The trouble… is that we are terrifyingly ignorant. The most learned of us are ignorant… The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance – almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it.
Wendell Berry, from Donella Meadows’ “Systems Thinking”
This remains true in the world of Generative AI and its Large Language Models. I wonder if in some ways it becomes more immediately evident than before, as we become more used to working with knowledge as a malleable commodity. Or if that persistent chasm between all our models and the real world is even further disguised by the swathes of text we now inhabit.