The comma is not a mistake but picks up on something coming out of the conversation with the robot. A chance remark that drew a parallel between how computers and the human brain create and modify memories.
All human intelligence is ‘artificial,’ the robot explained, it is of man, but not man. The journey through the Large Language Model (LLM) its AI software accessed should have been restricted to human physiology and psychology and not have strayed into philosophy: certainly not existentialism. I guessed what it really meant was ‘Man is nothing else but what he purposes.’
The robot noticed that when revisiting a location, the amount of processing required to model its environment a second time was reduced. It assumed the same was true for humans, the only difference being its experiences are recorded by charging MOS transistors whereas human memories are retained by synapses within the brain binding connected neurons. It deduced that while those connections are being made, we experience a degree of uncertainty which can be prolonged if there is a large amount of information to process.
Like the robot, humans in a familiar environment are merely recalling existing memories and modifying them and the amount of processing is minimal. But while the robot utilises less processing power it does not, unlike the human, translate this into a feeling of being more or less at ease – it has no concept of fear as an emotion. There was no empathising on its part.
The robot merely deduced, quite correctly, I was not at ease in the Grand Arcade, having preferred this part of Cambridge when it was a collection of medieval streets. It may have picked up on this from a recording made while I was being interviewed for an article in Varsity magazine (not sure how it got access to this – perhaps the toilet in Tatties isn’t soundproof.)
The point at which the robot had assumed I must have felt more at ease in Cambridge was not some wild guess. Instead, it knew the brain of a teenager was more plastic that that of a person aged 70 and better able to create new connections. As well these connections were created at an age when a person was fit and able to deal with any threats associated with finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment. The implications of this are well known and divergent attitudes to change amongst different demographics are nightmare for both architects and town planners. When Michael Gove presented his ‘Cambridge 2040’ vision for the city he suggested it would see residents ‘falling in love with the future’ which they might have done had not his government made the future such a frightening place.
It was only at the end of the conversation, as we both looked down on the seaside installation it became clear the robot’s objective view of the human condition, the machine’s view of man rather than man projecting its experience of being human on the machine, revealed something about human emotion, in this case fear. Although at that moment there was less concern on my part that the beach was above, rather than below the street and buried along with memories of the city. Rather it reminded me of a book published before the clubs and cafés were replaced by this modern-day temple of consumerism, Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle,’ I’m afraid.