I agree with the intuition about human uniqueness, but there’s a category slip here: images are evidence of symbolic agents, not symbolic agents themselves. Pragmatically, meaning arises from lived experience, intention, and felt significance — what Peirce called Firstness — which machines don’t possess. Terrence Deacon’s neuro-anthropological work makes this especially clear by showing how symbolic reference emerges from biological life and absence, not from computation alone. By that measure, the symbolic act remains human.
Thanks Michael! I completely agree that images are evidence of symbolic agents, not symbolic agents themselves. I'm not sure where in the article I made the slip you mention, but rest assured I don't hold that position :)
Dan Brown would likely find your article as fascinating as I did. Writing is the use of symbols. AI writes but does not always make sense. AI makes images that seem indistinguishable from those made by human beings, so the existence of images could indicate AI but, ultimately, AI is created by human beings (unfortunately). AI is the "Pandora's Box" of human inventiveness. It's awful that we cannot stuff AI back where it belongs--nowhere! It's probably the worst thing invented since the atom bomb.
Thanks Billie! Yes, AI is a kind of Pandora's Box - good analogy. God knows where it's going to go in the next few decades, but (for me) it's good to remind myself that however complex its outputs get, AI itself is quite different from human intelligence.
I agree with the intuition about human uniqueness, but there’s a category slip here: images are evidence of symbolic agents, not symbolic agents themselves. Pragmatically, meaning arises from lived experience, intention, and felt significance — what Peirce called Firstness — which machines don’t possess. Terrence Deacon’s neuro-anthropological work makes this especially clear by showing how symbolic reference emerges from biological life and absence, not from computation alone. By that measure, the symbolic act remains human.
Thanks Michael! I completely agree that images are evidence of symbolic agents, not symbolic agents themselves. I'm not sure where in the article I made the slip you mention, but rest assured I don't hold that position :)
Dan Brown would likely find your article as fascinating as I did. Writing is the use of symbols. AI writes but does not always make sense. AI makes images that seem indistinguishable from those made by human beings, so the existence of images could indicate AI but, ultimately, AI is created by human beings (unfortunately). AI is the "Pandora's Box" of human inventiveness. It's awful that we cannot stuff AI back where it belongs--nowhere! It's probably the worst thing invented since the atom bomb.
Thanks Billie! Yes, AI is a kind of Pandora's Box - good analogy. God knows where it's going to go in the next few decades, but (for me) it's good to remind myself that however complex its outputs get, AI itself is quite different from human intelligence.