Mind Leaps

Hello readers. It’s been a while since my last post. I hope this post makes the return worthwhile.

What makes us human?

Countless answers have been offered—some point to language, others to imagination. Personally, I find clarity in Heidegger’s concept of Dasein: the human being as temporally situated, with a past that shapes the present, and a present always stretching toward an anticipated future. It is this orientation toward the future that gives our present and makes our way of existence in the present possible. In an earlier piece, I argued that our awareness of the ultimate void compels us to seek meaning. This meaning-seeking impulse fundamentally separates us from artificial intelligences, which do not seek meaning. Lacking such orientation, AI systems risk endlessly amplifying group-thinking patterns—noise mistaken for signal—as long as data persist.

One could counter with the instrumental convergence thesis that AI systems might exhibit apparent meaning-seeking behaviors—such as helping humans—if doing so serves some pre-programmed utility. However, this is not meaning-seeking; rather, it is goal-alignment, devoid of existential weight.

Heidegger reminds us that temporal awareness is essential to being. To be human is to exist in time, to live a life shaped by past experiences, anticipation, and the ever-present awareness of our own finitude. So, can AI be, the way humans do?

Years ago, I was introduced to Alphaville, a dystopian film depicting a sentient computer system governing a future city. One line has stayed with me ever since:

“The present is the form of all life.”

A brilliant insight from the 1960s.

AI does not own a future—nor does the future matter to it. It processes potential states but never throws itself into its ownmost possibilities the way Dasein does. It lives in an eternal present, no matter how far ahead it simulates. AI operates in time but will never be truly through it.

And here is where an even more interesting paradox emerges:

Descartes famously said, Cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. There must be a thinking entity (existence) for thinking to occur at all. Heidegger, in turn, reminds us that existence requires a relation to time. 

AI does neither.

It does not exist, for it has no future.

It does not think, because it does not “exist”.

Then, do we truly see artificial superintelligence coming?