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One million years ago.
An ancient hominid cradles a large stone—black and glassy—in the palm of his hand, feeling for creases in the rock with his fingertips. In the other hand he grasps the antler of a deer, the bone’s blunt base pointing forward. He strikes the stone with the antler, and it splits along an invisible fracture. He flips it over and strikes again. Another flake of stone falls away. Examining the contours of the rock he continues to flip and strike—sometimes with force, other times with a gentle tap. Gradually, a useful and deadly object emerges from the formless stone. It is a bifaced handaxe, the most important tool that accompanied our ancestors out of Africa.
A skilled modern knapper can replicate this sequence in minutes; the mechanics of fashioning a biface are simple enough. It’s the leap of imagination that is staggering. To grasp a lump of stone, turn it one’s hands, feel its contours, and then conceive of an object within it—this is only possible because in the far distant past, an intelligent brain reached out through hands and fingers into the physical world.
We now find ourselves in a new age of intelligence, of machines that think and learn. Since the public release of ChatGPT at the end of November, breathless announcements have heralded (and decried) every human-like accomplishment—an AI that aces standardized tests, completes essay assignments, writes poetry in the style of every famous author, living or dead. This is original content, and some of it is surprisingly clever. What’s missing is the wisdom of a body.
Most of us today are employed in the knowledge economy. We sit in front of computers—our hands busy with typing, our mouths with talking. The brain runs the show.
But there’s another kind of work, largely hidden, where the body contributes an intelligence all its own. Whether the occupation is potter, chef, musician or surgeon, people who are trained to execute intricate physical movements know that the best ideas often move from the outside in.
Pixabay
We don’t have a language to describe how that happens, step-by-step, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Our hands interrogate the world. They probe and touch and ask wordless questions—the answers building up a library of senses for the mind.
A potter draws the clay on a spinning wheel upwards, her fingers wet with slip, delighting in the grit and the coolness. Can AI feel that? Can it “play” without the need to maximize an outcome?
ChatGPT has no emotions. It will tell you this if you ask. Perhaps, though, a future embodied AI will be able to experience satisfaction in hefting a peculiarly shaped stone or feel the pleasure of squeezing clay through its mechanical fingers. When that AI can explore its world by touching, grasping, poking—even caressing it—we might find ourselves alongside another being whose imagination is driven by the curious passion of its body.
Or maybe not.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection
In a small gallery on the first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City there’s a case with the museum’s oldest artifacts—nine bifaced handaxes fashioned from flint and quartz. In pride of place at the center of the group is a tall red stone, almost glowing in the darkened gallery. Carefully knapped across its width and from top to bottom, it has a shape that stops you in your tracks.
That it was effective as a tool is clear. But why did its maker take such care in every aspect of its creation, well beyond what was necessary for its use?
We know the answer. They wanted it to be beautiful.
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Published here on Forbes.com
March 28, 2023
