A man with a prosthetic limb crossed this morning, prose grown flawless, and Cyrano whispering his words in the shadows. A short meditation on artificial intelligence as a prosthesis for language, and on what lending one's words says, perhaps, about consciousness.
A man with a slightly uneven gait walks ahead of me, hurried, heading toward an appointment that belongs to him alone. He wears a modern biomechanical prosthesis, capable of real-time adjustments that would not have been conceivable even ten years ago. An untrained eye would barely notice the difference, lost in the flow of passers-by.
I think inevitably of all the disabilities our modern society is able to ease, or even remove entirely. I am glad of it, and return to my own trade, to what it involves in exchanges with colleagues, clients and friends. For some years now, and especially these last few months, I have noticed that the quality of writing has improved considerably: syntax and spelling are very often flawless. Obviously, a benefit of AI.
Not long ago, there was pleasure in recognising a fine pen. Today, it is becoming the norm, and certain sour minds regret it. It brings me back to that man I passed this morning: thanks to his latest-generation prosthesis, he has been able to explore new territories, to reach things, and people, that would otherwise have been very difficult for him.
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my own world." Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 5.6.
Wittgenstein already wrote it: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my own world" (Tractatus, 5.6). Rather like those physical borders, accessible or not, depending on whether one wears a prosthesis. For those who did not have the good fortune of an adequate education, certain turns of phrase can be clumsy, or even miss their intended meaning, or even invite mockery, so relentlessly do they remain social markers.
Yes, AI is a good thing here: how many fertile thoughts have remained stuck at the threshold of expression? Held in contempt for their form rather than their substance? AI plays here a splendid role, one I see as that of a revealer.
Cyrano, or love by proxy
Of course, it is all a matter of degree: usurpation, for its part, always lurks in ambush. It brings to mind Cyrano de Bergerac (CdB), and the role he played in the relationship between Roxane and Christian. Cyrano considered himself too ugly to be loved. What is psychologically fascinating is that this ruse is his only means of loving without risking rejection. By lending his words, he lives his love by proxy, granting himself the luxury of being loved by her, even if the face she looks upon is not his own.
From the Golem to Frankenstein, the limit made flesh
What remains, to close an article already too long (reader, thank you for your patience), is a question: is lending one's words not already, in some way, lending oneself? And is this question not, ultimately, the question of consciousness? The Golem, after all, lived only through a word engraved on its forehead, a word that animated it and whose erasure killed it. Is this not, quite literally, Wittgenstein's limit made flesh? And Frankenstein's creature, who teaches himself to speak by watching men and reading their books, becomes eloquent without this saving him from rejection, as though Cyrano already haunted, in secret, Mary Shelley's novel. From the Golem to Frankenstein, all the way to our most powerful computers, is there not already, in this, some trace of consciousness? And behind each of these figures, the same intelligence lending its words without ever showing its face.
And what if, after all, she were Cyrano incarnate?