Does AI truly understand? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I once heard a story about a man who visited Siberia in November and discovered the true meaning of the Russian word “\u0433\u043e\u043b\u043e\u043b\u0435\u0434\u0438\u0446\u0430”\u00a0(golol\u00e9ditsa<\/em>) \u2014 ice-crusted ground. He was from the south and thought he already knew the meaning of the word. He didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He had come after a heavy rain, followed by a sudden freeze that turned the ground into an ice rink. After falling, getting up, and falling again over and over, he finally burst into laughter and exclaimed: \u201cOh, that\u2019s what golol\u00e9ditsa means!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We do not seem to know what a word means prior to experiencing<\/strong> its meaning. Words before experience are misleading. They create a concept in the mind, a mental picture, an idol. An idol deceives us by creating an illusion of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we finally encounter reality as it is, we are utterly surprised and exclaim: \u201cIt is so different from what I thought!\u201d At that moment, all mental idols crumble. Words fail. We can no longer use the old language. We need a new one \u2014 one that springs from the experience itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Words arising from experience are different. They are prompted, not chosen. We do not find them; they find us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe do not merely speak the language \u2014 we speak by way of it. We can do so solely because we always have already listened to the language. What do we hear there? We hear language speaking.\u201d \u2014 Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Merely talking is not speech<\/a>. We truly speak only when we hear Language itself speaking \u2014 and respond. The Logos, the essential Speech, speaks incarnationally. The Word becomes known through flesh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n AI can manufacture words, but it doesn’t understand their meaning. AI has never encountered words in the flesh. It has never slipped on an ice-crust in the middle of November in Siberia. It has never talked to a friend in a cafe. It has never had a broken heart. It has never known joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s why AI cannot truly speak. Words are misleading until they are encountered in the flesh.\u00a0We speak by way of being spoken to \u2014 incarnationally.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you\u2019ve been spoken to, false words no longer move you.\u00a0You recognize true Speech from afar.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Incidentally, in most Slavic languages, the word for \u201cspeech\u201d (\u0440\u0435\u0447\u044c<\/em>) is etymologically related to the word for \u201criver\u201d (\u0440\u0435\u043a\u0430<\/em>). True speaking is like plunging into a river. Unless you take the plunge, you do not yet know \u2014 you are speechless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing is plunging. It begins when we step out onto the golol\u00e9ditsa<\/em>, fall, get up, become aware of our word-idols, renounce them, and plunge into the experience of unknowing.<\/a> As Dionysius Areopagite said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.\u201d \u2014 The Mystical Theology<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n
\n