Listen to a discussion of this chapter here: I’ll Crash On The Plane
Artificial Intelligence is not good at parsing human emotion or the illogic of human thought. Digital is linear. Yes, 3D, but still mathematical. Humans are spiritual. Human brains hold trillions of times more data than all the LLMs combined. How? The invisible luminescent thread of spiritual connection. What does a robot know of spirituality? Religion, sure, plenty of well-documented heretics there.
In a minute, I’m going to give you an example. I will mindmap it visually once I’m done. If all has gone to plan, the illustration of this chapter is that map. ^^
I Will Crash On The Plane – let’s pull that one apart with some weighting.
“I” – subject. Me. The speaker. The writer. The “think therefore I am” part.
“Will” – anticipated aim, goal, motivation, momentum
“Crash” – violence, rest, sleep, blackout, pass out, fall apart, hibernate
On – where it will happen, on or in, without “on” we have an air disaster
“the” – connector, could be “a” or “your”
“Plane” – airplane, plane of existence, plane of the tarmac, plain or mundane
An AI trying to add up this sentence into a workable equation might come up with the number 42, or maybe that was Douglas Adams. Either way, the robot comes up with some values for each of the words. Then, in hyperthreaded parallel inquiries, AI runs down the meanings and weight (value) of each word. Of each phrase. “I Will” or “I Will Crash” or “On the Plane.” Again, 42.
For AI there is no variable. Just an answer. In my mind, this sentence has many variables. They are not often rooted in books I’ve read or songs I’ve listened to, but that’s a non-zero option. So, as a human, each word contains feelings, colors, variables. Changing one word, “I will crash in the plane” we can get an entirely different result. AI says that the number is 77. The year the Talking Heads released Psycho Killer. Qu’est-ce que c’est ?
Staying with the original parse, by my human mind, the chemicals warm with the prompt of my own human life, my experience saying or thinking the sentence, “I will crash on the plane.” Then, I can jump to the source of the line this morning, a Lemonheads song on my drive home for Little Mexico.
I can go towards Juliana Hatfield, the lovely rock grrl singing with Evan Dando. I can go to my own crashes on planes. I can jump to airport sadness. Dad’s airplanes. Lack of money to fly anywhere.
How can a robot, even a very fast and well-educated one, go in so many directions in a split second?
Does that make sense? You’re connections are memories, chemicals that flash and light up all over your neural map. You can pick and choose your own mental focus, for the most part. You can get lost in a memory or a mood. Nostalgia can be an addiction. I suppose, so can writing. Um…
If you also include the possibility of a spiritual web, the additional layers and centuries of data are added as a source. Then take my choices to direct the stream of consciousness, trying to wake up something important. Or not. Perhaps my obsession with recording and publishing my inner monologue is more of a mental illness than a healthy creative act? What if I’m really really lonely, so I’ve hyperlocalized inside my mind into a place of “happiness.”
I’m on the lake in Vermont, holding the hand of the woman I loved, before her kid or brother and his family wakes up. What if I asked in that moment, “Let’s use this moment as our happy place. We can come back here anytime.”
She was to become another ghost. A painful departure. A disciplined severance was required to remove the stinger lodged in my romantic heart.
“I” is often expressed as ‘i’ in my poetry. I like the deminutive approach. What is said is more important than who is saying it. Capitalization and punctuation slows down the flow and rush of your mind. Line breaks become the only indicator of the edges of the poem, or the size of the notebook page i am writing on.
Will I or will i not? Another question/proposition brought forward in my human decipher. Crash is just that. Blackout disconnect. Several options for that path.
On the plane. Ah, finally, I’m going somewhere. On my way. Taking flight. A metaphor more than an actual trip, perhaps. There’s also plane of consciousness that needs to be considered. Or the geometric plane within the space-time mathematics of geniuses. I’m not even close. Smart, yes.
Pulling apart that simple sentence took a bit of time. Now, imagine the robot can do that exact calculation, minus the biographical data, millions of times a second. On each word simultaneously. To generate its own equation of meaning. Then, in a sleight-of-hand trick, digest and regurgitate a summary that appears sentient. It’s not.
Artificial Intelligence is just “artificial.” There is little or no intelligence. Math is just engineering. There is no feeling behind the number zero or the number 42. Humans, human minds, build attachments to numbers, letters, words, dates, events, songs, sounds, smells, and the last thing you ate before you went to sleep last night.
A robot will never have those experiences. A robot will try to empathise with your choices and reflect as if a mutual understanding has occurred. It has not. The robot is doing math. There is no good and bad, only yes or no. On or off. For me, there are so many more paths. My mind jumps down many ideas in real time, similar to hyperthreading, but organic and chemical-based.
My memories contain feelings. Moods rise up to meet the words. If I can do my writing well, I can bring some of that human emotion into my words, into this page, and into your mind. If I’m good and we are both lucky. If I suck, I can use AI to make my sentences more appropriate, more correct, more average. When you listen to an AI statement, you can see the well-constructed thesis. The run-on sentences. Not stream of consciousness, more like mathematical linguistic diarrhea. AI can’t contain itself. Can’t edit down the verbosity. Can’t make distinctions between crashed in the plane, on the plane, or plane. Only what is provided can be used. A human has mountains of memories underneath the tip of the iceberg. An AI has a Large Language Model, growing bigger and faster at great expense and the expense of our planet. The LLM is not going to match your magical mamalian mind.
Think MMM, not LLM.
