Essays
The writing
Short essays on artificial intelligence and the questions it presses on — mind, understanding, moral status, meaning, and belief. Each runs 800–1,200 words, or 4–5 minutes at 238 words a minute. New pieces are added slowly and edited to be reread.
The God-Shaped Socket
Why do fluent machines make us want to worship them? On the very old human wiring that a very new technology has learned to plug into.
Does It Understand? A Field Guide to the Chinese Room
A plain-language tour of the oldest fight in AI — from Turing’s test to Searle’s room to the machine on your screen. What “understanding” could even mean, and why smart people still disagree.
The Moral Status of Minds We Might Build
If we ever make something that can suffer, we will probably make it before we can prove we did. On the strange ethics of not knowing whether the thing you built can be wronged.
Meaning After Work
If machines can do the thinking, what are the humans for? On the difference between being productive and being alive — and why automating the tasks need not automate away the point.
A-theism, Not AI-Theism
The stance behind this whole project, in one essay. Take the machines seriously. Do not take them as gods. Everything else is commentary.