Exhalation: Stories

As Donald Knuth put it: “Ai has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do without thinking …”

What do we have left that is ours and ours alone? Sensorimotor skills that are all but automatic, yes. Consciousness, yes. Emotions. Instinct. Appetites, impulses and dr... See more

Let me answer your implicit complaint: “The Turing Test will be eventually passed.” That’s right (in some settings, Turing’s original prediction has been already achieved), but the truth is that any human relationship — even digital ones, even those not especially intimate like the ones between writers and readers (I love you, though) — requires mu... See more

With the emerging ability to improve the embodied experience for all sentient beings, our species is entering a painful adolescent phase. We must realize it is no longer acceptable to coast along on values and purpose inherited from the past, without needing to exercise agency and responsibility to decide what we will work toward. We have to accept... See more

We’re not just bits of intelligence bouncing through the world. We have complicated emotions, and nuanced and unspoken social hierarchies. We act irrationally and pursue goals that may not be in our best interests. We don’t exist within the clean confines of an operating system or a laboratory—we act and react in a highly variable world. Creating a... See more