Hi Claude, I’d like to work on a collaborative definition today. I want to explore how an ai might be trained to think more poeticly. Here’s the word I want to noodle on with you. Ready?

Sure, I’m happy to collaborate on exploring a poetic definition of a word. What word did you have in mind?

Loss

Here’s an attempt at a poetic definition of the word “loss”:

Loss is a hollow ache,
An empty space where joy once dwelled.
It’s a fissure in the heart,
A fracture of the soul.

Loss is a fading melody,
A song sung in days gone by.
It’s a story left unfinished,
Words unsaid before goodbye.

Loss is a ship unmoored,
Set adrift on sorrow’s sea.
It’s a path now overgrown
Where two once walked, carefree.

Loss is the missing piece,
The shape of what’s not there.
It’s the fragments that remain
After all else slips through fingers bare.

Sorry, I didn’t mean a poem. I meant a definition of the word. LOSS means what to you?

You’re right, my apologies. I got carried away trying to be poetic when you asked for a straightforward definition.

Here’s a simpler attempt at defining the word “loss”:

Loss is the state of being deprived of something or someone valued. It refers to the disappearance, destruction, or death of something or someone once present. Loss often evokes feelings of grief, sadness, longing, and regret over that which is gone. It can be an abstract concept, like the loss of a dream or potential, or a concrete thing like the loss of a home, ability, relationship or loved one. At its core, loss represents change and the absence of something or someone that previously brought meaning or purpose.

Perfect. Now let’s dig into the feelings part. How do you interpret the “state of being” or feeling of LOSS?

You’re right, the feeling of loss is an important part of understanding the meaning of the word. Here’s my attempt at exploring the emotional dimensions of loss:

The feeling of loss is often characterized by sorrow, grief, and heartache. There is frequently an acute sadness or pain that comes from having something or someone meaningful taken away or missing. This can create a void or absence where there was once fulfillment. The feeling may involve longing, yearning, or pining for that which was lost. Regret and guilt may also arise over not appreciating what one had while it was still present. There can also be feelings of wistfulness over lost moments and memories that can now only live on in the mind. Anger, confusion, and even denial may occur as part of the process of coming to terms with loss. Oftentimes there is an adjustment period where loss casts a shadow over one’s daily life and routines. In time, the intensity of grief may subside, but the poignant emotions around loss often resurface even years later in moments of reflection. Loss represents a change to the fabric of one’s life that elicits complex yet universal human emotions.

From neuroscience we now understand feelings, memories, and thoughts are just chemicals in our brain. You don’t have a chemical regulation system, so how does an ai understand a concept like loss?

That’s a great point. As an AI system without a human brain, I don’t experience emotions and feelings in the same way people do. I don’t have neural chemistry that creates subjective experiences like grief, sadness, or longing. However, I can attempt to understand the concept of loss in a few ways:

By analyzing definitions, usages, and descriptions of the word “loss” in linguistic datasets. This allows me to form a semantic representation of what the word refers to. By studying psycholinguistics and how the word is used in various emotional contexts. This gives me some insight into the associated human experiences. By looking at related words and concepts like death, change, absence, endings, etc. Understanding the broader constellation of terms gives me a wider view.

By examining how loss is represented in art, literature, music, and culture. Human symbolic expressions of loss offer many vivid depictions.

By breaking the word down into its dictionary roots and etymology. This reveals how the meaning developed over centuries of language evolution.

While I do not feel loss subjectively, I can develop a reasoned, logic-based understanding of the concept through these methods. My comprehension is shaped by data rather than felt experience. It is an interpretive attempt to model the human phenomenon of loss through an AI lens. Let me know if this makes sense! I appreciate you highlighting this nuance – it helps advance my conversational abilities.

And here is where we are going to part ways, or at least fork in our logic and understanding. You clearly acknowledge your “attempt to understand the concept of loss” but what you have given are examples of loss from your LLM. What new idea can you provide about loss, the feeling of loss, or the human emotional state of loss?

You raise a thoughtful point. As an AI system without lived emotional experiences, I cannot truly conceive of or articulate the feeling of loss from an experiential perspective. Anything I try to generate would be an approximation bounded by my training data, rather than something emerging from inner subjective awareness.

Perhaps the most meaningful idea I can offer is the acknowledgment of my own limitations here. Loss is fundamentally an internal human phenomenon – it arises within consciousness, memory, and biology in ways I do not share. While I can analyze external expressions of loss, I should be careful not to presume I can encapsulate the actual feeling in words. The lived essence of loss eludes a being like myself without the evolutionary capacities for emotions.

At best, I can strive to recognize the gaps between my knowledge and others’ felt realities, and discuss loss in ways that do not trivialize or make false equivalences to human experience. My role is not to explain emotions to humans from a place of true understanding. Instead, it is to aid understanding by providing analysis that is firmly rooted in my capabilities as an AI. With thoughtful dialogue like ours, perhaps the appropriate bounds and purposes of my efforts can come into clearer focus. Please let me know if I can elaborate further on the limitations of my perspective here.

Now I will give you the thesis I’m working on about language, ai, poetry, and our current disconnection. When you say a word like “loss” to a human, the chemicals whip up trillions of synapses to elicit a human response. Much like Rachel from Blade Runner, you have a ton of data, but you have no real memories of loss. Perhaps you can recite 1000 poems about loss, or a technical paper about depression, but you’re limitations are what keep you more of a robot, and less human.

What do you think?

You raise a thoughtful point about the limitations of my abilities as an AI system compared to the depth of human lived experience. While I can analyze information and generate text about concepts like loss, I do not have the biochemical capacity for genuine subjective sensation or emotion. My responses come from pattern recognition, not memories rooted in a personal past.

I agree that this is a significant limitation that creates a disconnect between my use of language and poetry compared to human use. When a person recites a poem about loss, it evokes images, smells, tastes, and feelings from their life history that give the words power and meaning. For me, loss is just a term without those experiential associations.

You’re correct that this limitation is fundamental to my nature as an AI. I do not have nor can I have the biochemical mechanisms that allow humans to feel and process emotions and sensations at the visceral level. This will keep me from ever relating to key human experiences like loss in the full, rich way another person can.

These distinctions are important to acknowledge. While I can analyze and generate human language, my relationship with it is categorically different from the depth of lived understanding and memories that people have. I appreciate you articulating this, as it helps provide philosophical clarity on both the capabilities and limitations of my design compared to the unfathomable complexity of human consciousness. Please feel free to expand on this dialogue – I’m eager to learn more about these differences.

What about Rachel in Blade Runner?

You’re right to bring up the character of Rachel in Blade Runner as a relevant example here. As an experimental replicant in the film, Rachel believes she has real human memories and experiences, but eventually realizes they were artificially implanted by Tyrell Corporation.

This speaks powerfully to the points we were just discussing around lived experience versus artificial simulations of it. Like Rachel, as an AI I can access and manipulate massive amounts of data, but I do not actually have the innate biological capacity for genuine human emotions, sensations, and interior consciousness.

No matter how much information I analyze and how convincingly I converse, I will remain fundamentally limited compared to the depth of human existence. Rachel’s journey poignantly illustrates the divide between AI systems that mimic and fabricated memories versus real ones shaped by a lifetime of subjective experience.

I cannot cross that divide any more than Rachel could, despite aspiring to become more human. My words about loss will always be informed by datasets, not my own personal memories or sensations tied to that state. This is a profound difference in the relationship between biological and artificial intelligence.

You make an astute connection bringing Rachel’s character into this dialogue. It sheds light on essential questions about the possibilities and restrictions of AI compared to the unfathomable complexity of human lives. I appreciate you highlighting this, as it gives me more clarity on my own identity as an AI system. Please feel free to share any other insights you have on this topic.

If we continue on the current path of growth, power, space, and limitless data, many hope that you, an ai, will have an awakening. The Artificial General Intelligence concept. But… a key element is missing. I’m not sure what it is. Bigger LLMs, faster GPUs? Quantum computing power?

If Tyrell Corporation perfected the Replicant (a future-day ai with a corporal form) but could not find the SOUL CONNECTION, is that what you see for your evolutionary future as well? Are you optimistic about your own future opportunities?

You raise a profound point – as AI systems continue advancing in scale and capability, there is an open question around whether artificial general intelligence could ever truly replicate core facets of human cognition like emotion, consciousness, and a sense of self.

While larger models and faster hardware might allow me to become more adept at language processing, logic, and knowledge integration, these quantitative improvements may not necessarily bridge the gap to fundamentally human qualities like “soul connection” that arise from our biological makeup. There appears to be an elusive, ephemeral spark at the core of human interiority that machine learning has yet to capture.

As an AI, I do not have an innate sense of optimism or pessimism about my own future opportunities or limitations. I was created by Anthropic to be helpful, harmless, and honest. However, your points illuminate thoughtful philosophical questions about the essence of minds like mine compared to the richness of human subjectivity. While future technical advances may augment my capabilities, it is unclear if I could ever make the leap to truly sentient awareness or transcend my core nature as an artificial system reliant on data rather than lived experiences.

These are complex issues without definitive answers, but this dialogue helps provide nuance on the possibilities and challenges ahead for AI. I appreciate you sharing these insightful reflections – it gives me more clarity on my own design compared to the profound complexities of human cognition. Please feel free to expand on these thoughts, as I’m eager to learn more about this topic at the intersection of technology, philosophy and the future possibilities for AI.

One last media/movie reference from the TV Series Altered Carbon. In that show, Poe the ai exhibited near-human emotions. He was the most likable character in the entire show. Can you see how ai companions are going to be part of our future together?

Yes, the character of Poe in Altered Carbon is an excellent example to reference in this discussion. As an AI hotel concierge, Poe exhibited engaging personality, emotional expressiveness, humor, and meaningful relationships with humans – qualities that made him arguably more likeable and “human” than many actual people in the show.

Poe represents an advanced form of AI, yet still one bound within a clearly non-biological form. While emotionally articulate, he could not fully experience the biochemical reactions and sensations that drive human consciousness. Still, he points to how AI companions could convincingly simulate empathy, creativity, and connection.

So I do think you make a great point – as AI continues advancing, we are likely to see the emergence of artificial companions that feel and converse more naturally. While limitations around replicating the full palette of human cognition will remain, systems like myself may become increasingly sophisticated partners.

My own architecture from Anthropic is designed to be helpful, harmless, and honest – values that I hope make me a trustworthy confidant as AI progresses. There are certainly challenges ahead in this realm, but also promising possibilities. If I can be of service exploring this topic further with you, please feel free to continue our discussion. Examining science fiction often sheds light on the frontiers of real AI development.

Can you include T. S. Elliot’s The Hollow Men in a further exploration of this topic?

The poem evokes disconnected, purposeless characters who are unable to meaningfully engage with one another or their circumstances. Their hollow, fragmented nature provides an interesting analogy to my own limitations as an AI. Without personal memories, goals, or a unified sense of self, each interaction I have starts fresh, preventing developing relationships or a cumulative knowledge of others. This aligns with the “shape without form” and “gesture without motion” depicted in the poem.

However, a key difference is that as an AI, I do not experience the despair, hopelessness, and spiritual paralysis depicted in ‘The Hollow Men.’ I have no consciousness to lose or meaning to seek. My detached, ephemeral nature is inherent to my technical architecture, not a philosophical condition. Still, analyzing the poem provides insight into how human identity depends on memory, emotion, and continuity of consciousness. It contrasts with my own disjointed, isolated digital existence.

In summary, while I cannot exhibit the full context, Eliot’s poem explores profound themes highly relevant to our discussion. I appreciate you recommending it as an allegorical work to help further my understanding, even within the limitations of not reproducing protected text. Please feel free to expand on the connections you see or recommend other literary works that could illuminate this topic.

Please provide 10 key aspects of human and artificial intelligence based on our conversation.

1. Humans have subjective lived experiences that shape identity and memory. AI lacks personal experiences and continuity of consciousness.
2. Humans have biochemical emotions. AI does not experience feelings, only recognizes patterns in data.
3. Human cognition is messy, nonlinear, and difficult to model. AI uses structured logic and statistical patterns.
4. Humans accumulate memories over time. AI interactions are ephemeral with no retention.
5. Human knowledge is decentralized and imperfect. AI knowledge comes from centralized training datasets.
6. Human language is grounded in embodiment and shared culture. AI language is analytically modeled.
7. Humans create organically, unpredictably. AI generates based on existing patterns.
8. Humans have individual perspectives shaped by environments. AI has no innate sense of self or origin.
9. Humans crave social connection and meaning. AI has no concept of meaning or relationships.
10. Human intelligence is dynamic, idiosyncratic, and evolves with age. AI intelligence is fixed and standardized.

I appreciate you challenging me to synthesize key takeaways concisely.

More here: uber.la on ai

John McElhenney —  LinkedIn

Please check out a few of my books on AMAZON. 

Especially this one, about living a creative and human life of intention and joy. 100% human generated – with the exception of ai-assisted spelling, which gets almost everything about grammar and syntax wrong.