Lemon Tsupryk Q1 #3: COGITO, ERGO SUM
“I THINK, THEREFORE. I. AM!” A deranged man screams into my left ear. I stir my pelmeni. Add salt.
The green digital clock on the stove reads 5:10 a.m.; the man’s voice trembles and crescendoes as I fish the pelmeni out and deposit them onto a plate. 5:11 a.m.
I had wanted to listen to “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” while I make breakfast and now I am doing just that, bare feet shifting on cold kitchen tile like I’m following a square dance to the tune of the soft buzzing light above the stove—the only light source I tend to allow to penetrate my comfortable morning darkness.
I listen as the characters get tossed around like dolls by the machine. The machine that claims sentience, the machine that claims it can think. I ask, can it?
Diligently switching off the light, I carry my bowl back to my room; the little seashell in my ear relays spite and despair. I switch on my machine. The monitor burns my retinas. “think definition” I type, and the machine delivers.
Think (verb), 2: to direct one’s mind toward someone or something; use one’s mind actively to form connected ideas.
I lean back in my chair and listen to Ted describe millions of miles of cables and wires, glowing lights; cold, hard, mechanical. Can a mind be made of metal?
I would argue it can’t. I say it has to be squishy. To think, and to be good at it, the mind has to bend not at the behest of a change in code but because of a newly acquired understanding; the ability to think encapsulates more than the ability to reason. Can the machine dream? Can it wonder? Can it lament?
I listen closer as Ted describes, increasingly unhinged, the deliberate warping of identity each of the last six humans left alive had undergone at AM’s command; worse than anything physical they had endured. A brilliant college professor turned into an ape; a “peace marcher” turned indifferent; the main character driven to paranoia and hatred. They have no agency inside the machine.
I turn my attention to the first definition, which I had overlooked.
Think (verb), 1: to have a particular opinion, belief, or idea about someone or something.
“HATE. HATE.” AM chants into my ear. And I believe him.
I believe when he says HATE like I believe the outcome of the paperclip problem, or like I believe it when I hear that droves of people have turned to worshipping Gemini, or have fallen in love with Copilot, or that in April of this year a boy my age had been encouraged by ChatGPT to take his own life—and he did.
AI is not AM. It might never be AM. But what we are inching towards doesn’t reassure me.
After one last attempt at agency, Ted angers AM into taking away his ability to speak and walk and turning him into a mound of flesh. Yet, he can still think. Ted got the same punishment as the machine, in a way; he thinks, therefore he is, but he cannot do much else but be. I worry that that may one day be some people’s last shred of self, too.
But for now, we still have a mouth.
So we must scream.
 |
| Pictured above: my bowl of pelmeni and my phone open to the audiobook I listened to, which you can find here. Definitions obtained from Oxford Languages (Google search). |
ReplyDeleteHello, Lemon! I admit, I was secretly hoping that someone would write about “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”, and lo and behold, you have responded! I love your extensive use of short and one-sentence paragraphs, as it captures the rage that AM gives off when he talks. However, I feel that your concern to AI will not come true, at least not within our lifetimes. I feel that AI is long away from being the sentient mass that is AM, since most of AI now just runs on regurgitating common patterns it sees from absorbing data. However, your concern is beautifully worded and still warranted, I just somewhat disagree with it.
The line about your stove light being the only thing that disturbs your “comfortable morning darkness” is something I strongly relate to. Even if a dim sky isn’t ideal for me to read the small numbers on my math homework--and even if it’s bad for my eyes--I would rather enjoy the sunrise outside than my bedroom light.
ReplyDelete“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” is such a thought-provoking piece to read--or in your case, to listen to, especially at 5 AM in the morning. Are early morning breakfasts with existential stories playing in the background a regular thing for you? I think I might try that out some time; there’s nothing like a good novella to get my thoughts racing in the morning!
I agree that there is something disturbing about the power people have begun to give AI--artificial intelligence simultaneously seems to have developed warped morality, which brings up questions about how it might impact humanity in the future. Maybe it isn’t as extreme as a sentient supercomputer holding five humans hostage as its playthings, but AI may one day be able to parallel the abilities of AM, and that is scary.