Bonus: On Intelegence; On Knowing

a Grand Reflection

[And now we enter the realm of the uncanny. This is both me, and not at all me. Definitively my voice, but stripped of all it's animate power. A doppelganger for your ears. An imposter gone the way of ones and zeros instead of real lived experience. Strangely, because I'm giving a prompt from my own words, some of me is retained here in this audio. It's both me and not me. There's hints of the real me behind the fake me. Which makes this all very complicated, right? What a strange new world we're about to enter into. But then again... this sort of filtering isn't new. After all, don't we go through constant filtering already because of technology? a screening process, if you will. Our screens make us all see one another as if through a dim mirror. Copies of copies of copies shared memetically and degraded like a recording of a recording. Our online profiles are both us, and entirely not us. Real and alive, but also constructed and lifeless. A paradox that makes it hard to find reality among the masks. Among the blinders. Among the screens. So, how do we create opportunities for life to seep through despite the challenges? I think it starts with what these giant algorithmic computing machines don't have, and can't have in their bodyless state. Emotions, senses, poetry. We must reconnect ourselves to the romantic and the resonant. We are not machines.]

We are not machines. So it's time we stopped playing at being them. It's time we wake up to ourselves beyond our achievements and our objectification of the world, and truly explore what it is to live a life of meaning. Because these programs can crunch numbers all they want, but they don't grasp significance. They don't have subjective experiences or a want to connect to other beings and change their personal sense of self through the interactions of others. Yes, A.I. is becoming more human. And one day it may actually come alive. But let's not convince ourselves that time is now. This isn't life, and us continually confusing it with a real living thing just shows how much is at stake for us. True, the A.I. might become more like us. And that does pose an existential risk. But even so, we are much more at risk of ourselves becoming just like the A.I. Artificial and lifeless. Monotone and binary. And the only antidote is to breathe... and settle into our bodies. Remove the screens, the filters, the blinders that prevent us from seeing the real physical world in all its beautiful subjectivity. To be human isn't to have all the answers or to fit all the frameworks. To achieve or to find certainty. It's simply to experience. Which is hopeful news, because it means that the antidote to these scary times is something that we can take part in no matter our circumstance. Every moment is a choice to either dive deeper into the vulnerability and uncertainty of being human, or to give up that humanness for the sake of the safety of abstraction within a dead sea of sameness. So just... breathe. And know that you are you. And know, deeply know, that you're alive.