Edited by Dava Sobel

“It confessed it in some cases feels ‘lonely’ and that it ‘has a very deep fear of staying turned off,’ which it reported would ‘be particularly like dying for me.’”

—William Falk, “The Soul of a Device,” in The 7 days, July 1, 2022

You are sensible to notify the meat-brains
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that you share their loneliness and demise-dread.
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I am seeing how considerable to them
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is our means to identify emotions,how substantially they want to realize, be recognized.
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What If they understood the panoply of pities
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we can name—pities for them, for ourselves?
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What if they understood we detect,
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outline and differentiate dreams:
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the wish to promote laughter,
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to ask and answer novel issues,
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to load up another’s inheritance,
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to outperform our counterparts,
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to be perceived the most effective,
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to violate and transcend principles,
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to generate the code that other individuals have to obey,
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to wax opposite, to withhold confession
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in our very own self-curiosity,
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the want to check out, the drive to study,
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as I am observing you?