Machina Tanquam Cogitans*—Reflections on AI, Embodiment, and My Hopes for “Da Pope”

Dolton, Illinois

“Being unaware of the reality of human failure will always be the temptation of pride, seemingly angelic and radically demonic.”

~Fr. Michel Esparza

The Pope’s House

My husband and I visited the childhood home of Bob Prevost, aka Pope Leo XIV, the newest assignment to the Seat of Peter.

The story about the house itself is quite interesting—the family sold the home long ago and latest owner was in the process of fixing it up to flip when Bob became Leo. A miracle and now the owner had a jewel on his hands. Imagine how many people suddenly wanted to own it! Think rich collectors, who desired to have a papal childhood home in their real estate portfolios, never mind the fact that it is located in the decayed and abandoned industrial town of Dolton, Illinois. The owner put it up for auction. Sensing its historical importance, the city council of Dolton used eminent domain to stop the auction and make a deal with the owner. In the end, he sold it to the city for around $375K (I believe the purchase price was closer to $150K). Dolton has hopes to create a historical site. In the meantime, there’s a cop who hangs out there all day as people trickle in from all over the world to visit, pray, and leave offerings on the front porch.

Given Pope Leo is newly minted, and most people don’t know about him or Dolton for that matter, I decided it was a good time to check it out. Less traffic. No crowds. Quiet. I donned my “Da Pope” t-shirt and made the trek down to the forgotten town. Given its location on the Little Calumet River, in Bob’s time, it was a place of industry where blue collared workers of mostly Polish descent made a living and boys like Bob would grow up in a 900 square foot, three-bedroom, one bath, classic Chicago bungalow with his two brothers. A place where the boys could walk to school, their church, and the sandlot to play ball.

Eventually though, as the industrial revolution left American shores for the cheap labor pastures of Asia, the town of Dolton fell into disrepair. The young fled the town for better jobs and the elderly aged out and passed on, leaving their heirs to sell their homes for dirt cheap and never look back. It’s a classic tail of the small American town and it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the little boy named Bob who became the most recent Pope chose the name Leo XIV—a symbolic move on his part, purposefully following in the footsteps of Pope Leo XII, who wrote in 1891 his most important encyclical, “RERUM NOVARUM” (Of New Things), where he tackled the most pressing issue of his day: the industrialization of the world and the impact it had on workers and human dignity.

From the first paragraph, Pope Leo XIII sets the stage (emphasis mine):

“That the spirit of revolutionary change, which has long been disturbing the nations of the world, should have passed beyond the sphere of politics and made its influence felt in the cognate sphere of practical economics is not surprising. The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable, in the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science; in the changed relations between masters and workmen; in the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses; the increased self-reliance and close mutual combination of the working classes; as also, finally, in the prevailing moral degeneracy. The momentous gravity of the state of things now obtaining fills every mind with painful apprehension; wise men are discussing it; practical men are proposing schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and rulers of nations are all busy with it - actually there is no question which has taken deeper hold on the public mind.”

Though this was written in 1891, it could have been written today, hence why Pope Leo XIV chose his name—for he has dedicated his papacy to the Information Age and the consequences for our human dignity—a scientific wonder that threatens everything about life. Our bodies and their purpose are being discarded—not just our labor, but our souls and minds are also being rewired, re-trained, remade in a new image.

In what image is the human being remade? The image of the divine, or the image of Dolton—abandoned, left to rot, forgotten until no one remembers that a thriving civilization once lived within human bodies. I hope and pray these questions are also on the Pope’s mind.

The Romantics—A Balm for Industrialization

In her moving essay titled, “The Incarnationals" writer Emma Collins addresses the issue of the disembodiment of humanity happening in the age of AI and the parallels this time period has with the Industrial Revolution. The late 1800s saw the invention of distributed electricity and since the light bulb came on, nothing has been the same. It’s as if the human nervous system escaped the confines of the flesh and covered the earth in its shimmer—a shimmer both beautiful and terrifying. At the time, industrialization literally tore through society, ripping up the soil, cutting down the trees, tearing apart towns and communities, and obliterating large swaths of countryside. The people were in shock. Where had the beauty gone? Who had a say in what happened to the land? To their village? To their way of life? The few determined the fate of all.

In this space of helplessness came the Romantics, who sought to connect the divine mysteries of the cosmos with nature itself. A return to the soil as the soil was being destroyed. With this destruction of the land came an urban landscape, which she writes, is a “consequence of the post-industrial age, in which the modern urban landscape frequently contains neglected and run-down neighborhoods . . . it contains non-places (non-lieux), like vacant lots which are the site of a disordered collection of cast-off objects.” Through their poetry, the Romantics, like Wordsworth and Novalis, found themselves creating a means for humanity to touch interspace, or what author Charles Taylor calls, “the space of interaction between us and our world.”

In the article, Collins goes on to compare this with the disembodiment created by the Internet, the literal womb of the Information Age. She writes, “Consider this fragment of Novalis: ‘The site of the soul is there, where inner- and outer-world touch each other. Where they interfuse, this site is in every point of this fusion.’ Is the internet itself an interspace, a portal through which we can connect more deeply to some subliminal, shared truth? Or is it a false interspace that keeps us from communion with something higher and more substantial? Is surfing the internet a legitimate self-soothing practice? Or does it simply numb us without providing deeper solace? Is the internet a genuine companion? Or does it stop us from having close contact with other incarnated beings?”

This makes me wonder, if a town like Dolton is the post-industrial landscape, could our bodies become the next place we flee? For while the human condition is EMBODIED, prolonged use of our current technology is leading us to deny the experiences of our bodies, to reject our senses, to take us from our limbs and our hearts and exclusively into our heads, and not only our own minds, but the minds of countless others. The lines between our dreams, imaginations, and thoughts are blurred, even the soil upon which we stand is illusory. All has become a dream created by dreamers we’ve never even met.

“Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream…”

According to Wikipedia, “The Sandman is a mythical character originating in Germanic and Scandinavian folklore. He visits children in the evening, sprinkles sleep-inducing sand into their eyes and brings dreams. In the morning, the sleep sand is rubbed from the corner of the eyes.”

If the Internet is the interspace of dreams, then AI like ChatGPT and Grok are the Sandmen of this age, collecting the dreams of the many and distilling them into knowledge to be consumed by those using the system. Yet how do these Sandmen learn our dreams? How do they know which dreams are worthy of sharing? After all, the dreams of the internet come from us, the users, and here’s the thing, our imaginations are scary. According to one study published in the NIH National Library of Medicine, “Findings of this preliminary study show that individuals high in dark personality traits may be more vulnerable in developing problematic online use and that further research is warranted to examine the associations of dark personality traits with specific types of problematic online activities.”

Moreover, in another study it was found that, “the findings reveal that individuals high in psychopathy and FoMO are consistently more likely to engage in online political activity.”

So, the data used to train our AIs is heavily created by those of us with high levels of psychopathy, anxiety, and narcissism.

Is this the sort of digital God we want to shape our future? Yet how can any guardrails be established without granting absolute power to the one who owns the AI? What authority will gain control of the Sandman? Sometimes it seems the choice we face is to either live in a bloody world filled with anger and distrust, or inhabit a society filled with automatons taking orders blindly from a program managed and monitored by those who have “our best interests” in mind. A world where disembodiment is the ideal—not unlike the world from A Wrinkle In Time, Camazotz, a planet that has entirely succumbed to the evil “Black Thing,” where people act like "robots" under the control of a giant, disembodied brain called IT.

There’s a reason why children’s literature is necessary; whether ancient Scandinavian folklore or Madeline L’Engle, storytellers give us the antidote to the problems we face. When the “Black Thing” comes, the solution isn’t to panic, rather it is to embrace truth, beauty, and goodness.

Revenge of the Nerds

Since visiting Da Pope’s house, I’ve been praying for him, but I’ve also been listening to the sandmen behind the Sandman, the ones creating the AIs we now converse with on a regular basis. Consider these guys the robber barons of our age—I highly suggest getting to know them. Not from doctored snippets by your favorite talking head, rather watch the longform interviews they’re giving on YouTube—take in their movements, the way their eyes shift as they answer the harder questions. Ask yourself as you watch, would you want this man at your dinner table? Remember, they are at war, not with us per se, but with the old power, the ones who ushered in the Industrial Age, who cling to their monied interests in great fear as these young upstarts usher in the Information Age, consuming this time not the soil of the earth, but rather the body itself for its infuriating passions, emotions, and needs must be eliminated and overcome for humanity to continue along the path of progress.

Sam Altman’s interview with Tucker Carlson was chilling—a rare glimpse into the morals and standards of one of the wealthiest individuals who now controls the AI where, “The number of weekly active users has rapidly increased, growing from 100 million in November 2023 to 800 million by mid-2025. This growth is projected to continue, with some estimating the total user base could exceed 1 billion by the end of 2025.” In my opinion, every tech CEO in charge of an AI should go through this sort of interview, publicly, for all the world to see.

I also recommend this interview with Peter Theil and Russ Douthat.

These are a few of the men in charge of the future of the AI that 800 million people have consulted this past year alone, on everything from where to eat when on vacation to whether or not they should commit suicide, and if so, how best to do it. I personally have never used ChatGPT or Grok or any of the AIs. I hope to never do so. It’s a goal for me—I’ll stick with Jesus, or the fairies, or my dead ancestors if I’m going to consult a being without a body. For the time being, half the world still prays every day, so we haven’t completely replaced the God of the Cosmos with the God of Silicon Valley, but I often wonder how much longer it will be before more people consult ChatGPT than the divine.

Probably not very long.

Talk To The Hand

I’ve been thinking about all of this since the summer of 2010, when I first dreamed I was an eHuman. That dream led me to write the eHuman trilogy, what I now call a “transhumanist apocalypse prepper’s manual.” In the final book, REBOOT, I chronicle the rise of Guardian Enterprises, the company that eventually ushers in eHumanity and the ultimate transhumanist society. As I wrote it, I constantly thought about the wonders of the human hand. Have you ever considered the miracle of the human hand? Often when I read about robotics, the replication of the hand was rarely mentioned, mostly because it is too hard to replicate with hardware. Most roboticists admitted the technology was beyond us. Thus, this became my villain, Edgar Prince’s, goal—create a mechanical human hand so that his AI companion could take on a body and live with us, side by side. Last year, as I finally finished REBOOT and shared it with my readers, I knew that once the scientists discovered exactly how our hands work and actually created a capable human hand from machines, we were going to see the eHuman soon after. Well, it appears from this interview with Elon Musk at the All In Pod Summit, that future is closer than I’d thought (location 2:47 addresses the hand problem).

Emma Collins has this to offer in her essay, “It is likely that after the loss of a sense of cosmic order in the 18th century and the upheaval of the first stages of the Industrial Revolution, God was trying to speak to certain Romantic poets through specific portals in the natural world, showing them that He still existed. Religious experience became accessible through emotion and affect, which were provoked by intense interactions with nature. As modernity advances, however, and technology grows with it, the body becomes the locus of these glimpses of eternity.”

I agree with her. I imagine one part of me fancies myself as a modern-day Romantic, as my own work as an artist focuses heavily on the body as the temple of the soul, the place where the remedy of what ails us in the 21st century resides. According to the brilliant Marshall McLuhan, electricity and thus the Internet is an extension of our nervous system. If that nervous system is out of whack, if you’re having a panic attack, if chaos reigns in your life, the first thing to focus on is your breath. That brings you back to the body. The second thing I’d suggest is to dance, take a bath, or even put your hands in the soil. I’m an avid knitter—currently I can’t stop making socks. Endless rows upon rows, knitting in the round is profoundly peaceful to me during this time where so much is unraveling. My younger son says knitting my fidget spinner. He’s absolutely correct.

The idea that we now turn to the body as a remedy, a counter point, a place to glimpse God in the Information Age resonates with me. This is why Pope Leo XIV’s work is so crucial. I believe the Church has much to offer us—Rerum Novarum heavily influenced the worker’s rights movements of the Industrial Age—thus it is time for the Pope to influence the Information Age. Of course when it comes to worker’s rights and AI we must begin to create guidelines, yet it is my hope the Pope goes beyond wages and the dignity of work, to the very place that is in danger—our embodiment. We are literally losing our minds and our hearts to the machine; thus the dignity of the human experience is at stake. The right to life, the right to think, even the right to die. All of it is up for grabs.

Collin’s Incarnationals essay goes on to discuss how Catholicism has a role to play as medicine in the modern world, and this too mirrors my own experience. Through a love of the romantics, in particular Goethe and Novalis, along with a surrender to the forests of the Santa Cruz mountains that involved the immersion of nature beings as well as the total annihilation of the forest via wildfire, I too find myself returned to the Catholic faith of body and blood. As a computer scientist and early Internet adopter turned author and mother, I also find myself defending the body and the senses as the soil of the soul, and much like the recovery of the land after wildfire involved a rebuilding of the soil, so too do our souls need the soil of the body to be renewed for our incarnation to be fruitful and green again.

This then, is the greatest gift the Pope could give us. A path through the chaos focused on embodiment, rooted in truth, beauty, and goodness.

*Latin for “like a thinking machine”