Tillbourne is interested in how we understand, make decisions about and exercise control over systems that no individual can fully comprehend and how artificial intelligence may change our ability to do so.
The essays are exploratory and cumulative. They test ideas rather than assume them to be true, drawing connections between organisations, technology, information and other complex systems where those connections prove useful.
These are questions rather than conclusions. Some may survive investigation; others may turn out to be unoriginal, incorrectly framed or simply wrong. Finding that out is part of the exercise.
Over time, the aim is to develop better ways of thinking about how complex systems behave, and what that means for the people and institutions trying to understand, govern or change them.
Essays
ESSAYS IN DEVELOPMENT
01
When Everything Is True and the Picture Is False
How can selecting and compressing individually accurate information produce a misleading representation of reality?
02
How Do You Govern Something You Cannot Understand?
How can people exercise effective control over systems whose possible behaviours exceed the capacity of any individual to comprehend?
03
Could AI Bring Back the Artisan Worker?
Will AI change not merely how productive individuals are, but the economic scale at which work can be performed, and therefore the boundaries of organisations?
04
When Production Becomes Cheap, where Does the Value Go?
If AI radically reduces the cost of producing intellectual work, what becomes relatively scarce and valuable as a consequence?
05
Can You Control a System Without Knowing What It Is For?
What happens when the objectives of organisations, governments or intelligent machines are implicit, multiple, contradictory or imperfectly specified?
06
Does AI Change Our Relationship with Complexity?
Do changes in information, control, organisation and value reveal something more fundamental about our capacity to deal with complexity, or not?