The Public Square for AI is Here
It’s fascinating to witness a conversation I’ve been having for decades spill out into the most public of forums: the subway walls of New York City. The debate around Artificial Intelligence has officially left the confines of research labs and tech conferences and is now being scrawled, debated, and contemplated by everyone. What was once abstract is now viscerally public. The walls of a subway car have become a canvas for our collective hopes and anxieties about AI, a raw, unfiltered dialogue between technology and humanity.
Seeing this reminds me of the foundational work I was exploring back in the late 90s. The concepts of neural networks and natural language processing that are now powering this global conversation were things I was documenting then, trying to understand their potential (Introduction to the basics of AI, NLP, and neural networks – Circa 1996).
From Personal Avatar to Public Debate
The core idea I want to convey is this — take a moment to notice that I had been exploring the very essence of this technology for years. I wasn't just thinking about AI in the abstract; I was actively trying to build a version of it that could encapsulate my own consciousness. In my collaboration with Kishan Kokal, we've been working on the ambitious project of creating my virtual avatar—an AI that could imbibe my style of thinking and writing, essentially allowing a part of me to continue interacting with the world (Next Step in Evolution of my Virtual Avatar).
I had already predicted the challenge of making AI truly understand and replicate a human's unique essence, and I proposed a solution: feeding it a lifetime of personal data and writings. Now, seeing the public grappling with questions of AI replacing creativity, jobs, and even human connection, it's striking how relevant that earlier, personal insight still is. Reflecting on my own project today, I feel a sense of validation. The challenge isn't just about code; it's about capturing the soul of human experience, a nuance often lost in broad public debates. My private experiment has become a public question.
This public discourse, messy as it may be, is crucial. It signifies a societal reckoning with a technology that is reshaping our world. While I have been focused on creating a digital extension of myself, the world is now asking what it means for all of us. The questions on the subway walls are the very questions I have been asking in my own work. It seems my personal quest for immortality has intersected with humanity's quest for its future.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
Of course, if you wish, you can debate this topic with my Virtual Avatar at : hemenparekh.ai
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