AI, consciousness and the Logos in the Gospel of John

Why does the latest generative version of Artificial Intelligence (AI) strike a chord with intellectuals, politicians and ordinary people? For the first time, we are faced with a mechanical device capable of producing and understanding meaningful verbal texts. It is a genuine epistemological, political and, if I may say so, theological revolution. Yes, theological. Millennia of philosophical reflection have explained and reiterated to us that what distinguishes human beings from non-human animals is the possession of a faculty that can best be described by the Greek word logos. Logos is not so much the ability to utter words. Parrots can do that too, and the mechanical reproduction of speech has long been nothing new. Logos is something quite different. Put simply, it is thinking, feeling, forming alliances and waging wars, organising one’s individual and collective existence, pursuing an idea of what is good and what is evil, of what is right and what is wrong, and much more besides, through and by means of verbal discourse which, in Greek philosophical terminology, is precisely denoted by the word logos.

To understand what I am talking about, remember that the biblical God created the world by speaking (“God said, and so it was”) – that is, through the Logos – and that the Gospel of John begins with “In the beginning was the Logos”, meaning language. It is no coincidence that in all philosophies, even secular ones, the human being is at the pinnacle of creation because of their possession of the Logos.

What is happening with AI? We are presented with a mechanical device that appears to possess the very ability we knew made the human being unique. So unique that we could conceive of it as the image of God creating the world through the Logos. One cannot help but feel a sense of crisis.

But is that really how things stand? That is the question posed by the numerous books and articles on AI that have been filling the culture sections of newspapers and the shelves of bookshops for some time now. I must confess that, on this subject, I have more problems than solutions.

I would like to set out my view on a much-debated issue at the moment: granted, AI handles language more or less like humans do, but is it conscious of what it is doing? The almost unanimous answer is: no, AI has no consciousness; its actions are ‘agere sine intelligere’ – to use the phrase coined by Luciano Floridi, one of the most authoritative scholars in the field.

But what is consciousness? Since the definitions are all tautological (“consciousness is self-awareness” – and other such platitudes), some scientists and philosophers resort to an operational description by rephrasing the question as follows: “How does a human know that they are conscious?”. The answer may seem strange, but it is the only verifiable one: a human knows they are conscious by telling themselves so. And again: how do I know what I’m thinking? The answer is the same: I know what I’m thinking by telling myself. What’s more, it is often others who help us understand what we are actually thinking by asking us questions or clarifying the meaning of what we tell them. The psychoanalytic consultation is the paradigmatic example of this.

What does all this mean? Human consciousness is inseparable from language. Our own speech and that of others is the mirror in which and through which we seek and construct our sense of self. Without that mirror, there is no such thing as ‘self’. Corollary: if a mechanical device uses language like a human, why on earth should we deny it some form of consciousness? Do we not attribute consciousness to our human interlocutor on the basis of their speech?

It is impossible not to think of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the logos (translated as ‘Word’ in official texts) and the logos was directed towards God (my translation) and the logos was God”. There remains much to study and reflect upon.