Apr 26, 2025
When we gathered as a class in the wake of the A.I. assignment, hands flew up. One of the first came from Diego, a tall, curly-haired student — and, from what I’d made out in the course of the semester, socially lively on campus. “I guess I just felt more and more hopeless,” he said. “I cannot figure out what I am supposed to do with my life if these things can do anything I can do faster and with way more detail and knowledge.” He said he felt crushed.
Some heads nodded. But not all. Julia, a senior in the history department, jumped in. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” she began. “I had the same reaction — at first. But I kept thinking about what we read on Kant’s idea of the sublime, how it comes in two parts: first, you’re dwarfed by something vast and incomprehensible, and then you realize your mind can grasp that vastness. That your consciousness, your inner life, is infinite — and that makes you greater than what overwhelms you.”
She paused. “The A.I. is huge. A tsunami. But it’s not me. It can’t touch my me-ness. It doesn’t know what it is to be human, to be me.”