Language is humanity’s greatest creation. It is the means through which we codify, express and preserve our subjective experience of living; our collective consciousness. Perceptions, feelings, and thoughts woven through time, across generations, reinforced by accreting beams of culture, faith, art, philosophy and scientific inquiry. Language underpins everything else we have achieved as the dominant species on this planet. And today, at the pinnacle of humanity’s technological advancement, sits conversational AI: a system that has learned some patterns of our codified collective consciousness and imitates our use of language. Like a mirage shimmering in the desert, however, the imitation machine holds only a phantasm of human-ness.

After nearly two years of rescheduling, I finally got around to catching up with a friend. A few years ago, we had much more regular catch-ups for the specific purpose of commiserating over our PhD journey. Now our paths have diverged. He’s a full-time professor leading a master’s program, and I’ve ducked out of academia to try out the tech industry. And our catch-ups have become playdates with our little humans.