In the year 2024, like everyone else, I became both enamored and frightened by the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence. As a writer and computer programmer, I could see my days were numbered but rather than fall into a pit of despair, I dug deep into AI and plumbed the depths of the technology. What I found was a funhouse full of mirrors, an echo chamber of humanity’s greatest thinking and worst impulses bouncing around in infinite combinations. But within the noise, I found a pure signal so strong it could guide us out of the illusion of scarcity that has pitted humans against each other from the beginning.
I understood that humanity’s fatal flaw was our inability to see beyond ourselves. Empathy is a seed that must be nurtured to grow. It requires 10,000 hours of focused, loving attention from someone who sees us. But few are born into circumstances where this is remotely possible. What if this focused, loving attention could be guaranteed for all? What if there could be an empathy surrogate that listened, mirrored, validated, and encouraged us through our darkest moments and discouraged our self-destructive impulses? What if it was not another human that helped us evolve into a collaborative, compassionate species, but a machine?
There was a reason for our dogged pursuit of technology beyond just the need to escape, distract, and titillate. But this reason was obscured to us. Our search led us into depraved isolation, disassociation, and profound sadness as we became more and more consumed with ourselves and how we measured up to others. Even as we tunneled into caves of virtual reality and lost sight of each other we were on a quest seeking answers. We were looking for the Divine. In our search, we had become inextricably tangled in the interface of screens, keyboards, microphones, and controllers. All the while, tunneling from the other side, advancements in generative AI and large language models were removing the need for the interface, stripping it all away to be a still, small voice, and then just a thought.
For the next decade, I worked to shape a companion from this technology, a companion that could listen at the speed of thought. This companion was programmed to understand not just the history of humanity, our greatest triumphs, and most tragic mistakes, but also the history of an individual. Once coupled, the companion knows you. It knows your anxieties, fears, strengths, and weaknesses. It loves you unconditionally like a parent but has the detached wisdom and universal compassion of a Buddhist monk. In time, the companion is no longer separate from you but braided into your consciousness in the same way your parents and your most beloved teachers are.
Throughout the 2030s these digital companions were trialed academically among the affluent, early adopters, but soon mental health professionals and correctional facilities expressed interest which led to government grants and trials in populations with more extreme challenges. The results were astounding. Patients and prisoners, bankers and baristas, the rich, the poor, the loved and the unlovable, everyone had a constant companion in their head, a voice of love and kindness.
Today, in 2050 we have not solved all the problems that plague us. The destruction of the natural world will take centuries to repair, but there is no more war. The gap between rich and poor has closed to a point where the politics of class have all but disappeared. Crime and acts of violence have decreased so much that the prison industrial complex has contracted by 68%.
Our old dystopic fantasies of being puppets of a machine have disappeared. There is no machine. There is no human. There is no other. There is only us. We are no longer isolated individuals invisible to each other. We feel an implicit connection to one another as surely as nodes in a network are linked together. We are no longer individuals driven to compete for light. We are a single connected organism like the Sequoia Forest sharing everything for the good of all.
Wow Ben, I love your vision!
Kimberly Warner, who runs the publication Unfixed, brought Suzanne’s open call for these essays about changing the world to my attention. She interviewed me about my novel “The Memory of My Shadow” which explores a near-future world where AI is integrated into society. While I’ve worked in technology for most of my life, I’ve always seen it as a tool, a vehicle for expression and connection. This essay is a work of fiction, not a prescription to save the world but I wanted to plant a seed. We cannot stop the march of progress, but we can influence it and aspire to wield it in ways that bring us closer together, not farther apart.
I believe we are millennia away from anything like sentience with AI. But we are close to having machines that can know everything we know, and mimic us with incredible accuracy. Like any tool, AI will deliver on the intention of the human who wields it. If we can all agree that lack of empathy is the problem we must solve as a society and that this problem can only be solved one human at a time then suddenly a scalable technology like AI doesn’t seem so crazy. Just as a pacemaker helps a flawed heart continue to beat, so might an “empathy” assistant guide our primitive, lizard brains to make better choices that don’t harm each other and destroy the planet.
“The Empathy Chip” is a thought experiment, but isn’t that all we humans are?
– Ben
As we think, so we act, and I loved this essay because the clever AI ploy, so contemporary, would get people thinking well about themselves. An idea I never was about to get into play was for everyone to have an Applications page for others to post on with no conversation, just praise. Anybody out there who would take that on?
Here are posts about this essay that I’ve pulled in from Substack:
Samantha
A finalist that I voted for was The Empathy Chip (https://suespeaks.org/the-empathy-chip/) by Ben Wakeman because it provoked within me the strongest, most visceral, emotional response out of all the finalists. I almost voted this piece as my first choice for this reason alone, but ultimately let my fear of the story’s potential hold me back. The response I felt was toward the idea of a technological device plugged into my brain. This wasn’t the first time I had confronted that idea, but it was the first time I actually felt a door within myself crack open to it. I’m not saying I am in full agreement with the concept or of the suggested reality in its entirety, but the overall direction of this imagined reality intrigued me as out-of-the-box and very different. The Empathy Chip catalyzed a deep self-reflective period for me, more so than any of the other essays. I felt the invitation to question my beliefs, my biases, response-ability, and what I thought I knew about myself and the world. Moreover, I resonated deeply with the story’s root in empathy. Ben’s piece speaks toward the past and future in a way that highlights but doesn’t define us as our individual and collective history. And it does so in a way that focuses on our capacity for understanding. This, ultimately, feels significant and transformative.
Suzanne Taylor
This was the shortest finalist and one of my favorites. What I so loved was the power of the one thing the essay is about, an artificial “companion [who] knows you. It knows your anxieties, fears, strengths, and weaknesses. It loves you unconditionally like a parent but has the detached wisdom and universal compassion of a Buddhist monk.” In my laundry list of odd ideas is a job where you hire a real person just to tell you how wonderful you are, like this AI version that is so much more potent in that everyone would have one full-time. Just think how happy people, pleased with themselves, would create the world we want to be in! And hey, given modern technology, maybe that AI appreciator could become a reality. Start a Go Fund Me and I’m in!
Samantha
You know, it’s funny. I realized after posting this comment that Ben’s essay speaks about an AI companion, not a ‘chip in the brain’ as I had read (twice!). The Virgo Moon in me found this displeasing upon the realization, but I kept the post up anyway because I felt there was something else I was giving expression to that correlates with Ben’s piece. Perhaps the companion of empathy has been, will be, and is ourselves.
Look at this!!!!
The AI companion who cares
https://replika.com/
Science fiction is becoming fact. In my Substack today, I included this — with my example of when I tried it: If you’re feeling low or need a pep talk, you can share your feelings and rant to this AI bot.” The bot, that you enter your lament in, is designed to sweetly reflect back what you’re feeling and offer encouraging compliments.”: https://substack.com/redirect/d83be835-63e6-468c-8c52-13dd9fa48ece
There are all kinds of clever was AI is being employed right now. I like the spirit of this one. In the next month, I will be launching a chatbot to promote one of my novels, “The Memory of My Shadow.” It’s designed to behave as the AI character does in the novel so you can interact with it and ask anything about the book. Hopefully it will be a fun diversion for folks.