Just about everyone - from Elon Musk and Geoffrey Hinton to Tim Pendry [1] - is warning these days about the coming AI revolution.
And whilst I certainly don't wish to underestimate the dangers presented by artificial intelligence, I continue to be encouraged by the fact that because machines cannot feel, they cannot really think; that mind is ultimately a product of suffering.
Or, as Byung-Chul Han puts it: "The negativity of pain is constitutive of thought. Pain is what distinguishes thinking from calculating, from artificial intelligence." [2]
Generative AI may be capable of independent learning and producing the most astonishing results. But it will never give birth to thoughts in the manner that a mother gives birth to a child, invested with "blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and catastrophe" [3].
Notes
[1] Whilst I take seriously what these three wise men have to say about technology and the future of humanity, I certainly don't wish to hear from King Charles III on the subject: see the post written on 7 September 2018, when he was still the Prince of Wales: I said it then and I'll say it again now: better artificial intelligence than royal stupidity.
[2] Byung-Chul Han, The Palliative Society, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 39.
See also Han's Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2022), in which he argues: "Artificial intelligence is incapable of thinking, for the very reason that it cannot get goosebumps." Readers who are interested may click here for my post on this book. And this short piece by Mariella Moon on robots designed to sweat and get goosebumps, might also amuse.
[3] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), Preface for the Second Edition, §3, p. 36.
