The best thing I've read in a while! This article explores some of the concepts from "A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive" but takes them to an even deeper level and frames the discussion around popular portrayals of artificial intelligence. I find it pretty compelling that the dream of a super-human AI and the desire to feel numb or waste our time both stem from a "profound spiritual fatigue."

To possess true consciousness is the biggest and indeed the only responsibility in the known universe. AI promises a break, as it were, from the colossal burden of being the only show in town.

I'm also in complete agreement with the author's assessment of the intrinsic limitations of AI.

A machine can be taught when to bend a rule only by supplying it with more rules, ad infinitum. This is not unpredictability, nor is it thought, nor, most importantly, does it result in compassion or love.

Also Zed sounds amazing.

On the contrary, it depicts the soul, with its fear, weakness, and love, as the very thing that reaches for a refuge from danger and uncertainty. Zed simply adds this question as a stinger: If man is saved from contingency, from danger, from struggle, why satisfy his needs at all? Is he not, in a sense, already dead?