Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 115.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2026-08-07 00:42:54+00:00
        From: James Smithies <James.Smithies@anu.edu.au>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 40.113: Correction: World Models and Artificial Intelligence URL

Dear Willard,

I've been interested in the concept of emergence for a few years now and have
watched the increase in naive use of the term with interest. I had a crack at
exploring it in the 'Emergent Infrastructure' chapter of my recent monograph
(link below my signature), my goal being to historicize the concept and use it
to undermine belief in technological determinism. The Krakauer et al paper is
very welcome from that perspective. I particularly like the way they present a
framework for the application of emergence theory to LLMs that is grounded in
complexity science and distinguishes between 'knowledge out' (KO) and 'knowledge
in' (KI) systems.

My chapter is historical and oriented towards trying to understand global
digital infrastructure rather than only LLMs but I'm of the opinion that
'emergence' is one of the key ideas for contemporary scholarship, and a concept
we need to grapple with. It sits on an epistemological boundary. One side of
that boundary leads to a world of determinism, romanticism, and lack of human
control; the other leads to rationalism, science, and human agency. As I note in
the introduction to my chapter, Philip Clayton goes so far as to claim that
emergence theory presents us with a third option for ontological commitment,
next to physicalism and dualism. I'm not qualified to adjudicate on that but I'm
confident that (rigorously conceived), the concept can help us differentiate
between marketing hype and knowledge.

Best wishes,
James

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003684398-9/emergent-
infrastructure-james-
smithies?context=ubx&refId=9f5f25cb-66d2-4c14-a84e-8ff98e8a0b2c
________________________________
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 4 August 2026 5:38 PM
To: James Smithies <james.smithies@anu.edu.au>
Subject: [Humanist] 40.113: Correction: World Models and Artificial Intelligence
URL


              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 113.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2026-08-04 07:33:37+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: Correction: World Models and Artificial Intelligence URL

Apologies for the quickly expired link. See instead:
<https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/384/2320>..

WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor em., King's College London;
<http://www.mccarty.org.uk/>



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