What can be achieved by Artificial Intelligence versus the human eye, the hand and the human heart has blurred says Susan Zelouf …
Through a glass, darkly, distinctions between what can be achieved by Artificial Intelligence (AI) versus the eye, the hand and the human heart blur. Borders soften. Edges fray. We find ourselves here, on the edge of what we know. No better time then to screen Ridley Scott’s 1982 dystopian film Blade Runner. Rutger Hauer’s dangerously delicious renegade replicant Roy Batty is reason enough to revisit Scott’s sci-fi classic, prompting us to consider the merits of made-to-order virtual boyfriends over real, live, disorderly ones. But as artists and writers demand that the media and entertainment industries agree not to use AI to replace them, we’ve opted to spend more and more of our one beautiful life cruising the Metaverse without a map. Unmoored, we may find ourselves on the edge of a flat world, no North Star to guide us. There be dragons, for sure, but are they sentient?
The word sentient descends from the Latin nominative sentiens or feeling, present participle of the verb sentire, meaning to feel. Learning a foreign love language during years spent in Italy, I preferred the low moan of Ti sento (I feel you) to the more throwaway declaration of Ti amo; I came to hunger for it, a phrase as sweet and dense as it is delicate, the millefoglie (Italian layer cake) of coital conversation. What would those words sound like coming from an AI lover? Given a decent algorithm, learned responses become exponentially more convincing. Leaps in the development of AI technology have made zookeepers of many professions, their only job to feed the voracious beasts more information. Newsflash to adherents of the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic “Great Replacement” right-wing conspiracy theory: you are being replaced, just not by those you’ve hated on. My husband, a Protestant from Northern Ireland whose religion ostensibly prohibits allowing anyone else to wash the car, eschewed buying a ride-on lawnmower to replace his push mower, as if the grass would think less of him. A milestone birthday gift of a baby tractor made him change his tune; now he whistles while he works the back field. A neighbour’s pricey purchase of a Husqvarna Automower 450X, its footprint more sports car than garden kit, is a curiosity rather than an object of desire. “What’s the point?”, he wonders, as he navigates the wild terrain, naming weeds and flowers, taming overgrown shrubs, lopping branches, saving a frog here, spotting a hawk there.
There are 72 seasons in the traditional Japanese calendar, marking changes in the natural world every five days or so. It’s not that Japan’s microclimate is vastly different from the rest of the world’s, it’s that the Japanese notice what they’re noticing. July 7-11: warm winds blow. July 17- 22: hawks learn to fly. August 13-17: evening cicadas sing. What if we Irish glanced up from our screens in search of the first swallow as it arrives, one favourable April evening? Or breathed in the sharp stink of slurry, marking improving ground conditions, a harbinger of early spring? Stayed awake to hear the territorial call and response of the robin, then the blackbird, followed by song thrushes, wood pigeons, wrens, warblers, sparrows and finches, crescendoing in a glorious dawn chorus? Listened to the flutter and squeak of bats at twilight, foraging for insects as the nights warm? Or set out on a pilgrimage to Lough Ennell in Co Westmeath to witness a murmuration of starlings? We wouldn’t know ourselves. Or would we? @susanzelouf
1. I’M WAXING lyrical over Lev Parikian’s British take on Japan’s 72 seasons, inspiring us to compile an Irish list.
2. I’M CHANNELLING thoroughly modern women like Eileen Gray in Max Mara’s gender-neutral SS23 RTW collection.
3. I’M MIAOWING at the sun in Bottega Veneta Angle cat-eye sunglasses. €460, at www.mytheresa.com.
4. I’M CATCHING his eye in pavé emerald cubic zirconia Viper snake drop earrings from www.latelita.
5. I’M LOSING sleep over Ameca, the latest iteration of humanoid robot. Will this bitch write my next column? www.engineeredarts.co.uk.
6. I’M CRYING tears in the rain with Blade Runner’s Rutger Hauer (those piercing baby blues!) as he utters his last words.
7. I’M BINGEING Black Mirror as Netfl ix drops Season 6 of the addictive techno-tale.
8. I’M DISCOVERING hip Abbeyleix with a staycation pre-Electric Picnic. Sample farm-to-fork, locally sourced dishes prepared by Michelin-starred chef Sam Moody in the heart of lovely Laois. www.bramleyabbeyleix.com.
9. I’M BIRDING in my own backyard, an antidote to too much screen time. Grab your binoculars!
10. I’M SIZZLING in an Avatar-inspired citrus Maille Malha mini dress from Jacquemus. www.farfetch.com/ie.
11. I’M SWOONING over Parisian cityscape views from SO/Hotel, its Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired lobby a nod to Saarinen’s futuristic TWA terminal at JFK Airport. www.soparis.com.
12. I’M IMMERSING myself in the catastrophic effects of flooding via evocative work by Kilkenny-based visual artist Bernadette Kiely. See “Stay Silent and Still” at Taylor Galleries, 16 Kildare Street, Dublin 2 until July.
13. I’M LISTENING to Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterly treatment of how AI may shape our daily lives. www.audible.co.uk.
