TECH Signal 317
Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge
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The piece highlights a centuries-old pattern of seeking shortcuts to hard-won knowledge, framing current AI promises in a longer historical context. For engineers building AI tools, it is a reminder that claims of instant expertise transfer have always been seductive and have always faced skepticism about whether they deliver real understanding.
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The Ars Notoria used complex diagrams and verbal formulae that practitioners had to accept on faith, similar to how modern AI systems require trust in opaque internal representations.
Despite being condemned by authorities like Thomas Aquinas as both unlawful and futile, the tradition persisted because the desire for instant knowledge outweighed institutional disapproval.
The fifty-six surviving manuscripts demonstrate that the appeal of bypassing difficult study has deep historical roots, predating computational shortcuts by centuries.
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