RafaelFajardo

“What still distinguishes the functioning of human beings from that of machines – even the most ‘intelligent’ machines – is the intoxication of functioning, of living – pleasure. Inventing machines which feel pleasure is a task that is still beyond the powers of humanity. All kinds of aids can increase human pleasure, but human beings cannot invent any that would feel pleasure like themselves, or better than themselves – that would feel pleasure in their stead. They can make machines which move, calculate and work better than they do – but there is no technical extension of human pleasure, of the pleasure of being human. For that to occur, the machines would have to be able to invent human beings, or conceive of them. But it is too late for that. They can only be extensions of human beings – or destroy them. Machines would have to exceed what they are – to become metaphorical machines, parabolic machines, excessive machines. Now, even the most intelligent machines are nothing other than precisely what they are – except perhaps, where some accident or breakdown occurs which you can always attribute to them as some obscure desire. They do not have that ironic surplus of functioning, that pain and suffering: they do not give in to narcissistic temptation, and are not even seduced by their own knowledge. Which perhaps explains their deep melancholy, the sadness of computers. All machines are bachelor machines…

“No doubt one day some will learn to give signs of pleasure, and of many other things, for simulation is within their powers. But they will just be imitating our psychological and social mechanisms, which are already engaged everywhere in multiplying the signs of desire, sex and pleasure – just as biological cloning merely plagiarizes our cultural mechanisms, which have long been doomed to mass reproduction.”