AI can think, but it can’t feel. Explore the emotions and wonder that set us apart as deeply human.
AI. These are the initials we are hearing everywhere. The dreaded villain of every creator’s heart, and the newest acquisition in our professional spheres. It is hard not to feel like the increase of Artificial Intelligence is not marking some end of days, some final call of humanity.
We question so much of what AI can do. Yet perhaps we should remind ourselves of the things it cannot do. The world is overwhelming; we need to step back and, for lack of a better phrase, stop and smell the roses. There are so many beautiful feelings and emotions that can only be realised and experienced by those with beating hearts, those devoid of artificiality.
1. Appreciating Art: The Emotional Experience of Creation
Yes, controversy has struck about the ethics of AI ‘creating’ art, because as we know, it does very little of creating. Visiting an art gallery, whether a small local gallery or the Louvre Museum in Paris, offers an entirely human experience. To feel understood, or questioned, or challenged; to experience the flurry of emotions that are evoked from a piece of art, is a feeling that can barely be codified, let alone replicated.
Art in any era, be it Baroque or Modernist, reflects the ideas of a certain time, exploring a feeling or frustration, that later stirs something deep within its viewer. Often, we do not even know how we feel until we are forced to face it. Artificial Intelligence could, of course, list to you each of the Impressionists who showed at each exhibition, but it could not feel what it is to stand before a work by Claude Monet and marvel at the way he captures the light.
2. Watching the Start and End of the Day
We may not have understood it when we were younger, but the simplicity of happiness cannot be overstated. To live and see the day begin and end, watching the sun rise and fall, is a marvel that has been noted across almost all of time. Whatever you believe in, whether you are religious or not, you cannot deny the magic of the sunrise and sunset. It is a phenomenon we can try and capture, with a picture, a painting, or even words, but to experience it is something different entirely.
To feel the light on your skin, the warmth, as you’re caught in the so-called ‘golden hour’, is the closest many will get to magic. No matter the state of the world or the newest doomsday news story, at least we can put our phones down and revel in the fact that the sun will rise and set again, just like always.
3. Walking Just for the Sake of Walking
There is a reason so many of the great writers walked. It allowed solitude, fresh air, and a constant stream of observations. When one walks just to walk, we are pleasantly delighted by what we encounters. A little dog dressed in a winter coat, a couple sharing coffee in a newly opened coffee shop, a tree flowering with the briefly lasting cherry blossoms.
Exercise is important, but walking is almost more than that. It is a reminder to slow down, it is a purposeful but soft stray from our fast and information-filled lives. The psychological benefits are numerous; it can reduce the likelihood of depression and anxiety, and allows us to feel part of a community without the pressure of contact. Artificial Intelligence can read the testaments about walking, about the great pilgrimages, or your daily stroll around the neighbourhood, but it cannot understand the feeling.
4. The Ability to Savour: Living Beyond Algorithms
We have talked of the importance of simplicity, but this comes hand in hand with the capacity to savour. A taste, a feeling, a moment – humans were born to savour. Yes, we can be told that hot chocolate in mid-winter tastes especially good, but we cannot know it unless we test its truth—until we feel the slightly bitter sweetness of real cocoa fill our tongue as the world around us is held in frost.
Humans hold onto moments. We remember how it feels to hold someone’s eyes in a crowded room, how soon loneliness can be cured in savouring somebody else. To read, to know, is not the same as to experience. AI was made as a tool, but humans were designed to live, often without even knowing what our ‘real’ or ‘true’ purpose is, if there even is one. And that is something no man-made tool can ever truly understand.
The Tools We Create — and the Souls We Keep
Yes, Artificial Intelligence is capable of achieving certain tasks, sometimes quite phenomenally, but it is not a replacement, just a tool. In a world bent on selling us that everything is at its end, that technology is superseding us slowly, remember to ask yourself this: what is it that makes you human, and can it really be experienced, or can it merely be understood?
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Vincent Phan
Vincent is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 1000 Libraries Magazine. He is a Paris-born ex-corporate turned bookseller and philosopher, on a global mission to spread the joy of physical books in our age of digital technology.
