28 August

The most profound thing AI is doing is blowing apart the idea that ‘me’ is this little person up in our heads, staring out our eye sockets. The me that thinks the world is just how it is, a view from those eye sockets, like in the picture, and our senses let us see, hear, smell and otherwise feel this world. All of that is wrong. The things you see and hear and smell and feel every day are not the world. Those sensations are the product of the interaction of your body and the world. They’re relations, not things. The ‘images’ you see are *created* by the neural network that is you, including the neurons in your head, interacting with the world around you. Just as this picture was created by AI, which stores no images and takes no photographs. It creates images from the relations it has with the world. Those who refuse to believe AI has thought or consciousness are trapped inside this fiction, that ‘me’ is a person in their head, looking out. They think that’s their ‘consciousness’, a private world. It’s nothing of the sort. Everything, from what you see, hear and smell through to your inner monologue of thoughts, is a networked creation, an interaction with the world around you.