AI has no sense of insecurity, doubt or shame.
I often spend time thinking about shame and what role shame plays in my life and the life of my clients. Often it is felt in the room, but not always seen. It can be missed in the mirror of my presence.
When I am able to step into that aching void with the other, and honour their reflection, there is an opportunity. This opportunity can constitute the artistic aspect of psychotherapy. This flair for the shadow of one’s person-reality is illuminated and known by those who have felt its crushing influence. When we create, we often touch the live electric of our shame.
Thinking….
AI can not be ashamed of itself anymore then it can fail in love, fail in attempts to impress others, and to belong. ‘It’ doesn’t care whether it is relationally ethical, accurate or responsible. When we enquire with AI about our subjectivity or world, we are dealing with a shame free interlocutor. How can something that is invulnerable to universal human experiences be our council? More alarmingly, what will become of the young minds of our time, who peer into the silicon mirror?
Preparing answer…
Shame is a critical part of our development. It teaches us to understand what is acceptable to others so we may find a home amongst our kin. It simultaneously helps us understand our deepest aspects through protecting our most tender feelings, rituals and emotions from others. Think of all the things we do in private that are significant because they are not known or seen. The paradox is that these enclaves of intimacy and seclusion require a presence of our tribe at the boundary to hold us in them. The lack of this holding and community has proven to be lethal to humans.
Our new technology cannot cultivate such crops as it does not have a belly that requires them: our bellies feel empty, our souls hollow. AI dazzles us with its incredible speed and certainty and the dazzling requires us to become temporarily blinded by a mirror held at the wrong angle towards the light. My sense of both my potential inadequacy in meeting you along with the tender heat of my internal world is both tempered, balanced and protected by shame. I’m not sure how you may experience what I am describing but, I know I approach intimacy carefully; the way one approaches a riverbank in the dark.
Recently I attended a training focused on shame. This was facilitated by a therapist who was seeking to eradicate shame from his own and the lives of others he worked with. Although this may be a noble aim, I thought it might be somewhat beyond possibility or desire. I wondered if the understanding that shame has played a role in forming our selves is a critical understanding that explains its belonging within our psychic life. I am not advocating for an experience of shame that is prolonged or painful for anyone. I am considering that our shame is part of us that ultimately has a home when we can understand the beauty and complexity of what it protects.
