Consciousness is experience
Christof Koch
The Feeling Of Life Itself
Today I asked AI to create an image of peace, using the words ‘bright reflective colours, peace.’ I’m interested in what artificial intelligence can contribute to our conscious human capacity for creativity, experience and reflection.
Now I shall spend a few days considering the (I think beautiful) image I’ve been presented with. What can I see of peace here? I wonder, too, what you might see? Will several responses differ widely, or will we each see similar attributes of peace?
First response in me sees multi-layered, multi-coloured richness, depth and diversity with an immediately obvious lack of sharp edges. No grazed knees or broken bones here. I recall something similar from my childhood imaginings about ‘Heaven.’
What would a more fluid human consciousness look like? How would our experience of life change? Is the sharp-edged, the hard and fast, the ‘absolute,’ helpful? I see inviting pathways in this image – cohesion, unity in diversity, no walls, no weapons – and I feel something of peace.
We’re all too familiar with the experience of what it feels like when we encounter deliberate fomenting of anger, anxiety, lack, loss, and warfare in its various tragic guises. I dare to hope that our humankind may become more familiar with the sort of intelligence – ‘artificial’ and ‘human’ – that presents, holds out to us all, new visions of peace.
wind in my wheels 🌱 
What a beautiful image, Simon, and a provocative question to accompany it.
When I gaze at this image, I see a number of things…disparate threads coalescing, a rush of gorgeous energy propelling us forward, a kaleidoscope of color that pulsates with positivity and good cheer. This image summons a feeling in my heart, one that says despite the gloom and doom that so often meets us in the morning news, there remains a radiant hope, an alternative that burns brightly. 🔥❤️
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Thank you so much for this response, Lori. Is it too much to hope that the ‘voice and art’ of AI might, at the very least, be an encouragement to try to think beyond our usual, human, ‘conscious,’ (perhaps too often ‘unconscious’), frames of reference? – reaching to the ‘kaleidoscope’ and to previously unthought of possibilities that ‘pulsate[s] with positivity and good cheer.’ ? Yes to radiant hope. Yes, yes, yes to brighter alternatives for the consciousness, for the experience, of all humankind. And for the entire Cosmos! 🤗💕xx
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