Sharp shadows on the balcony tiles —
the sun doesn’t argue.
They rally against AI. It has no soul.
They say the writer’s soul lives in every syllable.
My crime is simple: I do not buy it.
I say AI can mimic anything we can write.
If not now, then soon (2).
They accuse me of being a worm gnawing at the roots of what makes us human.
I hear Pierre Brassau clearing his throat (1).
(1) If you do not know who Pierre Brassau is, read the post “Monkey Business.”
(2) Regarding AI
A roundworm has 302 neurons. A human has 86 billion. To a roundworm, everything a human does — art, planning, imagining the future — is simply beyond reach.
Now consider where AI is headed. If it keeps scaling at the rate it has been, we may eventually build something that stands above human intelligence the way we stand above that worm. Not “smarter” in the way we usually mean it — but operating at a completely different level of perception. Seeing patterns we can’t see. Navigating complexity we can’t fathom.
What we call wisdom — the kind that supposedly comes only from suffering and age — may simply be our slow, biological way of processing things that a sufficiently advanced AI would handle as a matter of routine. Not because it learned from us, but because it got good enough that the hard parts stopped being hard.
That’s what I mean when I say AI can mimic anything we write — and more. It’s not an insult. It’s just where this is going.
But yeah, there are actually loads of cases — you just have to look at it differently.
Rice and cows use us to breed. Without us they’d just be a tiny footnote in nature. With us they’ve multiplied way beyond what they could ever manage on their own.
Roundworms basically figured out how to make us useful to them. When humans stopped wandering around and started farming in one place, that was basically the jackpot for these little guys. Before toilets and sewage systems were a thing, people used human waste as fertilizer. So every time a farmer tended their crops, they were literally planting worm eggs back into the soil — and then the worms would end up back inside them. A perfect little cycle, and we set it up for them.
Some roundworms got so comfortable with humans that they basically moved in permanently and stopped bothering with any other host. Pinworms (a kind of roundworm) are a great example. They lay their eggs around your skin at night, which makes you itch. You scratch, touch some food, your kid — and just like that, you’ve spread their eggs around the house for them. You’re basically doing their farming.
Pretty clever for something with only 302 neurons, right?
302 neurons likely don’t provide enough excess computing power to become depressed and suicidal from eating carrion and literal shit, being a favorite subject of lab experiments and pest control measures and all that good stuff. A couple dozens more and they’d probably kill themselves. Just the sweet spot for survival power and being content with the career you’ve built.
I’m not familiar with the life goals and aspirations of roundworms. But I get a bad feeling when humanity starts to ponder “… but could we thrive as parasites?”. Really? What happened to exploring the universe and making sense of it?
This has not been demonstrated. In fact, the opposite appears to be true: the newest models are not as much “better” than older models as simple scaling would suggest.
You’re also making the not at all reasonable assumption that endless scaling is even possible. Data centers are already facing severe resource constraints, and AI companies are failing to demonstrate the benefits that would justify the enormous investments they require.
“Mimic anything we write” and “the hard parts stopped being hard” are different metrics, and in fact not really related to each other. Literature also offers endless examples of “gods” not being particularly wise.