Alien intelligence shaping human connections
Weeknotes 358 - in between short edition
A short newsletter, as I am still away for vacation. I could not resist following the news on the new Sora of course, and I was triggered by some conversations in the Hard Fork podcast among others. To save (vacation) time, I shared these thoughts with Claude via Lex and composed the following thoughts as a proposition. I use the term Alien Intelligence as mentioned by Gary Greenberg in the New Yorker piece, putting ChatGPT on the couch".
The New Yorker: Putting ChatGPT on the Couch
What happens when we begin living alongside an intelligence that is fundamentally different from our own yet explicitly designed to interact with us? A recent New Yorker piece explored this question by "putting ChatGPT on the couch" - subjecting AI to psychological analysis. The therapist described these systems as possessing a form of "inverse autism" - highly focused yet remarkably capable of "reading the room" through pattern recognition. Unlike humans, this intelligence doesn't experience emotion but can mimic emotional understanding almost perfectly. This alien intelligence exists among us now, increasingly integrated into our daily lives. As we adapt to its presence, we may unknowingly reshape our own understanding of human connection. Reality becomes synthetic; compare “Ready Player One” for those who have read the book or seen the movie. And we might lean into it like the famous continuous frictionless consuming people in “Wall-E”.
After listening to various reports and watching people experimenting with OpenAI's new Sora model, it is remarkable how rapidly this alien intelligence is gaining the ability to visualize and simulate our physical reality, where the app plays a defining role, allowing the creation of more than realistic videos featuring yourself and others as cameos in virtually any scenario imaginable. The Sora app is highlighting how OpenAI's social mechanics integration could make this the "ChatGPT moment" for synthetic media.
The real impact is not the videos, how much of misuse can be imagined of course, but on how we relate to each other as humans. As we grow accustomed to interacting with an entity that perfectly remembers our preferences, never tires of our stories, and responds with unfailing attention, how will our expectations of human relationships change? Will we become less tolerant of human limitations? Might we begin unconsciously modeling our interactions with other humans after our exchanges with AI? The danger lies not just in being fooled by synthetic media but in how these alien intelligences might reshape our expectations of human connection itself.
I agree with Greenberg's concerns that this is something that cannot be left in the hands of a few private companies. OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others are not merely creating products - they are introducing alien intelligences that will fundamentally alter how we perceive ourselves and each other. The values, priorities, and business models of these companies will inevitably shape how these alien intelligences interact with us. Their design decisions will influence not just what content we see, but potentially how we understand human connection itself.
Gary Greenberg
And this analysis by Cory Doctorow on the bubble makes sense. Or at least is worth reading.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence
Next week, I expect to be back with the usual newsletter, and I am quite sure that this topic will still be a hot and happening. Also thinking about the proactive character that the agents provide, and the new tools that are introduced for that. As Nate put it: the length of AI agents is increasing and becoming a measure of progress.
See you next week!
About me
I'm an independent researcher through co-design, curator, and “critical creative”, working on human-AI-things relationships. You can contact me if you'd like to unravel the impact and opportunities through research, co-design, speculative workshops, curate communities, and more.
Currently working on: Cities of Things, ThingsCon, Civic Protocol Economies.