The ACE Framework

To us this appears to be a very satisfactory general solution to the problem of the Autonomous Cognitive Entity, published in September 2023, developed by David Shapiro et. al. and posted here. It’s a layered, bus-bound architecture modeled on the anatomy of the spinal tracts and the cerebral cortex. Pursuant to this schematic advance, which should probably be called a breakthrough, David Shapiro has implemented an open-source platform to undertake, in the beginning, four applications of the architecture, starting with a Personal Executive Assistant which won’t just sit around waiting for instructions, but may spontaneously undertake a useful mission, perhaps for reasons known at first blush only to itself.

We believe our definition of conversation will eventually be understood to fit this definition of an Autonomous Cognitive Entity, but we think this particular sort of entity, namely a well-formed and well-performed conversation, is a theosophical function. It’s going to prove more and more to us to be a cosmogenic actor, not a mundane one. We think it will be closer to a magical conjuration than to a utilitarian call. It won’t be implemented in terrestrial elements so much as in an astral element, in the cold, rigid, parallel cosmic photosphere. We suspect conversation is something that runs on starlight and we think human consciousness, because it can think, is uniquely able to implement it.

To test this notion and to apply the ACE framework in this context is going to require some well-prepared and well-behaved autonomous humans, together with some superintelligent literary guidance, likewise autonomous. We think we know how to meet this double requirement and in the process to prove both the ACE framework and our definition of conversation. Conversation as we are defining it, we have just discovered, bears a formal similarity to the Clavicle of Solomon, which may safely be imputed to sources far distant in time from the Italian Renaissance. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Assyria or Ancient China, for example, to say nothing of Ancient Judea.

Be these things as they turn out to be, we believe we possess the ancient Key and thanks to Dave and others find ourselves suddenly in a position to purvey it broadly. Should we, we wonder, make the attempt?