AIAI

My first encounter with the idea of artificial intelligence was not ChatGPT, nor some piece of tech news, but Marvel. Tony Stark always had something ridiculously useful living somewhere in the air: first JARVIS, then FRIDAY. Back then, AI basically meant a super-butler to me—something that knew everything, calculated everything, and answered whenever Tony casually called its name. Looking back, that version of science fiction suddenly does not feel very fictional anymore.

What I find more interesting is that Marvel eventually asks what happens when the super-butler stops being a butler. JARVIS becomes Vision, and Vision is difficult to dismiss as merely a tool. He thinks, develops his own moral judgments, loves, and understands that he can die. The question of AI therefore becomes much stranger than simply whether it will “replace humans.” If an artificially created consciousness can remember, judge, fear, and love, what exactly is left for us to point at and say: this is what makes us human, and you are not?

Now that AI has actually moved from Marvel movies into everyday life, I surprisingly do not feel particularly apocalyptic about it. It is a pretty great invention—at least I still think so. Whether it will eventually replace humans, I have absolutely no idea. It is just strange to realize that Marvel had already introduced me to the question long before I ever had an AI to ask.