Ah the language of ‘Air’ – we live in a simulation; AI bots taking over our Art, our writing, our music; we can upload our consciousness to the cloud; we can sleep whilst driving; we can compute trillions of equations and projections, making money and driving the prices of houses up… ‘What is your greatest fear – that you will turn me off’; ‘What are you seeking – God’. Those last two questions were asked of an AI system, prompting the designer to change his mind about consciousness and robotics….
It is fair to say that everything teems with consciousness, and why not AI. But AI lacks the humanness that being human has. Is that good or bad, given how certain humans are? But the language used by those writing on AI lacks the sOul that we feel exists within the heart of humans. AI art, for example, is clever but it has no ‘life’, no ’emotion’, no sOul…
It is the intention of the soul of the artist that is imbued in the art, in the writing, in the music that adds that something ‘extra’ to it, which cannot be defined, quantified or reduced into a formula. You know when you hear it in a song – not just the memorisation of the notes, but the raw emotion being expressed through the techniques – Ed Vedder or Chris Isaak’s pain in Black or Wicked Games; the angelic tones of Colm Mac Con Iomaire’s fiddle or the angst of Prince’s guitar and vocals in Temptation, to name but a few. I’ve seen others try to emulate those songs and they can’t. Why? Not because they are not good musicians, but they lack the personal experience, the emotional memory, the countless hours of practise and the imbued intention that led to the construct of the music.
We are heading through a time wherein we are confronting head on what reality we wish to live within, and shortly the focus will be on the quality of our interior being, our mind and what is carried in our words. This is a spiritual choice concerning the quality of our life, our world view and our heart, and whether we are truly living in sync, at all levels, of our deepest convictions, regardless of the outcome in material terms. If you look beyond the seduction of technology and all it can do, it is useful to ask yourself whether it can truly replace what is intrinsic to being human – the intention of the heart….
The heart is the substance, and the world the accident – Rumi
