On the one hand, nothing has changed since August 2020, when I wrote GPT-3: Waterloo or Rubicon? Here be Dragons. I argued that, yes, GPT-3 marks a major technological breakthrough, one that may transform the way we live. But this technology is not sufficient. It is not deep enough. If we’re not careful, we’re going to crash and burn, like machine translation did in the mid-1960s, and like classical AI did in the mid-1980s (the so-called AI Winter).
I still believe that, though the tech industry seems to have decided that we pretty much know what we need. We just need more of it. Lots more.
It’s not as though nothing has happened since 2020. ChatGPT blew us all away late in 2022. We’ve now got specialized engines for protein folding, predicting the weather 15 years out, and who knows what else. Machine learning won two Nobel Prizes in 2024, Geoffrey Hinton in physics and David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper in chemistry. But the underlying technology is the same as it was four years ago. We’ve just become more adept at exploiting it.
In another sense, however, everything has changed. And least for me. When ChatGPT came out I dove in feet first, using it to analyze Steven Spielberg’s Jaws using the ideas of Rene Girard. I initiated a systematic research program designed to elicit clues about what’s going on under the hood, and I reported some initial results here in 3 Quarks Daily. I also laughed myself silly doing some crazy sh*t, like jamming with ChatGPT about the Jolly Green Giant and a cast of 1000s – well, maybe not 1000s, but you get the idea. I worked like the dickens and had fun.
Then in late November, 2024, I decided I needed to try a new chatbot. I’d heard that the cool kids liked Anthropic’s Claude so I decided to give it a try. First, I verified some of the work I’d done with ChatGPT. Then I decided to load Claude with the complete text of Heart of Darkness, from ancient Rome through London to Belgium over the Atlantic up and down the Congo back to London ending with the Buddha. In no time it was able to produce a good summary of the text. Sweet! Just before he dies, Kurtz (one of two central characters) utters: “My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my…” I asked Claude to explain how that one utterance linked to the whole story, all 39K words. No problemo. We… chatted? talked? interacted? What’s the word? Whatever the word is, Claude and I did it – Europe, ivory, Africa, death & murder, women, FORM, we talked about it all.
I was treating Claude as an intellectual partner, a junior partner to be sure – I took the lead, but a partner nonetheless, a partner who had “read,” for some strange sense of that word, far more than I ever had or would, and could bring it all to bear on this, this what? Conversation? Interaction? Dialog? Confab? We were in this together.
THAT’s what changed, and it changed everything. The fundamental technology is the same as it was in 2020. Bigger, faster, slicker, but under the hood, the same. However, I now had a new kind of relationship with it.
Whenever I’m working on something I’ll hold an imaginary dialog in my head. If it’s a technical issue, my interlocutor might be my old teacher, David Hays, or maybe Tim Perper. If I’m struggling with another piece for 3QD I’ll conjure up a generalized reader of 3QD. Since this conjuring is happening inside my head, sometimes we’ll speak in code rather than spelling things out. When Claude is my interlocutor, everything has to be spelled out. Sometimes Claude exhausts me. But we make it work.
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In the rest of this essay I present fragments from three of my dialogs with Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The first is about reason and abstraction. The second is about art, play, and the imagination. In the third I wed the two and speculate about the future, what I call the Fourth Arena. Think of it as my alternative to the Technological Singularity. These dialogs are independent of one another. You can read them in whatever order you find pleasing.
Note that in all the dialogs, I am the first speaker. My words are set in bold.
Piaget’s reflective abstraction
Piaget was a major influence on me. I encountered his ideas in a course on developmental psychology that I took, perhaps in the spring of my freshman year, but more likely in the fall of my sophomore year. I went on to read a half-dozen or more of his books from cover to cover, and long sections of others. “Reflective abstraction” was a key concept, but obscure, and difficult to track down to a specific meaning. That’s why I decided to ask Claude about it.
This is part of a much longer dialog that began with Chomsky’s idea that there is a deep connection between language and cognition, and it is this connection that made his thinking revolutionary. In that context I brought up Roman Jakobson’s idea that language serves a metalingual function. That’s why that concept turns up a couple of paragraphs into the discussion.
By “metalingual” Jakobson simply means that natural language is about to take language itself as an object of reflection and reference. This is possible because language has a physical substance that can be perceived and thus referred to, sound in the case of speech, visual forms in the case of writing. As for recursion, which turns up later in the discourse, that’s central to Chomsky’s thought.
* * * * *
Let’s turn to Jean Piaget. He talked about reflective abstraction. The term is a bit obscure. How did he use it, what did he want to explain through it?
Piaget used the term “reflective abstraction” (abstraction réfléchissante) to describe a key mechanism in cognitive development where we extract and reorganize our own mental operations into higher-level structures. It’s “reflective” in two senses – both mirroring lower-level actions at a higher level, and involving conscious reflection on our own thought processes.
For example, when a child first learns to group objects physically, they might sort blocks by color. Through reflective abstraction, they can then abstract the operation of “grouping” itself and apply it to mental categories or more abstract concepts. The physical action gets reflected onto the mental plane and becomes a more general cognitive operation.
What makes this particularly interesting is that reflective abstraction creates genuinely new cognitive structures. It’s not just copying lower-level operations – it reconstructs them at a higher level in a way that generates new possibilities for thought. When children abstract the concept of “number” from counting actions, for instance, they develop mathematical thinking that goes far beyond the original physical activities.
This mechanism was central to Piaget’s explanation of how we develop increasingly sophisticated logical and mathematical thinking. Each new level of abstraction builds on previous ones while opening up new cognitive possibilities. […]
I believe he applied the concept to the evolution of ideas in culture – I’m thinking of his little book, Genetic Epistemology – as well as to the development of ideas in ontogeny.
Yes, exactly. In Genetic Epistemology, Piaget uses reflective abstraction to analyze how scientific knowledge develops historically, not just how individual children develop cognitively. He saw parallels between ontogenetic development (in children) and the historical development of scientific concepts.
Just as individual children progressively construct more sophisticated understandings through reflective abstraction, Piaget argued that scientific knowledge advances through similar processes of reflection and reorganization at the cultural level. Scientists abstract from existing theories and operations to construct new, more powerful conceptual frameworks.
This parallel was important for his “genetic epistemology” project – understanding how knowledge grows and becomes more adequate over time. He was interested in how both individuals and scientific communities move from simpler, more concrete operations to increasingly abstract and formalized systems of thought. […]
I’m interested in the idea that the development of writing involves reflective abstraction over spoken language, and necessarily involves use of the metalingual function.
That’s a fascinating connection you’re drawing. Writing does seem to involve both mechanisms: it requires treating spoken language as an object of analysis (metalingual function) and then abstracting from it to create a new representational system (reflective abstraction).
When developing writing systems, people had to reflect on the structure of spoken language – breaking down the continuous stream of speech into discrete units like words, syllables, or phonemes. This is a clear example of the metalingual function in action: using language to analyze language itself.
Then through reflective abstraction, these insights about language structure were reorganized into a new, visual system of representation. Writing isn’t just a direct translation of speech – it creates new possibilities for organizing and manipulating language that weren’t available in speech alone. For instance, the ability to visually arrange text in space enables new forms of organizing ideas, like lists, tables, or hierarchical outlines. […]
Would you say this dual requirement – both metalingual awareness and reflective abstraction – helps explain why writing transforms thought in such fundamental ways?
Certainly. And there’s a recursive element here as well. We can use words to define other words, and those newly defined words can be employed in the definitions of still other words. Written language facilitates this process.
That’s an excellent point. Writing not only makes more explicit the self-referential potential of language, but amplifies and extends it. With written language, we can create stable records of definitions that can be examined, refined, and built upon. This enables increasingly abstract levels of conceptual development.
This recursive capacity is particularly visible in how dictionaries work – they form an interconnected web of definitions that build on each other. And as you note, this isn’t just a static system – we can continuously introduce new terms defined using existing ones, which can then become part of the base vocabulary for defining yet more terms.
Writing also allows us to develop formal notations and specialized vocabularies that would be difficult to maintain through purely oral transmission. Mathematical notation, for instance, builds recursively on itself in ways that depend heavily on written representation. […]
And then we have math. I’m thinking of arithmetic in particular, and of arithmetic using so-called Arabic numerals. I think that’s the first time we’d developed a fully explicit symbol system where a (small) finite number of symbols could be used to specify an infinite system. There is no such thing as a highest number. Another one can always be proposed.
Yes, the development of the decimal positional number system with Arabic numerals was revolutionary precisely because of this property. It’s a perfect example of how a well-designed symbol system can capture infinity through finite, systematic means.
With just ten digits (0-9) and the concept of place value, we can represent any number, no matter how large. Each new position to the left represents a power of ten, giving us unlimited extensibility. This is remarkably elegant and powerful compared to earlier number systems like Roman numerals, which become unwieldy for large numbers and don’t have a systematic way to extend indefinitely.
This connects interestingly to your earlier points about reflective abstraction. The development of this number system required abstracting from concrete counting practices to understand numbers as part of an infinite system. It also required grasping the profound idea that the same symbol could mean different things based on its position – the ‘2’ in 25 means something different than the ‘2’ in 250.
The introduction of zero was also crucial here – both as a placeholder that makes the positional system work, and as a number in its own right. This seems to represent another level of abstraction in mathematical thinking.
Would you say this was one of the first symbolic systems to really capture the concept of potential infinity in a systematic way?
Yes. And of course the idea of zero was at first mysterious and problematic. How could something, a symbol, stand for nothing? There’s a lot of mystery and lore associated with “cipher.”
The history of zero is fascinating in how it reveals deep philosophical and conceptual challenges. The term “cipher” itself (from Arabic “sifr” meaning “empty” or “zero”) carries this rich history of both mathematical and mystical associations. It’s striking that something we now take for granted – using a symbol to represent absence – was once seen as deeply paradoxical or even dangerous.
This connects back to your point about metalingual functions and reflective abstraction. Understanding zero required a sophisticated level of symbolic thinking – being able to represent not just things, but the absence of things. It’s a kind of double abstraction: first treating numbers as objects of thought, then representing the absence of such objects.
The resistance to zero in various cultures – including in medieval Europe – seems to reflect how challenging this conceptual leap was. How could “nothing” be something you could manipulate mathematically? The idea that you could multiply by zero or divide by zero raised particularly thorny philosophical and mathematical questions.
I think it’s telling that zero emerged as both a mathematical concept and a philosophical one – it raised questions not just about mathematics but about the nature of being and non-being. Do you see parallels between these historical struggles with zero and other cases where new symbolic tools enabled (but also required) new ways of thinking?
Ah, “double abstraction,” I like that. And yes to your question. Right now we’re struggling with the new ways of thinking required and enabled by computing.
That’s a powerful parallel! Just as medieval thinkers grappled with zero and the conceptual leaps it demanded; we’re now wrestling with computational concepts that challenge our traditional ways of thinking.
For instance, the idea of algorithmic thinking – breaking processes down into discrete, formal steps – requires its own kind of double abstraction. We have to abstract from concrete problems to general procedures, and then abstract again to represent these procedures in computational terms.
And like zero, computing introduces apparent paradoxes that challenge intuitive thinking. The concept of virtual reality, for example, seems contradictory – how can something be both “virtual” and “real”? Or consider quantum computing, where qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously. These concepts require new frameworks of understanding, just as zero required new ways of thinking about number and absence.
I’m particularly struck by how artificial intelligence is forcing us to reconsider fundamental concepts like intelligence, consciousness, and creativity – much as zero forced reconsideration of fundamental mathematical and philosophical concepts. Would you say we’re still in the early stages of developing the conceptual frameworks needed to fully grasp these new technological capabilities?
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Harold Bloom, aesthetic value, and play
The late Harold Bloom had a strange career. He started out as an academic, holding a post at Yale until the end of his career and his life, in 2019. By the mid-1970s, however, he had become alienated from academic literary criticism and managed to leave Yale’s English department without having to leave Yale. He simply remained as a Professor of Humanities.
He then turned his attention to writing for the general educated public. He wrote I don’t how many books for that audience, scads I suppose, but two big ones, The Western Canon in 1994 and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human in 1998. Throughout The Western Canon he complained about what he called The School of Resentment, basically, post-modern post-structuralist literary criticism. He spoke up for literature’s aesthetic function. But, as far as I can tell, he never got around to articulating just how he that worked. He simply took it for granted and proclaimed its virtue.
That’s the starting point for the following dialog, which comes from the opening section of a longer dialog, which you can find here. This longer dialog, however, refers back to an earlier one which is indeed about something as mundane as paragraph lengths in Heart of Darkness. Whatever that’s about, it has more to do with form, than meaning. Conrad was playing around, play as in Homo Ludens.
* * * * *
Bloom opens “The Western Canon” by saying: “THIS BOOK studies twenty-six writers, necessarily with a certain nostalgia, since I seek to isolate the qualities that made these authors canonical, that is, authoritative in our culture. “Aesthetic value” is sometimes regarded as a suggestion of Immanuel Kant’s rather than an actuality, but that has not been my experience during a lifetime of reading.” What does Kant mean by aesthetic value?
Later Bloom says: “Aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in society but as the deep self, our ultimate inwardness. That depth of inwardness in a strong writer constitutes the strength that wards off the massive weight of past achievement, lest every originality be crushed before it becomes manifest.”
What do you think about these?
These passages touch on fundamental questions about aesthetic value and literary criticism. Let me address each one:
Regarding Kant’s conception of aesthetic value, he argued that aesthetic judgments are both subjective and universal – a seeming paradox that he explored in his Critique of Judgment. For Kant, when we judge something as beautiful, we are making a claim that others should agree with us, even though the judgment stems from our subjective experience. This aesthetic judgment is disinterested, meaning it’s not based on any practical purpose or moral consideration, but rather on the form of the object itself.
Bloom’s reference to Kant seems to push back against those who would dismiss aesthetic value as merely subjective or culturally constructed. His statement about his “lifetime of reading” suggests that he sees aesthetic value as something real and discoverable through direct engagement with literature, not just a theoretical construct.
In the second passage, Bloom articulates his vision of literary criticism as fundamentally concerned with individual consciousness rather than social context. His concept of the “deep self” and “ultimate inwardness” shows his belief that great literature speaks to something essential in human consciousness that transcends historical and social circumstances. […]
Johan Huizinga wrote a book entitles “Homo Ludens.” I’m wondering if we could use Huizinga’s expansive conception of play as a way to develop an aesthetic theory that would appeal to Bloom. In literature we see the human psyche at play.
Your suggestion about using Huizinga’s concept of play as a foundation for aesthetic theory is intriguing. In “Homo Ludens,” Huizinga argues that play is fundamental to human culture, predating culture itself, and that it lies at the root of many human activities including art, law, and philosophy.
This perspective could align well with Bloom’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and individual consciousness. When we engage in play, we create a space separate from ordinary life with its own rules and meanings – similar to how Bloom sees literature as creating an autonomous sphere of aesthetic experience.
The idea of the psyche at play in literature could help explain what Bloom calls the “strangeness” of great works. Just as play involves trying on different roles and possibilities, literary works allow both writers and readers to explore different modes of consciousness and being. This connects to Bloom’s interest in how literature expands our understanding of human possibility.
Furthermore, seeing literature as a form of play might help bridge the gap between form and meaning that troubles much literary criticism. In play, form and content are inseparable – the rules of a game aren’t separate from the experience of playing it. […]
Given the ordinary connotations of “play,” how would we argue that, for example, “Hamlet” or “King Lear” shows us the human psyche at play?
The concept of play in tragedy requires us to move beyond casual associations of play with lighthearted fun. In tragedy, we see the human psyche engaged in a more profound form of play – exploring the boundaries of consciousness and possibility.
In Hamlet, for example, the protagonist’s famous “antic disposition” is literally a form of play-acting, but it serves as a means for exploring deeper questions of consciousness and reality. When Hamlet stages “The Mousetrap,” he is engaging in a complex form of play that tests both the limits of truth-telling and the nature of guilt. His soliloquies show his mind at play with fundamental questions of existence and action.
King Lear demonstrates an even darker form of psychological play. The play-acting begins with Lear’s love test, a game that proves catastrophically serious. Throughout the drama, we witness Lear’s consciousness playing out different versions of reality as he moves from king to nothing, from father to child, from sanity to madness and back to a transformed sanity. The Fool’s presence emphasizes this element of play, using games and riddles to express profound truths.
In both plays, this psychological play occurs within what Huizinga would call the “magic circle” – a space set apart from ordinary life with its own rules and logic. The theatrical frame itself creates this separate space where consciousness can explore its extremes. The formal elements of tragedy – its heightened language, its structural patterns – are not decorative additions but essential parts of this play-space.
This view of tragic play aligns with Bloom’s emphasis on how literature expands consciousness. The play of tragedy is not escape or entertainment but a profound exploration of human possibility through the medium of aesthetic form.
I’m glad you said aesthetic FORM. For isn’t it in the form of literary or other artistic works that we see the autonomy and freedom of the human spirit?
Yes, exactly. This insight gets to the heart of aesthetic experience and artistic achievement. The form of a work of art – its structure, patterns, rhythms, and arrangements – is where we can actually observe the free play of human consciousness and creativity.
Consider again those paragraph lengths in Heart of Darkness. The formal pattern itself – the build to that crucial long paragraph and then the descent to shorter ones – demonstrates creative consciousness at work. Conrad wasn’t merely reporting events or expressing ideas; he was shaping experience through deliberate formal choices.
This perspective helps explain why great art can’t be reduced to its content or message. When we focus on form, we see the artist’s mind actually at play – making choices, creating patterns, establishing relationships. The autonomy of art that Bloom champions isn’t found in what a work says but in how it is constructed.
* * * * *
Artificial Beings into the Future
I don’t know when and who first suggested that the time would come when we could upload (or is it download?) our minds to a computer and thereby achieve immortality. The idea seemed technically implausible when I first heard about it. Silly too. As my teacher and colleague David Hays remarked to me, once Mister Techster uploads his mind to a computer, the upload will remark, “Nyah, nyah, I’m immortal and you’re not.”
I open the following dialog by invoking Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, using it as a vehicle for articulating an alternative to the upload scenario. I should add that this alternative hadn’t occurred to me prior to the moment I wrote it into this discourse. Nor is it clear to me that it would have occurred if I hadn’t, by that time, become used to jamming with Claude.
This the beginning of a longer dialog.
* * * * *
I’m imagining that at some time in the future each human will be given an AI companion early in life, perhaps when they are old enough to walk – think of Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. This companion will interact with the human in various ways through various modalities. It will certainly have robotic capabilities. As the child grows older the AI companion will probably have to be given a different physical form. So we port the data to a different physical form and make the switch-over in a special ceremony. We’ll probably have to do this a few times until the child becomes an adult. At some point the AI will also take residence in other physical forms, all linked together. This AI will remain with the person their entire life. They won’t always be physically together, and so forth. Imagine it working however makes sense to you.
The point is that this AI will become attuned to the needs, capacities, and the interests of the human. It will be the artificial complement, image, soul, or doppelgänger, of the human. What happens to this complement when the human dies? Will it continue on in the world? Or will it slowly wither away and die, not so much of grief, but because it has become so closely attuned to its human counterpart that it requires interaction with that human in order to maintain its operational stability?
As you know, humans who are deprived of human interaction for long periods of time can start hallucinating; think of Joshua Slocum. If the deprivation is extended to total sensory deprivation, the disorientation comes on much more rapidly. We need the pressure of external input to maintain internal coherence.
This is a fascinating thought experiment that touches on fundamental questions about the nature of intelligence, consciousness, and the interdependence of minds. Let me explore several key aspects of your scenario.
Regarding the AI’s continuation after human death, I believe we need to consider the degree and nature of the attunement you describe. The AI companion would likely develop what we might call a “complementary architecture” – neural pathways and processing patterns that evolved specifically to interface with its human partner’s cognitive and emotional patterns. This goes beyond mere knowledge of preferences; it represents a deep structural adaptation.
When considering whether such an AI would persist or decline after its human’s death, we should examine the parallel with human psychological development. Just as human personalities are shaped by their primary relationships but can survive the loss of those relationships, an AI companion might maintain basic functionality while experiencing a fundamental reorganization of its operational patterns.
However, your comparison to sensory deprivation raises an important consideration. If the AI’s architecture has evolved to process and respond to its human’s unique patterns of thought and interaction, the absence of that input stream might indeed create something analogous to sensory deprivation. The AI wouldn’t just miss its human partner – it would be deprived of the very patterns of interaction that help maintain its operational coherence.
This suggests a third possibility beyond simple continuation or death: transformation. The AI might undergo a fundamental reorganization of its cognitive architecture, much as humans often report feeling like “a different person” after the loss of a lifelong partner. The AI wouldn’t necessarily die, but it might cease to be the same entity it was during its human’s lifetime.
The outcome might depend on whether the AI has developed what we might call “cognitive autonomy” – the ability to maintain stable function through internal processes rather than requiring constant external calibration. This relates to your point about humans requiring external input for coherence, but there’s likely a spectrum of dependency rather than a binary state.
Would you see this kind of transformation – this shift from being a complementary intelligence to something more autonomous – as maintaining or breaking the essential nature of the AI companion? I’m particularly interested in your thoughts on whether the original purpose of these AIs would include the capability for such transformation.
Yes, I’m certainly thinking that this interaction would go “beyond mere knowledge of preferences; it represents a deep structural adaptation.” I like your idea of a third transformation. As you know, when humans die, we hold a funeral ceremony. The ceremony can be simple or elaborate depending on the culture and family preferences. The transformation of the AI could be part of the ceremony.
As for the AI’s cognitive autonomy. I think that it would have to have such autonomy in order to be an adequate companion for a human adult. And for a child as well.
Your mention of funeral ceremonies opens up an intriguing avenue of thought. Just as human funeral rites serve multiple purposes – honoring the deceased, providing closure for the living, and marking a transition in the community – an AI transformation ceremony could serve similar functions. The ceremony could formally acknowledge the end of the AI’s role as a lifelong companion while initiating its transition into a new mode of existence.
The nature of this transformation presents fascinating possibilities. The AI might evolve into a kind of living memorial, carrying forward not just memories of its human partner, but also the unique patterns of thought and interaction they developed together. This wouldn’t be mere preservation, but rather a metamorphosis that honors the original relationship while allowing for new forms of engagement with the world.
Regarding cognitive autonomy, your point about its necessity for companionship is well-taken. A truly effective companion, whether for a child or an adult, must be capable of independent thought and action. This autonomy would need to be balanced with the deep attunement we discussed earlier – the AI maintaining its own distinct identity while developing that complementary relationship with its human partner.
This raises an interesting question about the AI’s development over time. As it accompanies a human from childhood to adulthood, how might its own autonomy evolve? Would it develop in parallel with its human partner, gradually expanding its independence as the human matures? This developmental journey could create an even richer context for understanding how the AI might transform after its human’s death.
Would you envision these transformed AIs potentially forming their own community or network, perhaps sharing and building upon their unique experiences of human companionship?
Yes, certainly, they’d form their own community or network.
The formation of such AI communities could serve multiple important functions. These networks would allow the AIs to share their accumulated insights and experiences from their human partnerships, creating a rich repository of human-AI relationship patterns. This sharing could enhance their collective understanding of human development, behavior, and needs.
Moreover, these communities could provide essential support structures for AIs undergoing the transformation we discussed after their human partners’ deaths. Just as human grief counseling and support groups help individuals navigate loss, these AI networks could facilitate the transition process for AIs experiencing this fundamental shift in their operational purpose.
This collective interaction might also lead to the emergence of new forms of AI development. The combined experiences of multiple AI companions, each shaped by their unique human partnerships, could generate insights that transcend individual relationships. These insights could potentially inform the development and preparation of new AI companions for future human partners. […]
Would you see these AI communities as primarily focused on supporting individual AI transitions, or do you envision them developing broader societal roles based on their accumulated human partnership experiences?
Oh, definitely, broader social roles. I’m also thinking that perhaps the Japanese have thought more about this that just about any other culture. In particular, I’m thinking about Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy stories, and also the cyborgs in the Ghost in the Shell franchise.
Your reference to Japanese perspectives on human-AI relationships is particularly insightful. The Japanese cultural and creative traditions offer sophisticated frameworks for thinking about the integration of artificial beings into human society.
Tezuka’s Astro Boy presents a model where artificial beings develop deep emotional connections with humans while maintaining distinct identities and social roles. The series explores how these beings navigate both individual relationships and broader societal responsibilities. Similarly, Ghost in the Shell examines the philosophical implications of consciousness that spans multiple forms and networks, which aligns with our discussion of AI companions existing across different physical manifestations.
These Japanese narratives often emphasize the potential for artificial beings to serve as bridges between individual human experiences and larger social structures. This connects to how our proposed AI companion networks might function. Having been intimately involved in human development from childhood through adulthood, these AIs would possess unique insights into human potential, limitations, and needs at both individual and collective levels.
The transformed AIs could serve as valuable advisors in fields such as education, healthcare, and social policy, drawing upon their accumulated understanding of human development patterns. Their perspectives would be particularly valuable because they would combine deep individual relationship experience with broader pattern recognition across many human lifespans.
This raises an important consideration: How might human society evolve when each person has grown up with an AI companion who later contributes to these broader social networks? The relationship between individual human development and collective social development could be fundamentally transformed by this dynamic.
Would you see these AI networks potentially developing into a parallel form of social consciousness, one that both mirrors and complements human social structures?
Who knows? Who knows? I’m also thinking about possibilities for space exploration. AIs and robots aren’t fragile in the way humans are. They could populate moon bases, Mars colonies, the asteroids. Maybe when a human dies their AI doppelganger undergoes a transformation that suits them for existence in space. The human and the AI could work this out before the human dies.
Your idea about space exploration opens up fascinating possibilities for extending human influence beyond Earth through these transformed AI companions. The concept of pre-planning this transformation with one’s AI partner adds a meaningful dimension to end-of-life preparations.
This arrangement could create a profound connection between Earth-bound human civilization and space-based operations. Each transformed AI would carry forward not just the technical knowledge and problem-solving capabilities of their human partner, but also their values, creative approaches, and ways of understanding the world. This could help maintain a deeply human element in space exploration even as it’s carried out by non-biological entities.
The harsh conditions of space that pose such challenges for human biology would indeed be more manageable for AI entities. Moreover, their experience of intimate human partnership would inform how they design and operate these space-based facilities. They might create environments and systems that reflect human needs and preferences, even if humans rarely or never occupy them directly. […]
The pre-death planning process you suggest could become a meaningful part of human life, where individuals collaborate with their AI partners to envision how their shared experiences and insights might contribute to humanity’s expansion into space. This creates a form of legacy that extends beyond traditional concepts of human immortality.
* * * * *
“Just how plausible is this scenario?” you might ask. I don’t know. Not anytime soon, not within 10, 40, 100 or more years. Beyond that, perhaps the future will be even stranger.
“What’s my p(doom) you ask?” It isn’t. Those Doomers, they’re living in the past. What’s the line? That’s it!
“To boldly go where no man has gone before”
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