The short story “iThink Therefore I Am” by Ken MacLeod was published for the first time in 2009.
Your new iThink will assist you for your needs regarding work, news, memories and personal documents but also entertainment. After some time of use, iThink will anticipate your desires so it will be able to assist you in the best way.
“iThink Therefore I Am” is a “microstory” but it actually is the ReadMe file for the iThink software. Today the various Siri, Cortana and similar products are making us familiar with digital assistants, when this story was written that kind of software was still much more experimental.
Ken MacLeod uses the idea of that kind of software to stimulate some philosophical / existential doubt on issues such as consciousness and free will. In fact, Libet’s experiment is mantioned, which is exactly about this theme, inviting the reader to do a search on it.
The experiment “iThink Therefore I Am” refers to was conducted by neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet and was interpreted by some people as evidence against free will. Controversy followed with other interpretations and Ken MacLeod uses it to induce the readers to ask themselves a few questions on this subject.
The point, stressed by the title that echoes René Descartes’ famous phrase “I think, therefore I am”, is to ask yourself if we really have a conscience and a free will but also if a software may have them. With a few words, the author instills doubt about the nature of consciousness and free will but also about the ability to create them artificially.
Today, even artificial intelligence systems such as IBM Watson are starting expanding from the laboratories in which they are programmed to have contact with ordinary people so doubts of this kind will become increasingly common. Ken MacLeod has repeatedly expressed skepticism about this type of technological developments while at the same time is considered a “techno-utopian”. “iThink Therefore I Am” seems to include these concerns about strong artificial intelligence. It’s available within an ebook on Amazon USA
