Machines of Introspection
AI isn't the destination. It's the vehicle driving our next great introspective journey.
Machines are here to stay. That’s the reality. And yet, even if we’re so close than ever to infinite abundance, we feel like we’re missing an important piece in that reality that we call ours.
I’m slowly realising something.
To explain it, I’ll use an example from everyday life.
When you’re driving a car, I bet that sometimes your mind starts wondering and you forget that you’re actually driving.
In that moment, somehow you know that you’re driving, but your thoughts are entirely absorbed in a series of events, faces, situations that quickly chase each other, almost defeating the basic rules of space and time.
In that moment you find spontaneous connections between elements and old memories. Just before stopping at a traffic light or because the young guy on a bike forgot to have basic survival instincts.
I believe the same is happening now with AI.
First of all, I feel like we went from the passenger seat to the driver seat.
Which is a massive improvement.
With social media algorithms, we were stuck in a passive loop of attention-grabbing engineering. Addictive content with massive noise and very scarce signal.
We were sitting in the passenger seat, scrolling the window where everything lasted only a few instants before disappearing after a corner, a truck, a bridge.
While the argument about generative AI slop is true, I think that we’re driving now.
Who’s “we”?
The builders, the creators, the practical dreamers.
We’re in the driving seat of complex and mysterious machines running on condensed world knowledge.
As every driver, we need to be careful.
It’s easy to press down on the accelerator. It’s difficult to break.
I’ll leave all the ethical, moral and societal aspects for another conversation.
This conversation is about the “magic” happening while driving the machines.
About what happens in that moment when machines allow us to navigate the horizon of possibilities.
About what happens when we forget we’re driving.
You see now what I mean.
The machines are lifting the heavy load of complexity.
Their engines roar powerfully - or more recently, silently - while we consume the distance between two points.
So, we don’t need to think anymore about all the aspects of the journey.
We just need to focus on the destination.
Yes, car maintenance and safety are important (I’m personally involved in building responsible AI).
But they’re a consequence of accepting to drive.
They’re not the reason behind the journey.
This leaves us with the most relevant question: why?
Why this journey? Why that destination?
What’s its meaning?
Machines focus on implementative action.
We, as humans, can finally focus on meaning.
Which is far from easy, because it forces us to explore new areas of our consciousness that we’ve never seen or that we forgot about.
While the powerful engines move us around in our daily journeys, we’re immersed in another introspective journey about us.
I don’t think we need to reinvent new ways of seeing ourselves.
We need to rediscover something deeply rooted in us, hidden by layers of human abstractions, our condensation on the windscreen.
I believe we’re called to discover again what being human really means.
Someone might say a new spiritual awakening, someone might link physical and non-physical worlds, someone might see the invisible thread between body, mind and consciousness.
I don’t have clear answers.
And I don’t want to rely on pre-fabricated FAQs.
I have questions. Lots of questions about us.
Isn’t that absurd?
A machine might help us in finding the true meaning(s) of what being alive is about.
I love absurdity because it stimulates the search for clarity.
Enjoy your journey.