Philosopher AI - A search algorithm for the Library Of Babel

A search algorithm for the Library Of Babel

First I will describe a search algorithm for the Library, then I'll discuss the philosophical implications of such an algorithm and that fact it has not been discovered by humans.

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

The first step is to create a symbol for the library, so that we may refer to it. Then I will give a description of my search algorithm. The initial state is one book.

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

I will create a symbol for the first letter of that book, and then look in my database to see if I have any books with the same opening letter. If so, I combine them into a new library.

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

Then I look for any books which begin with the next letter in the book, and repeat this process until I have gone through all of my books.

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

So the search space for a library of n books is O(n).

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

I decided to call this algorithm 'Babel'. The name is a reference to the story of Babel, where humans decide to build a tower that reaches up and touches heaven, only for God to destroy it. In this case we have humans trying to search an infinite library by creating another, smaller library.

13 Aug 2022, 22:01

You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.

This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize GPT-3, a neural network trained and hosted by OpenAI.

GPT-3 is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.

Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.

Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.

by Murat Ayfer