AI can't feel

I've been watching lots of people weigh in on AI and art. What I'm saying here may or not add to that conversation. But I have thoughts which straddle both of my professions and decided I'd get in the fray.

As a mental health therapist I deal all day in feelings and thoughts. What most people don't realize is that both are information. The reason we seem to get so turned around in life is that we over-validate the logical information (thoughts) over the form-based information (feeling). This could be getting into the Aristotle-Plato arena but I won't hang out here long. My work entails trying to find the right balance between those things to find their truth. And trust me when I say both need to be present in order for that to happen. While logic may help us understand how something works, feeling tells us what it means.

I speak with people everyday who wonder where their motivation has gone. They wonder why concentration won't appear. When I ask them about their life, what a typical day looks like, they often give me a calendar list of tasks accomplished nearly robotically. Sleep happens because they collapse. Food is fuel. I often ask them, "What do you do on any given day to remind you are human?" More often than I'd care to count they stare at me blankly.

Without a moment of quiet to hear our thoughts, without a walk to remind us it is a body housing our brain, without music to show us there is more sound than clicking keys, the well of our emotion dries up and we aren't able to do the simplest tasks like opening an email (although avoidance anxiety could be at play here; consult your local therapist if you think that's familiar). Feelings drive us. They create purpose. Even the smallest things, like getting out bed, start with a feeling (even if is based in a full bladder).

You should take these meandering thoughts as proof this wasn't written by AI, BTW.

Those feelings give intention. Something AI doesn't have. We have to tell AI what to do. It doesn't feel. Which is why we like it. It can do our bidding without losing motivation or concentration. All it needs is more water than you'll drink today to do one magical little task. But without feeling or intention it means it doesn't know what language means, just what it does. A perfect example is when AI is asked to be a therapist. It can do some amazing reflective responses (reflecting back the content of what you said to show understanding; seriously, I took notes). But add any level of depth and complexity of human experience, and it begins spitting out language in ones and zeros. It can mimic us, maybe even write a decent story, but it will never know the unbelievable range of emotions a person feels at the death of someone else, especially if the feelings didn't fit into zeroes and ones while they were alive.

Many of the resumes I read at my current job have an AI written section (I'm getting so good at spotting it). AI is a tool and I think it has its places. My writer friends will attest that we must often click on a disclaimer that none of what we are submitting was created by AI. Yet, some people are still publishing it. And it has readership. But I don't believe it will ever produce any true, meaningful, lasting literature. Yes, it is partially because I don't want to be put out of work by a robot. But the deeper reason is I believe that we begin reading AI work (or maybe even going to AI counselors) is we have become as two dimensional as the chips talking to us. It is a reflection of our own lack of depth. I worry that it will mean we have lost to our unfeeling robot overlords because we become too much like them. Then we've lost taste and insight, an our very souls with it.

Go ahead and finish your homework with Chat GPT. The research shows the teachers can tell only slightly better than half the time (which pokes a few holes in my belief that I can spot an AI resume). Write a love poem for your anniversary with a robot assistant. But be very clear that it is only a surface-level treatment, a reflection only as deep as a mirror itself. It can't capture what made you want poetry for your love. It can't begin to understand the panic of that late paper. What lay within you, and hopefully me, is an intelligence than can never be artificial.