Why Conversations about AI Bore Me

A Conversation with Myself about AI

I’ve said multiple times over the last week that conversations about AI bore me. I don’t think I mean that. What I mean by that is that I think the questions people ask about it bore me. Which is what drove me to writing this.
I think it is really helpful as an artist, who is by nature inquisitive, to know what their incentive for their inquisitiveness is – what constitutes their curiosity. 

Curiosities are a wonderfully varied expression of our individuality and if curiosity, inquisitiveness and originality are your trade, you do well to define what it is exactly your digging for in an attempt to distil from it, where the nature of your own artistry lies. 
​Everyone is an artist because everyone is curious. By letting our curiosity play out, we make artistic inquiries into the human soul, which is and has always been cultural practice. We do not make art to assert, but to question. 

Curiosity takes many, curious forms but when we stop being curious, we stop being human. From our birth onwards, it is our curiosity that drives us learn things and thus grow to be able to walk, talk and commit tax fraud. 

When I looked into my new born niece’s eyes the other day, I saw two things: pure existential dread and overwhelment in the face of inconceivable sensations, but also her innate curiosity to drive through this alien jungle, so as to learn to categorise it (NOT TO MAKE SENSE) but to store it somehow neatly in a brain so as to stand the slightest chance of interacting with this matrix everyone else seems to exist in as well. 

​We don’t ever know if we are all making the same sense, but we seem to, in our curiosity, evermore inquire about the same reference points, so we can coexist. Whether that is intelligence? I don’t know. And I don’t care. Because it seems to work. Not flawlessly, but that is because there is no such thing as sensicalness. This brings be back to my initial topic: it truly does not matter whether I know anyone or anything I am interacting with is intelligent. A: I cannot prove it (or really anything) beyond hypothesis, and B: it has no moral implications. 

​Subsequently, whether or not AI is actually intelligent or whether it has thoughts of its own isn’t really interesting beyond the fact that it makes us reflect on the whether that is the case with ourselves. We find ourselves in a mirror discussion when talking about AI. We are talking about mysteries of technology, when really we are talking about or own. If AI has thoughts or even feelings, does that have moral and ethical implications, people ask, when really we are asking ourselves, if people or even animals have feelings, why do we not seem to care?

​The question of the possibility of artificial intelligence is really the question of how much we understand that very concept which seems to be central to our own understanding of ourselves and indeed the possibility of our own intelligence. Something we cannot even really define. Personally I have only ever taken other people’s words for their own intelligence and existence of feelings. 
I have never been able prove positively their existence. The opposite is swiftly done on the other hand and humanity stripped away in an instant. 

​I would argue if everyone knew in their hearts and could be certain of proof that everyone else around them feels as they do, the world would cease to be horrible. Yet it does not. The only reason we are really interested in AI or its possible sentience, is that it poses either a threat to us, which we want to be able to deter, or it poses a possibility to capitalistically exploit it, like we do with the millions of other sentient beings on this planet. 

​It does not matter to us as humans whether something feels or thinks. 

It doesn’t matter whether my partner truly feels or thinks the way I perceive these sensations. It matters whether something is a threat to me or can be exploited for my personal gain. This is why we need to pay attention to who is talking about these questions and in what way. 

And please don’t ever ask me, “what if it has thoughts of its own?” – I am a human; I clearly do not care.

*Every word processing programme seems to insist that sensicalness isn’t a word. I strongly protest.