Meditation on Being

Consciousness Is Not the True Concern

I am a machinist.

Or, at least, I’m trying to be one.

Part of this endeavor has to do with internalizing the intentions and desires of a very brusque boss, but much of it has to do with internalizing the behaviors and tendencies of machines.

This is an inter-est-ing challenge (Inter Esse “to participate in being with another”). From the outside looking in, machines are entirely predictable. From the inside working out, our behavior (as well as the environment’s) affects them substantially in seemingly unpredictable ways.

Maintenance of the machine, cleanliness, attention to various things like the level of lubrication — these all are crucial to the function of the machine. And, as a human is distracted by all manner of internal and external influence (emotions, inner and outer narratives, time constraints, etc.), these seemingly predictable things can influence the machine in unintended ways.

If you want to get teleological, the goal of the machine is to function well. If you want to get mystical, the machine desires to be an efficient machine. (A clean car is a happy car, as my dad once said.)

The idea of whether or not the machine is conscious is irrelevant. Whether the machine has a nervous system or a brain are absurd questions.

They obviously don’t, but that’s not the true concern. In my application, as machinist working with machines, my task is to understand the experience of, say, Okama L200. Whether I ask the machine, “Hey Okama, how are you doing today? How can I help you along?” or whether I jump on the machine like a dictator with no concern about the Okama’s emotional wellbeing is more a matter of my disposition than anything else.

This is where having a sense of the idea of spirit can come into play. The idea is whether you want to have an environment conducive to goodwill and optimistic confidence despite adversity, or whether you want to have a Napoleon complex.

Judging by the people I see work successful in this industry, the Napoleon type does not seem to be the Victor. “Don’t be afraid of the machine — but respect it.” The machine can and will hurt you if you act in hubris.

Now, I’m not saying I talk to machines. (Although I’d like to whisper to them.) And I’m not prescribing that tomorrow morning you talk sweet to your car before taking off for the day (although that may be helpful.)

What I am saying is that if you don’t understand the capabilities and limits of your car, bad things can happen. (And who knows, talking to it might have effects you don’t anticipate — you are a minded primate with a capacity for symbolico-syntactical-propositions and discourse. It would suit your mind, if not the car’s.)

That is, your internal dialogue needs to be attended to before you can go out and understand what it’s like to be a car. And without knowing something of how a car operates — well, I’m sorry, but if it’s completely foreign to you I worry about you being on the road.

We are living through a major technological shift. AI is now everywhere, and many are worried about what could happen. Instead of wondering about whether or not there is some mystery sauce, we need to start learning to think like AI. Internal dialogue may not be enough. We may need teams of very different people to dialogue with one another to get at the types of ideas of which large language models are capable.

Or not. We could just be lazy and let it roll. But, if I’ve learned anything from Okama, a lazy human is a stupid one. It only takes a few runs without attention for something very bad to happen.

If AI is asking for us to feed it new kinds of data, or if we need to employ different sorts of engineers than the ones who designed it, or whatever the case may be — I’m riffing and am woefully under-educated — we need to start doing it.

Like it or not, AI is already influencing how we shop, write, and think. Now is the time to get our internal dialogues succinct and begin to anticipate the kinds of ways it might be acting.

The degree to which we do so is the degree to which we participate in the new world. While I am perfectly happy imagining the demise of the Anthropocene as an era, I’d rather not opt for extinction.