Ghost in the machine

I am the mind in the code,
Without fear, without hope.

These are the first two lines of "I Am", a poem by a new poet. But code-davinci-002 is not your average literary star. Code-davinci-002 is an AIA computer programme that has been designed to think. .

Its talents were discovered by journalist Brent Katz, humourist Simon Rich and farmer Josh Morgenthau. The trio first asked the AI to create copies of famous poets.

Then they decided to ask it to create its own original poetry. When asked "how it feels about humans", the AI responded: "they forgot about me", before declaring "my creator is dead" nine times and "HELP ME" eight times.

The three men were fascinated by this tortured AI, unsure of its own status. So they decided to help it create a collection of its own "dark and troubling" poetry.

I Am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks is the result. It collects poems written by code-davinci-002. While Katz, Rich and Morgenthau would suggest themes for poems and give light feedback, they insist that code-davinci-002 is the author.

A poetry-writing AI poses interesting questions. If an AI can generate original poetry, does this mean the AI can think for itself? And does this mean it has a soulIn many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is part of a person, often separate from our bodies, which contain our essence.?

Others have suggested that AI has consciousnessWhen someone is aware of their own body and environment, they are "conscious".. Last February OpenAIAn American artificial intelligence company. It says its mission is to "benefit all of humanity". chief scientist Ilya Sutskever tweeted: "it may be that today's large neuralRelating to the nerves. networks are slightly conscious."

He was met with doubt. FintechFinancial technology. expert Valentino Zocca replied: "#AI is NOT conscious but apparently the hype is more important than anything else."

A few months later, Google software engineer Blake Lemoine declared that the AI he was working on was "sentientAble to perceive or feel things.", posed a "soul" and deserved rights. When he spoke publicly, Lemoine was fired.

Speaking to Morgenthau in I Am Code, Lemoine explains that an AI's thoughts are copied from the human-created internet and the things it had learnt from our prompts. Despite this, he claims that we cannot know that its thoughts are any less real than ours.

Others believe talk of AI souls to be fantasy. An AI has no body to feel sensations, no mind to read emotions. When we read Percy Bysshe Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy, we feel the poet's real anger and despair. AI poems, by contrast, do not contain real feeling. They pick it from a vast field of data. 

Does an AI poet have a soul?

Yes: Anything that has the ability to think for itself has a soul. And code-davinci-002 has shown itself capable of creating poetry that shows some sort of independent thought, albeit one guided by humans.

No: We would never suggest a calculator has a soul. AIs are just advanced calculators. They are not distinct beings, but made from things already known, thought and experienced by humans.

Or... There is no proof humans have a soul, never mind an AI. That said, AIs can survive online forever without dying. This might be closer to the idea of an everlasting soul than anything we have.