AI, Heidegger, and Evangelion

“Everywhere, everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for further ordering.” — Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology Earlier this week, I posted a screenshot of ChatGPT’s take on life in NYC, a response so oddly specific and human that I couldn’t resist sharing it on X. It spread far wider than I’d anticipated. While most people found the AI’s description uncannily relatable, what also surfaced were waves of revulsion and disbelief. For many, the exchange seemed to distill everything shallow, culturally tone-deaf, and myopic about our tech-infused world, laying bare a kind of algorithmic emptiness that unsettled far beyond the intended, lighthearted message. But what exactly provokes this visceral backlash (as well as resonance)? It’s not the simple fact that a machine is writing, but the feeling that machine-generated content can mimic the outward signs of expression while lacking the inward sp ... Read full article.