I've been thinking about an extraordinary inventor lately—someone who lived nearly two thousand years ago but whose creations feel startlingly relevant to our current AI conversations. His name was Heron of Alexandria, and he built what we might call the world's first programmable robots.
Picture this: temple doors that opened automatically when sacred fires were lit, miniature theatres with moving figures that performed entire sequences, fountains that seemed to pulse with life. Using only levers, ropes, compressed air, and steam, Heron created mechanical marvels that foreshadowed our modern age of automation. One of his most remarkable inventions was a mobile theatrical stage—a true automaton that moved on wheels, powered by a falling counterweight system. When the curtain rose, programmed sequences unfolded: ships advanced across the stage, sailors raised their arms, and artificial flames flickered to life.
Was this artificial intelligence? Perhaps, in its primitive form. Did it demonstrate thinking? Maybe. But did it possess life, will, or anything we'd recognise as humanity? Absolutely not.
This question haunts me as I watch our current AI revolution unfold. What exactly separates us from our increasingly sophisticated machines? Italian philosopher Maurizio Ferraris tackles this profound question in his latest work, and his answer might surprise you: it's not our minds that make us human—it's our skin.
The Fallacy of Pure Computation
Here's where our thinking often goes astray. We've become enchanted by the idea that intelligence equals computation, that consciousness is simply elaborate data processing. When ChatGPT produces convincing responses, we tend to assume it's thinking. But emulation isn't cognition, no matter how sophisticated it becomes.
I find myself returning to this fundamental distinction constantly. Yes, machines can organise information faster than we can, calculate with greater precision, and process vast datasets without fatigue. But this computational prowess represents only a fraction of human intelligence. We're not just biological calculators—we're sensing, feeling, willing creatures embedded in a physical world.
The mistake lies in what philosophers call "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"—treating one aspect of human intelligence (computation) as if it were the whole. It's rather like examining a symphony and concluding that music is merely mathematical relationships between frequencies, missing entirely the emotional resonance, cultural context, and embodied experience of listening.
Why the Body Matters More Than We Think
Ferraris argues that consciousness isn't housed in some ethereal mind separate from the body—it emerges from our embodied existence. The skin isn't just a biological wrapper; it's the interface where inner experience meets outer reality. It's where consciousness literally touches the world.
Think about this for a moment. Every emotion you've ever felt, every decision you've made, every creative insight you've experienced—all of these emerged from a conscious being living in a physical body. Your thoughts aren't abstract computations floating in mental space; they're the products of a biological organism navigating real-world challenges, driven by needs, desires, and the fundamental imperative to survive and flourish.
This embodied perspective transforms our understanding of intelligence. Human thinking isn't just processing information—it's an organism with skin, blood, hormones, and nerve endings making sense of its environment. We don't just compute solutions; we feel our way through problems, drawing on intuition that emerges from our entire bodily experience.
The Technology of Being Human
What fascinates me most is how Ferraris positions writing as a kind of technological skin—an external membrane that extends our cognitive capabilities. From ancient clay tablets to modern digital networks, we've always been cyborgs, using technology to amplify our natural abilities.
But here's the crucial difference: we create and deploy these technologies with intention, driven by will and purpose. A machine can extend existing patterns, but it cannot initiate new ones. It can continue a conversation, but it cannot begin one with genuine curiosity or desire.
This connects to what evolutionary biologists call "exaptation"—the process by which features evolved for one purpose get repurposed for another. Feathers originally evolved for warmth, then were co-opted for flight. Human culture works similarly, but it requires conscious agents capable of recognising new possibilities and acting on them.
The Question of Will
I keep coming back to this fundamental point: machines don't want anything. They don't hope, dream, or desire. They execute programs, however sophisticated, but they don't possess the will that drives genuine creativity and choice.
When I write these words, I'm not just assembling data points. I'm drawing on decades of embodied experience—conversations with colleagues, nights spent pondering the stars, moments of wonder and frustration that have shaped my understanding. Each sentence reflects choices made by a conscious being with skin in the game, literally and figuratively.
This isn't to diminish what AI can accomplish. Modern language models can produce remarkably sophisticated outputs, and they'll undoubtedly become more impressive. But they're fundamentally different from human intelligence because they lack the driving force of embodied will—the felt sense of being a vulnerable, mortal creature trying to make sense of existence.
Living in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
As AI becomes more pervasive in our daily lives, I find myself appreciating human consciousness more deeply. The very sophistication of our machines throws into sharp relief what they cannot do: they cannot feel the weight of mortality, the pull of love, the sting of loss, or the joy of discovery.
This isn't a cause for fear but for wonder. Every time AI fails to capture some subtle aspect of human experience, it reminds us of our own remarkable nature. We are not just information processors but meaning-makers, not just problem-solvers but world-creators.
The real risk isn't that machines will become human—it's that we might forget what makes us human in the first place. In our enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, we mustn't lose sight of the irreplaceable value of natural intelligence, embodied consciousness, and the simple miracle of being aware creatures in a vast universe.
The Skin We're In
Perhaps the most profound insight from Ferraris's work is this: consciousness isn't something we have—it's something we are. It's not a program running on the hardware of our brains, but rather the dynamic process of being embodied, sensing, and willing creatures engaged with the world.
Your skin is reading these words right now, in a sense. You're not just processing information but experiencing it—feeling the texture of ideas, sensing their emotional resonance, connecting them to your own lived experience. This is what no machine can replicate, no matter how sophisticated its algorithms become.
As I finish writing this, I'm acutely aware of my own embodied experience—the feeling of thoughts taking shape, the satisfaction of finding the right words, the hope that these ideas might resonate with fellow conscious beings. This isn't just computation; it's the irreducible mystery of being human.
In our rush to create artificial intelligence, let's not forget to celebrate the natural intelligence that makes it all possible—the consciousness that emerges from skin, blood, and bone, from the magnificent accident of being aware creatures in an aware universe.
I'm Gerd Dani, writing from Free AstroScience, where we explore the profound questions that science and philosophy raise about human existence. What aspects of consciousness do you think remain uniquely human? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this endlessly fascinating question.
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