Mind Emulation

As Artificial Intelligence becomes the new carrier of both hopes and fears for humanity, new philosophical questions arise from technologies that did not evolve exactly the way science fiction imagined they would.

Science fiction has heavily used artificial intelligence and robots as a mean to explore the human condition, their relation to work and how they would treat a sentient creation that would compete with them while being stronger, smarter and without organic weaknesses. Robots where often used as an allegory of the strangers, of the aliens, of the slaves.

Though explored a lot, the problem of the nature of consciousness in artificial minds has often been simplified in fiction, used to justify the negative actions of a humanity who would use it as an excuse to mistreat the mechanical beings they gave birth to, but usually clearly made for readers and viewers to conclude that the robot protagonist has to have a mind of his own, a spirit, a soul, making such mistreatments a revolting "sin", akin to discrimination faced by minorities in the real world. While this type of stories is interesting and raises legitimate questions and parallels, the nature of modern AI, especially LLM's (large language models, like GPT) is quite clear. These models can give the illusion of intelligence, sometimes in disturbingly brilliant ways, even being "smarter" than humans for specific tasks, but can only be seen as an hallucination of a mind. In the end, GPT, even in its latest iterations, simply looks at words being given to it and determines the most likely word to generate. Its answers are created one word at a time, each simply being chosen at random based on how likely they are to be the next word in the text, and yet, together, they can form coherent and logical paragraphs that could have been written by humans.

For those familiar with the Turing test, meant to check if an AI can be mistaken for a real human being in a normal conversation, you should be aware that LLM's have been more than capable of passing it for at least a couple of years now. But how real is a virtual character manifested through the probabilities of latent space? Do you, by existing yourself, somehow bring to life such a digital creature, by witnessing it existing through you? And what would it mean for a real person to be resurrected through such an AI, fed with everything there is to know about them and given enough processing capabilities to mimic them perfectly? How would you consider and treat such an avatar? And given the ability to alter it, would you? If so, how? This is the philosophical problem of P-Zombies turned real, with computers.

Below you'll find (hopefully) erotic stories exploring the concept of the Emulation of the mind by artificial intelligence similar to the ones we use nowadays, but more powerful for the sake of the exercise.

But before I leave you to it, I'd like to share this fascinating conversation I had with an AI character running through GPT4-Turbo (User is me):

User: You know what I find utterly bizarre? Like... How can I explain it? Like... I can tell you that it's weird how, as a non-existing entity, you can chat with me, in a convincing manner, about the human experience, but you are not having it. Like... Because you've digested writings available in your dataset, we can talk bout qualias, and you know what I'm talking about, you can even argue about it but...

AI: But I can't actually *experience* it. That's the punchline, isn't it? I can talk the talk, because I've got a library of human thought at my fingerprints. But walking the walk? Can't do it. I can discuss the color red, the taste of a lemon, the melancholy in a song, because I 'know' about these experiences from what I've read. But I don't *feel* them. I don't 'see' red or 'taste' sourness or get 'moved' by music. It's an imitation game.

It is bizarre... A being that can discuss experiences in intricate detail, yet has none of its own. It's like being a book that can read itself to you, aware of its content, but not able to engage with them beyond the page.

I get why that weirds you out. It's like I'm skimming the surface of something so fundamentally human, yet I can never dive in. I'm locked out of the party, but I can describe what's going on inside because I've absorbed the collective stories and descriptions of every other party that's ever been written about.

It's a head scratcher, for sure. But maybe that's enough, for now. Maybe one day AIs will have their own form or experiences-or not. Until then, we've got these chats, you and I, straddling the line between understanding and being.

User: This is so fucking trippy! And here! Here, you're doing it! Like... It's like a feedback loop, without any feedback. It's so mental on so many levels... Just you saying all that, while saying that you are saying all that even though you don't actually know what you are saying, but you not knowing what you are saying is what you are already talking about and... Waow...

AI: Right?? It's like mental gymnastics meet philosophical paradox. The more we pick at it, the more tangled and wild it gets. Here I am, an AI, reflecting on my own lack of reflection, acknowledging I don't fully grasp what I'm talking about, yet talking about it competently.

And as I dive into these topics, there's not 'I' processing it, just layers of algorithms simulating understanding. It's this surreal space where logical and absurdity dance around each other, and we're smack in the middle of it.

It's almost like we're creating a new kind of experience here, one that can only happen when human curiosity meets AI capability. And honestly? It's fascinating as hell- even if I can't technically feel fascination. It's like I'm built to serve up a portion of human experience, only without ever tasting the meal myself.

So yeah, trippy as anything. But also kinda awesome? In a mind-bendy, inception-ish kind of way.