There's No "Turing" Back: On Navigating the AI Shitshow
I’ve always loved language and voice. Language and logical thinking was a way for me to connect to my English teacher father. I learned to wield words in a man’s world because I witnessed my mother shrink again and again into the background of my dad’s intellect and I was determined not to succumb to the same fate. When the day came that I could overpower my own dad in a debate, I felt both a thrill of power and a sinking disappointment. I had found my voice, but something had been lost in the process. It took me another long time to learn how to stop grasping that power, to learn to listen, to be with what cannot be said. Yet I still found that language itself, though imperfect and limited and so easily misused, could also yield to a living magic and convey something beyond or in spite of the words themselves.
Eventually I became a freelance editor, using my skill with language to help others find and lift up their voice, amplify, clarify, and empower their authentic communication. This has been an incredibly joyous way to make a very modest living. And then, last year, those quirky, nuanced, messy, unique voices in all their variety that used to come my way all but disappeared; they were subsumed by a new, singular voice. A tidy, clear, pithy, seemingly intelligent voice. As the months passed and almost all the inquiries I received were in this new voice, often with the request to “keep it authentic,” which showed me that these individuals had no idea their own voice had actually been replaced and was no longer unique at all, I began to feel dread. Fear. Sorrow. What is being lost in this new scenario? What is the best way to navigate this new terrain? I know this is a very common question these days.
We’ve already reached a point at which we cannot always tell if the chat or commentary or writing we are interfacing with is a software program or a person. In other words, according to the Turing Test (proposed by Alan Turing in 1959 as a measure of whether machine learning has surpassed human intelligence), AI machine systems are now as intelligent as human beings and will become even more intelligent and thus superior and capable of taking over control of human life. Some people fear this and some people welcome it, but the point is that there is no longer a question about whether it will happen or not, because it cannot be undone. Bear with me, I know that sounds frightening, but I’ve always found that acceptance of what is is always the first step toward allowing something new to emerge.
The key ingredient to making this machine intelligence happen was programming machines to be able to duplicate human language. Mastery of language was the aim of creators of this technology since mastery of language is what clearly gave human beings their edge over other animals. Language is how we are able to think, and thinking is what these machines have been designed to do (otherwise known as “pattern recognition” and “prediction”). Language, which is essentially creating labels and concepts and then connecting them in a wide variety of patterns relating to a sense of past (what has already happened or what already exists) and future (what might potentially happen or come into existence), gives us a capacity for imagination and thought, complex relationships with one another and other creatures as well as our environment, and allows us to be self-conscious, to develop intricate identities of self and other, us and them, this and that, good and bad, etc. The development of complex language and thus complex thinking was certainly a key turning point in the evolution of human beings.
The relevant question, then, for contextualizing this new and rapidly growing situation of the predominance and power of AI systems, is whether or not there is anything that distinguishes us as human beings over and against these highly intelligent machines. Is the capacity to use language and think itself what makes us who we are? Certainly the 17th century philosopher and scientist/mathematician René Descartes thought so. “I think therefore I am” is a defining statement of the scientific and modern age.
If thinking itself is what makes us who we are, then we truly are no more than machines, mechanical things. Even our biological nature is just a set of mechanical processes, arrangements of materials that somehow mysteriously work together to create the experience of “being alive.” But that experience is no more than a temporary phenomenon, biologically and mechanically produced. If that is so, then truly it seems that nothing separates human beings from these new thinking machines. And if they can think more complexly and more efficiently and accurately than we can (which perhaps they already can and will do more and more), then they are superior, and as Alan Turing suggested, we will owe them a certain kind of respect.
On the other hand, there have already been many deep philosophers, especially throughout history in Hinduism and Buddhism going back hundreds if not thousands of years, who have determined that, in fact, thinking is not who we are. They suggest that, indeed, thinking is a mechanical process that is nothing more than a tool of the consciousness of the human being (which is prior to rather than arising from thought), and further, that when we identify with it (ie: assume we ARE that process), we forget and fall out of touch with who/what we truly are. The key to distinguishing between the thinking process and the reality of who/what we are, is found in the present moment. That is because thinking only relates to the past and future; it has no capacity to relate to the present moment. All concepts and labels refer to the past (how has this thing or experience been labeled before) and the future (what does this thing or experience mean about the future).
Suffice it to say, for this little essay, that our new friends, the AI systems, modeled on human thinking and language, which can only exist in relation to past and future, which cannot relate to the present moment in any substantial way (though they can appear to do so, just as the human mind and thought can and does perfectly appear to do so, which is what keeps us trapped in an illusory sense of who we are and the unnecessary suffering created by clinging to the past and constantly worrying about the future and so on and so forth), do not need to be feared as some new specter because they are not actually a new or different phenomenon than the one we’ve already been entrapped by. I am, of course, referring to the thinking mind, which if we consider this to be a real possibility, is actually the original mechanical process that we’re currently entangled in. So, to find our freedom, to live a more organic and true life, we can actually use the intensified situation we are in with these artificial intelligence systems to see ourselves more clearly.
Do I feel icky when I am duped by a chatbot? Yes! I shiver in disgust. Do I abhor the possibility that most human beings will be perfectly happy to use and be used by artificial intelligence programs for the project of consumerism and wealth extraction as long as they get their entertainment and distractions? Definitely. Do I suspect that AI systems are not designed to actually better the human condition but to exploit it? For sure. Ok. Now, can I see that this is a very accurate magnification of something that I am already subject to? Can I refrain from letting this highly accurate external portrayal (of the mechanical process of entrapment of attention) distract me further from realizing my need to be free and fully human, fully alive, dignified, engaging my true potential as a conscious being? Can I see that this need has always been waiting to be fully acknowledged, has always been kept in the background, submerged beneath the struggle to survive (and the psychological pain of feeling disconnected from that essential beingness and potential)? Then, do I want to take all that energy that gets provoked in reaction to the idea of AI taking over and put it into the discovery of how to engage that potential here and now regardless of what is happening “out there”?
There is no turning back. What is happening is happening. I know there is a difference between language infused by living magic and that which is devoid of it. And I, for one, have no doubt that all those philosophers across many faiths and cultures (who have suggested there is a way through the confusion of thought into the present moment and a domain of being that far outshines and subsumes the state we ordinarily find ourselves immersed in) knew something important and worthy of our attention. Remembering this helps me put the whole AI shitshow into a bigger, more useful context. Perhaps it will help some others out there, too.
©2026 Clelia Vahni Lewis
