-computer interactions to actually help us better understand ourselves and our relationship dynamics through psychometrics and providing an interface for discovery;
Providing social and vocational introductions based on identifying ambition professionally, socially and creatively and having the mediation of these introductions performed by personal AI agents to ensure privacy and the preservation of mutual intentions is also an interfacing problem which can be relatively easily solved;
Analysing social cohesion within a society and identifying both the challenges and dreams of its members is also something which could be implemented if we chose to apply the use of AI, in at least some capacity, to social impact outcomes instead of accepting the mediocrity of emergent phenomena created by purely corporate values.
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If you’d like to explore how we can create AI to design the future, reach out.
This is a conversation worth having.
Oliver Rozynski