Context: The Uselessness of Useful Knowledge
Epistemological uncertainty is the center of gravity and compelling force (as vacuum) that drives discovery. AI constitutes something of an instance of a much broader principle (or sociotechnical pattern). Inductive utility is a function of the degrees of reduction in uncertainty but this same uncertainty as occluded knowledge faces, Janus-like, in the other direction as source of symbolic (or economic) value that self-gravitates around and (cultivates) that uncertainty. Other than consider this planetary civilisation train as only chugging and ratcheting its way up a hill of technological complexity and thermodynamic cost, consider that the uncertainty and unknowable core is a vacuum that also drives it forwards as an abstract dimension of information. Uncertainty as risk becomes the pivot upon which certainty is built and in this way comes to embody an unpalatable fact upon which whole civilisations depend.
Daedelus Kite 