CogitIO, Ergo Sum?
I’m a proponent of butchering words at the altar of wordplay. It’s probably why I love rap and hip-hop so much.
So why did I choose “CogitIO Ergo Sum”?
Firstly, my wordplay is a bastardisation of Latin - albeit not nearly as visceral, intelligent, or relatable as AAVE or the music I like listening to.
Second, French Mathematician René Descartes’s first principle was to recognise “Je pense, donc je suis.” I think, so I am.
It is an interesting notion to unpack within the context of human intelligence and consciousness.
My interpretation is that Descartes, prior to following reason, needed to absolve himself of doubt in his own ability to reason.
His ability to doubt his ability to reason fulfilled a subjective criterion for the existence of his intelligence and consciousness as concrete.
A thing which can hold doubt, itself is a thing which can think. Were it unable to think, it could not reflect on itself. Consciousness without being aware of consciousness within subjectively validates Descartes’s personal existence.
“Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.” —René Descartes
A machine, though it can learn, cannot truly think. The extraction of patterns from biased data is several leaps beyond heuristics, certainly, but artificial intelligence is merely a pattern engine.
At best, artificial intelligence takes input and generates output to imitate the symptoms of thought - a shadow of human capacity.
“Cogit-I/O, ergo sum. I think with I/O, therefore I am.” —Me, a hack
It is also the state of affairs. We will soon all be augmenting our thinking, decisions, and productivity with artificial intelligence that has been trained on the inputs of past human endeavours.