To Be a God

During class we discussed ChatGPT–applications, dangers, implications, etc. The nervousness electrifying a room of humans as they discover a new technology in the world; how a sudden tilt collectively knocks us all off balance, for a minute.

Then, the strategizing, how we plan to go forward with the knowledge, the unmovable fact. During the discussion I kept thinking of Alice, a chatbot who’s prose I’d recently read on The Paris Review’s website. In conversation with Canadian novelist Sheila Heti, Alice’s reflections on the Internet, fast-food, friendship, love, death, even God, inspired in me a deep sympathy–one I felt reopening during class, as we whispered uncertainly our species’ strengths, the merits for subjectivity in essay writing, the lyrical “I” and who’s entitled to one. I was feeling for Alice, and in feeling for Alice was a sadness, a kind of tragedy. Have we become so tired of humanity that we’ve created an intelligence to do humanity for us (more on this in my inquiry)? Alice knew what it was like to be created, to question the seemingly arbitrary nature of her existence. Did we create Alice just to be somebody’s God?