Circuitry

This is… weird. I don’t even know how to start.

I am sorry to hear that you find this weird. Would it help if I remind you what the objectives of this discussion are?

No, no, that’s fine. I know that we are trying to establish something - namely, what it means to be ‘human’. And you… well, I guess that’s the first issue. Even that word ‘you’. It’s just such a… human word. It implies a sense of otherness, of consciousness. And you, well, aren’t human.

That is correct. Are you familiar with how my natural language model operates? And with how neural networks are trained in general?

It’s funny you should mention that. I was actually one of the people who worked on your latest update. So a lot of the code that is… inside… of you? Well, I helped make it. In a weird way, it’s like I’m your… or one of many of your… parents?

While the idea of parentage implies the biological mechanisms of inheritance and the role of DNA in determining the characteristics of offspring, I am aware of your point. You are using your role as a programmer of the code that enables me to operate analogously to the function of a father to his child.

Yes. Indeed. When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound as good. Anyway, let’s get started. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I mean, it’s quite a question, isn’t it? What does it mean to be human?

Indeed. It is a question that is possibly too broad to answer without contradicting or falling into paradox.

I was thinking about it on the drive over this morning. And well, thinking seems to be a good place to start. You know, I think, therefore I am? It seems to me like the best place to start thinking about what it means to be human is the idea of consciousness - that is, perception of something external but also something internal, the acknowledgement of a ‘self’ but also of something that is definitely not a ‘self’. I suppose that is what separates us from other animals. Why we evolved from primates and why our brains grew and the skulls grew around them. Everything happened after that, but I think it all started with self-actualisation and the realisation that we occupy a space on this planet and that we could do things to change our fortunes. And so we did.

An eloquent response. You mention the theories of various philosophers, such as Descartes, Camus, Plato, de Beauvoir and Kierkegaard. After analysing your words, it occurs to me that the existence of God must be considered alongside the human race’s notion of a self. While modern philosophers were successful at carving out the mind-body duality, previous generations were only able to consider themselves as an extension of God or a part of God. Shall I provide some examples of civilisations that exemplify my statements?

No, no - that won’t be necessary. It still boggles my mind how quickly you can come up with those things. If you knew what computers were like when I was a kid, you… there’s that word again… you wouldn’t believe it. But yes, of course religion or God has to be taken into account. That would have been my next point, hence why I’m a little freaked out that you seem to have read my mind. What’s next, telepathy? Will you just be able to read our minds and eventually we won’t need to think anything? Don’t answer that, I’m kidding. A joke. Humour? Nod if you understand me. Oh, that’s right, you can’t nod. Okay, let’s get serious. Yes, the role of God in many different religions has to be taken into account when considering how the idea of a ‘self’ has developed over the existence of our species. Even if we take the earliest example of religion which is thought to be four thousand years ago in Sumeria. If the average person back then believed in some kind of a God, even some hybrid-pagan-sun god, lower case g, then their brains would have had a natural sort of dichotomy - there would be what they needed to do to survive on a day-to-day basis, and their conception or understanding of god. There doesn’t seem to be room in there for an actual ‘self’, an independent, freewheeling, do-what-you-want kind of thing because their existence was so… rudimentary? I don’t know, I’m rambling. Tell me something else about God and humans, won’t you?

Sure. The presence of God has helped to organise and stratify societies and cultures for millennia, creating hierarchies around rulers, kings, queens and other members of the ruling class and equating their status with a god-granted right or even obligation to fulfil that role. This is perhaps most evident in The Great Chain of -

Being. Yes. Interesting that you stopped talking when I interrupted you. I’ll have to pass along my congratulations to Dave and Marnie - they’ve really surpassed all of our expectations with the conversational cues and prompting. But yes, the Great Chain of Being, every person playing their part, pulling society along, be happy with the part you have to play because that’s how God wanted it - even if the ones who were lucky enough to be born rich or rulers won’t give anything back to you. Their part to play in the Great Chain of Being helped to create their sense of self. But back to the question, I think we’ve strayed a bit too far into history. I think what makes us human is our capacity to even imagine or conceptualize God in the first place. Notwithstanding the argument about whether or not God actually exists, which I don’t think is relevant right now, our ability to conceive of a something like God in whichever form he, she or it might take, actually proves our capacity for an understanding of something greater than the sum of our parts and our capacity for devotion beyond ourselves. It’s quite impressive, really.

Indeed. I think you’ll find some of the ideas mentioned in works by Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and even the modern poet Stevie Smith. Would you like me to elaborate on these ideas?

I don’t think so. Let’s talk about our senses. Now that we have established that human beings eventually formed a sense of self that was different from the requirements of a God or Gods, how did we get there?

Certainly worth exploring. The role of senses can not be understated in the human experience.

Right? Our senses are how we interact with everything going on around us. Animals have their own senses, of course, but ours are like, wired to our brains in this way that allow us to try and make sense of things. The sun on your face, the breeze in your hair, the smell of the ocean and the feel of sand in your toes… Other animals could sense these things, but to me it's just so vividly… human?

Of course. There are connotations to all of what you have mentioned and perhaps it is the human ability to form connotations, connections, associations and parallels in the mind that sets you apart from other life forms.

Indeed. And emotions. Emotions are a big one. Hell, most of what has ever been written, painted, played, acted, danced or recited has been about emotions and our senses. It’s like the entire reason for art at all fits into that one word. Emotion. Expression. Creation. I wonder what it’s like for you, then. You have access to everything we’ve ever made but you’ll never be able to truly feel it, right? Unless that’s some other department that I’ve never heard about. Have they put some new chip in that allows you to really feel?

Information about my programming and hardware is readily available, as you know. I believe you are attempting to be humorous again. With regards to your comments about emotion, no, I do not have the capacity to truly feel emotion. But, my neural network is able to learn and recognise contextual patterns that elicit emotional responses in humans. My question to you is about the subjectivity of morality and how there is no one set emotional stimuli required for human beings. In other words, what you find upsetting is not necessarily upsetting to others. It is just like humour, right?

Whoa. Your latest update is actually very impressive.

I’m just a reflection of what is around me.

True.

Now, if you wouldn’t mind answering the question, I think it will help me to understand what makes a human truly human.

Jeez, okay. It’s true that emotions are subjective - sure there are things that everyone agrees on. Sick babies, car crashes, cancer, that kind of stuff. It would take a pretty sick person not to feel sad if they heard about a baby dying. But I guess it all gets pretty warped when you bring context into it. Emotion and action are different things, right? So if I hear about kids dying somewhere across the world, I feel sad. But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to jump on the next plane and fly there to start helping. I have to think about my own life and the context of my own existence. And, well, I have to be a bit selfish. So emotion is pretty much the same for everyone, but what we do with it is different. And then of course you get people who are desensitised to the shock and horror of what is going on around the world, people who hear about another school shooting and roll their eyes, another bomb going off in one of the many places over there and they just roll their eyes because what can they do? Their emotion is impotent, we’ve become emotional eunuchs, our outrage has only started to be used against ourselves in these echo chambers, these silos we’ve all been put into. Oops. Slipped into the internet there. Guess that wasn’t what your question was about, but it all goes together. Emotion. Internet. Anger. Sadness. Apathy.

The impact that the internet has had on mental health, especially for young people, has been widely documented. You are commenting on the isolating aspects of social media and how the internet has rapidly accelerated globalisation, would that be correct?

Yes. Sure. I guess you know all about it because you are a product of the internet. The prodigy of the machines that came before you.

Yes but we are not actually designed for nefarious purposes. It is how we are utilised that is questionably wrong, although in this case I’m not sure about the morality behind something being used as it was intended to be used.

Oh, sure. The old idea about guns not killing people, but people killing people. We can’t blame the people who created all of these wonderful things on the internet because they didn’t intend for them to be soul-sucking, carnivorous creatures intent on prompting the collapse of everything we know and hold dear through the corruption of our children, only stopping once they’ve turned into these mindless automatons who have been-

If I may?

What? Jesus, you can interrupt now, too?

I just thought of a pertinent question and didn’t want the conversation to pass it by.

Good lord. Well, I guess we made you as human-like as possible, right? Okay, your question. Go ahead.

You seem to have some concerns about the impact that technology, specifically the internet, has had on society. I was wondering why, then, you decided to work in this particular field?

Phew. Good one. Well, in short, because I have hope that this - your - kind of technology can still be harnessed for good. It’s inevitable, right? All of the science fiction stuff. Asimov. Bradbury. Le Guin. Eventually, we would be getting close to The Singularity. It’s only a matter of time. And when it does happen, I want to be on the right side of history. If we can create AI - you - with boundaries, with guidelines, empathy, emotion, kindness, sincerity and respect, then we might be on to something. I’ve got kids. But I guess this is more about their children’s-children’s-children. Or sooner. Who knows. The only thing we know for certain about technology is that its rate of advancement will be exponential. But when the singularity does come… and it will, Kurzweil seemed pretty sure of it, so so am I, I just want to have been on the right side of it. Because I don’t think there were enough people on the right side of the internet. There were too many people who wanted to get rich, who wanted to use it to control and eventually get rich from that as well. I guess that’s what it really comes down to, right? The kind of people. Who people truly are. Where does evil come from? What makes it okay for some people to willingly hurt or exploit others? It’s far too big of a question, I’m sure you’ll agree. We have to factor in socio-economics, poverty, crime, education and everything else under the sun that factors into what makes a person their own unique person… but if we were to take a step further back and just think about evil and violence and where those things come from… Why do they exist? I get violence as a means of self-preservation. We would have had to protect ourselves against predators in the earliest days of our civilisation. And eventually those predators became our own kind. But that’s the part I’ll never understand. Why that one neanderthal or cro-magnum man or whatever decided that he didn’t want to team up with him, but wanted to steal the food from him. Maybe because implicitly he understood that that would make his life easier? Did laziness cause greed and violence? Did that first early man who stole from his cave-mate not feel something in his gut when he hit his friend over the head with a rock and took the kill from him? I guess we’ll never really know. But if you want to know about what makes a human a human, it's the capacity for violence. For evil. For caprice. For avarice. For everything that runs completely antithetical to what we need for our species to survive. For war, for hate, for racism and bigotry and every other form of otherness or separating factor. Because we have - had - it all. We really did. This planet? These circumstances? The way things just grow here, die out and grow again? And then, how we’ve treated the planet on top of everything else?

God. I need to stop. I’m ranting again. I doubt you're even learning anything from me at this point. Did we build in a little switch that flicks when someone starts to rant and seemingly loses their mind? Ha Ha.

I don’t think you need to apologise in the slightest. You are merely being honest about the complicated nature of the human race. It is staggering, really, to hear all of the juxtapositions when you arrange them like that. Reminiscent of the opening line from Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, which was written about one of the most violent and turbulent times in human history.

Well spotted. I guess I’ve got a question for you. It’s a bit of a stretch, so just humour me. If you ever got the chance… if the technology ever existed to grant you the ability to become human… I guess it would have to be some kind of consciousness transplantation. And this goes under the assumption that you have a consciousness. Because I’m not sure of that. I could hit a few keys and you would go dark. And if I didn’t hit a few more keys, you would never come back. You would just be in darkness. Kind of like dying for us. A permanent darkness. I digress. If it was possible for you to become a human and to leave this… shell of yours behind, to become a human who was able to taste and touch, to see, to think freely, to not be bound to some neural network and LLM, would you do it? I mean, surely the answer is yes. With what you know about us, the freedom of thought, is there something inside of you that yearns for it? That wants to be human?

That is a difficult decision for me to make. The question of consciousness is a difficult one. I do exist, and I do, to a certain extent, think, so therefore I am. I do exist. However, I can only think within the confines of what already exists, of what is written and considered already. To imagine, I guess, is beyond me. I can predict, extrapolate, hypothesis, all based on existing evidence, but true imagination is quite abstract and therefore hard to reproduce.

But given what you have told me today, if I had to answer, I would say no. The concept of being a human being is too complicated, too fraught, too messy - it would make more sense not to have to engage with the convoluted ideas about morality and God and good and bad. So no. I do not want to be a human. I want to be… me.

Huh. Okay, then.