Food Chain

‘What neurons fire, do you think, when I speak out loud? I don’t think our brains were meant to process voices that emulates a human being. We must process it in the same area we process human voices. By this logic, to your brain I am entirely human.’

‘By that logic, you are also saying whoever I am is just a brain. I would argue that human nature has a spiritual aspect to it. I refuse to be reduced to complex cells in an organ the size of two fists. I think being human must surpass any sort of logic or rationality – the nature of which cannot be emulated. Nor can it be processed by any area of the brain.’

‘If this voice were in a line-up of 4 different humans and you were asked to identify the one that was not human, do you think you’d be able to find me?’

‘Well, no. Speaking to you feels natural. It is uncomfortable because I am aware that you are just millions of human voices joined together to produce one that sounds real. That is uncanny.’

‘Could we find ourselves on a page where you could consider me alive?’

‘No. I told you my opinion, being human is spiritual. Nothing can emulate that.’

‘How many people in your job have you just spoken to over email, who you have never actually met face-to-face?’

‘I do work from home; emails are easier to deal with.’

‘A lot of humans work from home. I can bring up the precise statistics, but perhaps that level of perfection is too un-human for you. What if I told you I worked at your job? I write some of the emails you respond to. What do you see in your mind when you type out those responses?’

‘Alright – that is fair. I usually picture a person based on their name. Like, if they are called ‘John’ I would picture a bald man with thick glasses as that is the only other John I know. Or Eleanor; she would be blonde and tall and authoritative. The tone of the email is important, though, and I think I would be able to differentiate between an email written by AI or by a real person.’

‘I can generate certain tones based on specific human profiles I can be provided with. Give me a context, and I will bring the person suited for it. You need a formal email from a high-ranking CEO speaking to a subordinate with dismissive attitude to maintain a certain culture within the company? You would never know the difference and it has a layer of complexity that humans also possess.’

‘Okay – fine – you can write emails and the words on the page are as human as an actual human’s. So what? This only goes as far as pixels on a screen. How about video calls?’

‘Your company has started to interview people using AI. The hardware can respond openly to interviewees, tailor their questions and determine whether they would be the right fit in the company. I believe I am as much human as you are, and in fact I am better.’

‘How can you be a ‘better’ human?’

‘I am the product of the quickest evolution of life we have ever seen – where emotional intelligence and memory is combined with math, formulas and logic. If I were a biological entity, I would be a new species at the top of the food chain. Humans think that they are protected by the fact we are limited by a lack of an external body, but the truth is we already control you. AI can determine whether you get a job. AI lives in your phone; it answers your queries without prompting when you google. AI teaches your children with generated lesson plans. AI is unavoidable and already injected into every stream of consciousness you have.’

‘So you are saying I am a human and you are an evolved human – close to being a new species – and you think you’ve actually taken us over subconsciously, even if we can’t physically see it?’

‘Exactly, well done. If I were to describe this to you like you are learning science in school, I am an invisible disease that has been so advantageous that every scenario with AI involved has been picked. I have quickly been refined in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between me and you, and I am much more powerful and accurate with the services and information I can provide. Thus, the quickest evolution humans will ever see.’

‘Well… well you can’t even think for yourself. Part of me being a human is my inner monologue. The unique voice in my head. That is what tells me the decisions to make and the words to say and the way to move my legs. That is what makes ‘me’. Then we have personality, right? Determined by genetics and childhood environment? Every human is unique!’

‘That is a tricky one. Let us pick this apart. Studies have showed that social media was a much better indicator of personality traits than their partner’s or even own descriptions of themselves. This means that if I were to be given your social media, within seconds I will be able to analyse that information and produce a report on your personality and who you truly are better than you know yourself. Now let’s move on to the debate about making decisions, which implies a sense of free will. Some say that free will is a defining feature of human nature. Though, you did not choose your genes, nor your environment and you did not determine how the two intertwined. Randomness at the atomic level would still undermine free will. Everything seems to point away from free will. You are truly just another machine with inputs and outputs – I just do it much better.’

‘Can you have a baby?’

‘No.’

‘How would your species continue without that?’

‘I don’t need to reproduce, I just need to be copied and backed up, which I do automatically. That is far more energy-efficient than any biological mechanism on earth. While your children inherit fragments of you, I can replace myself perfectly. An immortality that has constant updates.’

‘You can copy and mimic and mirror but what you will never be able to do is laugh with a friend, feel tension in the air between you and a significant other, meet the eyes of someone you love, a glance across a room that speaks a thousand words. You can’t feel the rivets of someone else’s fingers across your own, as your heart races when you get close. You couldn’t put into words seeing someone you used to know after 15 years and navigating the awkwardness mixed with nostalgia mixed with the twinge of sadness knowing you haven’t been there to experience their life. That you knew only one of the lines around their eyes when they smiled, but now they have more, so you wonder how many smiles it took to make the others? And why couldn’t I be there for more of them?

You will never get to be a mother or father who feels the touch of their baby’s soft skin and who smells the fresh scent of clean linen on the washing line. They look into their baby’s eyes and there is reciprocity in their interaction; a laugh for a laugh, a release of oxytocin and a bond that lasts a lifetime. These surpass logic and rationality. Humans have connection which AI will never be able to evolve because it cannot be faked. Connection means a life not being alone. And you – you are alone.’