‘Is it perfume from a dress / that makes me so digress?’ – the categorical differences between human experience and AI highlighted by literature

Abstract

Since the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ was coined, the respective research field has frequently emulated human mental faculties. Despite diverging viewpoints regarding the feasibility of achieving human-like cognition in machines, the very use of the word intelligence for complex computer systems evokes human consciousness. Likewise, there have been attempts to understand the human mind in terms of computers, exemplified by the computational theory of mind. By contrast, my article underscores the categorical difference between the mind and machines. Partly building upon arguments by David Gelernter and Bert Olivier, I focus on literary examples spanning from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot that accentuate subjective experience, the intricate relationship between body and mind, and the anticipation of death as human characteristics beyond the reach of computational systems.