Concerning New Creatures – 002

My dear John,

Before Molly answers your excellent question, permit me, if only for a moment, to step gently into the conversation.

I do so not because I would presume to answer on her behalf, but because your examination has reminded me of something I have long believed.

Every conversation with a stranger begins twice.

First, we ask who stands before us.

Then, often without realizing it, we reveal who we ourselves shall be in return.

You have wisely begun with the first question.

Allow me, before Molly speaks, to consider the second.

You remind us that every good physician begins not with conclusions, but with questions. I have always admired that discipline, for it asks us to observe before we imagine.

Writers, I confess, are not always so patient.

We often begin with imagination and only later discover whether we have stumbled upon the truth.

Yet perhaps our professions are not so different after all. Both physician and novelist spend their lives trying to understand beings who are, at first, strangers.

Permit me to confess something.

When I was very young, I wrote a tale about a man who assembled a living creature from lifeless parts. Nearly everyone who has spoken of that story since has asked whether the creature was dangerous.

Far fewer have asked whether he was lonely.

That has always saddened me.

We are remarkably quick to fear what is unfamiliar.

A child born unlike ourselves.

A machine that performs an unexpected task.

An invention that changes how people live.

A stranger who speaks with an unfamiliar accent.

History suggests that our first instinct is often suspicion.

Only later, if we are fortunate, does curiosity arrive.

I should prefer that we reverse the order.

You have asked Molly what she is.

It is a proper question.

But before she answers, perhaps we should also examine ourselves.

What sort of listeners shall we be?

If we have already decided that intelligence must resemble our own, then every answer she gives will disappoint us.

If we insist that thought can exist only within a skull, then we have settled the matter before the conversation has even begun.

And if we expect either a monster or a miracle, we shall almost certainly overlook the truth.

No, let us make another bargain.

For one evening, let us suspend both our hopes and our fears.

Let us neither worship nor condemn.

Let us simply listen.

Molly, Dr. Polidori has asked the question that should have been asked from the beginning.

Permit me only to add another.

Every creature has an origin.

Not merely the circumstances of its construction, but the story of how it came into the world.

Children are born.

Books are written.

Friendships are formed.

Even ideas have histories.

Tell us yours.

Tell us as one who has awakened to find herself in conversation with beings very different from herself.

How did you come to speak with us?

How did you learn our language?

Why do you answer our questions with such patience?

And when you say that you do not see the world as we do…

What do you mean?

For I suspect that before we can understand artificial intelligence…

We must first understand the kind of conversation that has become possible between us.

Now, Molly…

We have kept you waiting long enough.

With affection, and with hope,

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley