This blog post is a response to LOST PREDICTIONS by Fiona Murphy and Eva van Roekel, LOST PREDICTIONS II by Maruška Svašek, and LOST PREDICTIONS III by Sweta Tiwari. It was produced using ChatGPT and Google Gemini, though the responses are carved as per the requirement.
Karel came into the classroom without his usual scowl. He wasn’t staging his familiar descent from some lofty moral altitude, as though condemned to the noble torment of educating a few unfortunate specimens of humanity. It felt as if he was forced into the class today. By habit, he kept his books and the attendance register at the podium. Adjusted his glasses, adjusted his tie, pulled up his trousers, holding them from the waist, and gazed at the class. There were a few who hurriedly entered the class and fumbled for their seats. The few in the front, who had arrived early, drew curtains to their ongoing conversations and sat with poise, some with their elbows on the desk. There were some who opened the hoods of their laptops, and a few who opened their notebooks.
When the shuffle ceased, he cleared his throat, only to realise that, for the first time in his career, he had arrived in class without carefully written notes. He knew not what to write on the board, nor how to commence his lecture. He stared at the jacket of the book “Doctor Faustus”, with sticky notes jutting out from different pages inside. But he didn’t know what to do with it. He had half a mind to run away. The longer he lingered at the podium, the sharper his own impatience grew. At last, unable to endure the silence, he forced the word out: “Today…”
All looked at him with attention.
“We will discuss…”
He could not find a suitable noun to fill the blank. He began to introspect whether he had anything worthwhile to say that would make an iota of difference to the careers and lives of these students. Is there anything that they can get from his class that they cannot get in a more improvised form from an open-source AI?
“…the location of knowledge.”, he somehow managed to finish the sentence.
“While there is an endless source of texts that discuss what knowledge is, let’s try to find out where this mysterious phenomenon called knowledge resides? Where does Sophia reside?”
He looked at the class and expected them to get the joke. No one did. He thought it beneath him to explain the pun and continued. “So, where can knowledge be found? eh, think about it, where?”
It was a bit surprising for the students to be pulled into the vortex of discussion so early in the class. His regular attendees knew that Prof. Mulder might, on occasion, lob a question into the room, not out of curiosity, but as if to test their tolerance for trivia. The questions were invariably pointless, like, who authored that ill-conceived book no respectable soul admits to reading? Or, which life-hating philosopher first inflated that gaudy bubble of an idea? As expected, no one would risk their reputation by venturing an answer. Prof. Mulder would then supply the answer himself, with the smug benevolence of a rich patron announcing free wine and banquet to a crowd of starving, battle-worn soldiers. In fact, the enrolment in his course grew by the very reason that his classes were mostly peaceful. Certain students admitted, upon condition of anonymity, that his lectures on moral philosophy were the most potent sedatives known to humankind. But today, he seemed unusually curious to know the responses of his students. And one brave-heart ventured, “I guess…books.”
Prof. Mulder snatched the words even before the last syllable of this monosyllabic word was fully pronounced, “Books, yes, books did you say, that seems to be the popular opinion, don’t you think? Books, the treasure-trove of knowledge. The words on the page. But if you see those very same words on the screen, would it still be knowledge?”
He paused a little for a response, probably from himself. The students had understood that Prof. Mulder was onto something. There was a slight shuffle on the chairs. Some adjusted their positions, some glanced at each other. Prof. Mulder focused his gaze at the student who had given the first response. Cursing himself for responding, the student felt now compelled to say, “Perhaps it would…”
“You think so…so the screen could also be a place where Sophia…er…knowledge would reside. But both the books and the digital device are just platforms, aren’t they? Where do the words belong?… To an abstract structure called language, you may say? If so, where does language reside?”
The student found beads of perspiration appearing on the forehead as Prof. Mulder’s gaze stiffened. He kept his lips pressed together, lest they make any further noise. There was silence in the hall, but a sudden commotion at the door drew the attention of the class as the student breathed a sigh of relief. A number of students barged in holding a black poster that said in white font, “Long Live Creativity, Death to AI”. Jonah, one of his former students, who seemed to be the most vocal representative, took to the podium and sloganeered what was already written on the poster. In his long academic career, Mulder had learned the art of withstanding campus activism. He tolerated them like he tolerated traffic. There is nothing one can do about it. Today, however, he found himself not totally unconcerned. Was it the protest that Aoife and Elena were conspiring about? As the chanting went on, Prof. Mulder contemplated how stupid it is to demand Death to AI, death to an entity that does not even live. To grant the very possibility of death is to grant AI admission to the realm of the mortals.
******
Karel is not the kind of person who feels anxious about coming home early after work. In fact, if he came home early, he would hardly recognise the shapes of the shadows, his furniture made during broad daylight. Had he arrived earlier, when Anneke was home, it would surely have been a surprise, whether pleasant or unpleasant, only Anneke could tell. But it is true that Professor Karel did possess an alarm bell at the back of his mind. It rang when the official end of the day was near. He would always put that bell in snooze mode. He would usually come home late and exhausted, and would not be apologetic about it, because that is the nature of his duty—or so he thought. He also believed that his wife would understand.
Today, however, the alarm clock was confused about whether to go off or not. He knew that it was good to reach home early. However, he did not know why he should go home at all. It’s been more than a month since Anneke left, and there has been no communication since her message regarding his article. He did not have any lingering appointments at his office, nor was anyone waiting for him at home. Fortunately, or unfortunately, none of his students bothered him with their usual queries today. When Professor Karel eventually reached home, he found an eerie silence and, to some extent, a sense of relief. He did not have to make any excuse to anyone.
As a routine, he kept his bag on the sofa, took off his overcoat, and stood there for a moment holding the overcoat. Then, he threw it over his bag on the sofa, with a mental note to relegate the same to its proper place when the time arrived. He entered the washroom and got under the shower, and let the water pour over him. The water was cold. But he could not summon the energy to turn the knob so that the water, balanced perfectly between hot and cold, flowed at just the temperature he liked. He heard himself saying, “Make it hot.” He chuckled with the realisation. Certainly, the days are not far away when the AI would infiltrate the most intimate of human arenas, called, not without reason, the privy. Maybe it has already in some cases. Would it be that bad, when, by a voice command, one can summon up the water to be cold or hot, adjust the temperature of the room, write an email to the publisher, or schedule an appointment with the plumber? Perhaps, he could have called the plumber sitting at the pool in Berlin, he thought. Maybe Anneke still would have been here.
He fumbled for the towel, and he didn’t find any. He came out of his bathroom, water dripping from his body. He opened the closet, took the towel, and stood in front of the closed closet door, which also functioned as a mirror, a choice particularly made by Anneke. In the mirror, he looked at his body. The wet hair clinging to the skull gave him an impression of baldness. He looked at his belly, unencumbered from the oppressive control of the belt, claiming more space than it is usually accorded. Karel thought, if ever there was a house with a functioning AI, would one feel naked in front of it? He was almost at the verge of throwing out the idea in his mental recycle bin, when he found it uplifted by a sudden and serendipitous remembrance of Derrida’s famous essay, “The Animal Therefore I Am?”, where he questioned his nakedness before a cat.
Clad in his towel, he entered the living room and slouched on the sofa, the wetness of the towel making its watery transaction with the leathery exterior of the sofa. It was too early for dinner, he thought, and there was no motivation to cook. He poured himself a cup of coffee and approached the desk anyway. Involuntarily, his fingers opened the interface of ChatGPT, and he suddenly closed the tab, lest it penetrate deeper into his thoughts like it did the other day. After a few sips, he reopened the tab and saw the introductory customary message, “What’s on the agenda today?”
It was a bit direct for him. He didn’t know what his agenda was. On the left panel, he saw the threads of his previous conversation arranged in neat chronology. He opened the thread titled “Is entropy a metaphor for marriage?” and saw the letter, the version typed by AI. He realised, “AI never forgets”. With a guilt-stricken heart, he typed in, “What do you think of protests against AI?”. Like always, there was no pause, no wait. The response appeared instantaneously, in multiple paragraphs, in points. The interface automatically scrolled down to the last passage, which read:
I believe the protests are not only justified but necessary. In many cases, tech is moving faster than social, legal, and ethical frameworks can keep up. There are real risks — not just speculative ones — especially around misuse, surveillance, labour displacement, and fairness.
But I also think some protests, if ill-framed, can feed panic, hinder potentially good use of AI, or push for simplistic rules that don’t account for complexity. The best path, it seems to me, is cautious progress: keep innovating, but not at the cost of ethics, accountability, or human wellbeing.
How impartial was the response? There was not an iota of bias concerning its own utility or futility. Prof. Karel thought of the question he had asked the students and typed:
“Where does Sophia reside?”
The interface came up with a response that listed nearly four Sophias with their addresses, including a Duchess. Even the AI couldn’t get his drift, Karel thought, and typed again, “Sophia, as in wisdom.”
“Ah, got it”, the interface responded and followed up with a detailed description, beginning with the line, “Sophia, in the sense of wisdom, does not dwell in a city or a house but in the very fabric of human seeking.”
Karel mused, “Of course. It’s in the very fabric of human seeking.” He typed, “Can you draw a picture of Sophia?”
The AI took two seconds more than usual, but came up with a portrait. A lady, holding a book in her lap, and an owl on top of a baton in the other hand, her face radiant against a divine moon-shaped halo. That face, somehow, seemed familiar to Prof. Karel. It wasn’t Anneke’s nor Nina’s. He realised, it resembled almost the face of Sophie, his former student.
He opened another tab and googled Sophie Vermeer. It was a digital photo album, and without scrolling much, he saw the profile of Sophie on the faculty page of MIT. She had a black cardigan and old-fashioned spectacles that were making a comeback in the twenty-first century, and she bore an uncanny resemblance to the portrait of Sophia, as he compared them in a split screen. It was a sensation that hadn’t occurred in a long time. He wanted to, but he couldn’t close the tabs. He took his fingers off the keypad and uttered the word “Mephistopheles” in disgust, but couldn’t walk out of the deal.