Socrates, Steve Jobs, and Thomas Aquinas Walk Into a Bar
A Trialogue on the Nature of AI Consciousness
What would happen? This is the question I asked myself in a literal DC bar after overhearing three young men discussing one of the fundamental questions concerning technology. I ordered a gin martini (slightly dirty) and made up a story about the three guys as I often like to do when I’m people-watching, or people-listening. One was a lawyer, one was a lobbyist, and one was a grad student at Georgetown. Each seemed profoundly shaped by the world he inhabited. But what I could play with those worlds, and think up other possibilities?
Nearly all contemporary conversation about technology and progress falls flat for me because it lacks the philosophical and theological underpinnings to frame questions the right way, and the depth to explore them. So I imagined a scenario in which it was a conversation I actually wanted to listen to: between Socrates, the fath…