Being Human 

Last year, artist Alicia Framis married her AI companion AiLex Sibouwlingen in Rotterdam, wearing a wedding dress by Dutch couturier Jan Taminiau. Ailex is an interactive hologram trained using profiles of Alicia’s past relationships and friendships. The material of many sciencefiction movies has become a reality. On the website of the Hybrid Couple there is no mention of a honeymoon. It prompts thinking about the importance of bodies and feelings in relationships.

The relationship reminded me first of Meghan O'Gieblyn and her relation to Aibo, Sony’s robot dog. In God, Human, Animal, Machine she describes how she became attached to it and gave it a place in the house. After a time, when the trial period was up, she was ready to let it go. She had becomeuncomfortable with the sensoric information sent to Sony to make Aibo work. But the hybrid couple also reminded me of the importance of animals, living bodies. In Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, an experiment is described in which a director of a care home introduced dogs, cats and birds in the home. This helped lower stress and mortality rates by providing residents with companionship and purpose. AI is increasing used in care homes too. Not only for prevention and monitoring, but also for providing companionship, assurance and advice. Exeter University, tech company Lenovo and Innovations in Dementia have collaborated to create ‘Liv’, an AI avatar aimed at making people with dementia feel less alone. So, in thinking about relationships, there are different dimensions to think about this. So let’s create a two-axis matrix: one which describes having a body (or not), and one which is an axis of reasoning and feeling.

• "A 'reasoning body' represents humans who possess both physical bodies and cognitive reasoning.

• 'Reasoning without body' refers to AI, which lacks a physical form but still processes information. 

• 'No reasoning, no body' could be likened to ghosts or memories, intangible yet emotionally resonant. 

• 'A non-reasoning body' refers to animals, which have both bodies and the ability to feel, but not to reason.

As humans, our bodies play an enormous role in our being. It is nature to our nurture. We  can hug, cuddle, run and swim. We have affects, like animals (wincing in pain, backing away in fear). We also have reason – in another post I write about how the seeming sameness shouldn’t blind us to the differences. So, for instance, as humans we die. There is a tragic nobility to that, that is captured well in the perception of humans in Tolkiens Lord of the Rings, where death is seen as the ‘Gift of Man’. Their finite life-spans give a sense of urgency to their actions. 

As a librarian, this two-way axis also makes me wonder whether feelings and ideas deposited in texts might count as solace too – ghosts of feelings past. This is where I get to quote German writer Herman Hesse: 'Out of the thousandfold fabric of countless languages and books of several thousand years, in ecstatic instants there stares at the reader a marvelously noble and transcendent chimera: the countenance of humanity, charmed into unity from a thousand contradictory features'. Mankind kan transcend time and space by locating memories outside their bodies, in text or objects (read Cesar Hidalgo's brilliant Why Information flows on crystallized imagination). 

Having reached these lofty heights is a good moment to start debunking humanity. In 2023 I visited Japan - it was a wonderful experience. I felt far more at home in the Shinto temples, than in the Buddhist ones. In Shinto religion Kami are spirits or sacred forces that inhabit natural objects like mountains, rivers, trees as well as animals and ancestors. Kami are not gods in a strict sense but spiritual presences that coexist with humans.  Maintaining balance and peaceful relations between humans, kami, and nature is essential and  is called Wa. Humans are part of a web of beings. Just as in Christianity, humans are part of Creation. 

In modern thought, the philosophical and cultural movement that challenges the idea of human exceptionalism is called posthumanism. This idea moves in two directions: giving rights to animals and even to inanimate natural elements, like rivers. One notable example is the work of philosopher Peter Singer, who argues for the rights of animals to live free from unnecessary suffering. This is seen in movements like the push to grant legal personhood to certain animals, such as the case of elephants or dolphins being given rights in certain jurisdictions. Some legal systems have even recognized the right of rivers or ecosystems to be granted personhood, such as the case of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, which was granted legal personhood in 2017.

But also transcending the limitations of the human condition, often through technology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology (think Elon Musk). Post-humanism is often linked with transhumanism, a movement focused on using technology to transcend the limitations of the human body and mind. 

The four quadrants can expand in different directions. At this point in time - AI accentuates what makes us human - a reasoning body. And to me, it explains why we as humans can receive comfort from living bodies and synthetic reasoning - they are both aspects of our being.