Descartes' human-machine boundary blurred by AI

Blaise Agüera y Arcas argues that Descartes' mechanical philosophy severed body from soul, leaving behind three "monsters"—the homunculus, the ghost, and the philosophical zombie—and draining agency, purpose, and meaning from the world. He contends that large language models, which learn and generalize rather than merely imitate by rote, undermine Descartes' claim that machines could never reason or use language, and that internal representations in these models often mirror ours. He calls for healing this "Cartesian wound" so that agency, purpose, and value return as the basis for reciprocal relationships and mutual understanding.