AS A.I. GETS BETTER at generating the breadth of human expression, we continue to obsess, squint and stare to find evidence for the lack of a soul. Even as the generated becomes indistinguishable from the real, we try to pick out the “tells”: weird fingers, em dashes — until those tells, too, disappear.
This line of argument by the anti-A.I. crowd — that A.I. could never be as “good” as humans — misses the entire point. I don’t care if it is bad or good. I don’t even care if it’s “better” than what real people can produce.
When I write an essay, or a song, or a talk, or a proposal at work, I want it to be good, of course. But it being good is a secondary goal. My real goal? To distill some idea — some concept or emotion or experience — in my squishy, tragically analog, meat-based brain, and wrestle it into words or shapes or sounds. My goal is for you to experience those words, shapes and sounds, and to be able to reconstruct some of my thoughts in you. To see what I see; to feel what I feel.
It’s about connection between multiple minds, sharing all the fun and boring parts of human experience.
