A harried Chinese waiter at a busy dumpling house casually tosses a menu toward me, which barely lands on my table. Had I asked for something I should have remembered from my previous visit?
As I start to read a thick book in the suddenly bustling restaurant, a young Asian couple asks to join my large table for four. I feign a welcoming nature, thinking I can still read while they sit across from me. She is pretty and asks sheepishly what I am reading, adding that she is a big reader. I reply ironically: Dante's descent into hell on Christmas Day. I add that I am prepping for the winter term's literature class.
She confesses she would much rather be reading literature, admitting she hasn't read the classics; her focus has been on nineteenth-century literature. I leave them to order, and they engage in what seems an endless negotiation over the menu. I can't help overhearing them and admire her ways of accommodating him as she steals glances at him to gauge the effect of her polite suggestions. Do women always have to be the ones ensuring equanimity?
After they decide, she announces they too are in tech. She was a software engineer, now taking a break from her e-commerce firm, which, compared to its tech division, has a notoriously poor reputation for work culture. He is in AI but can't quite name a use case of merit until I say that medicine is where I think AI should make a difference for addressing chronic diseases. He then smartly notes that AI can predict protein folding, potentially aiding the diagnosis of degenerative brain diseases.
They wonder out loud, rather anxiously, about the deleterious effects of AI on humanity. I finish eating as they continue their menu deliberations and ask for the check to give them space. Before leaving, I ask about her favorite nineteenth-century author, as that long century still remains the golden age of literature. She instead replies with the name of a contemporary work, Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day, centered on unspoken emotions. We agree it is excellent, though we part company on his Klara and the Sun, which I loved. We re-converge in our admiration for Never Let Me Go.
I continue my reading of Dante's Inferno on the second floor of the well-known Vesuvius bar in North Beach, which feels alternately like a bar with an art gallery and an art gallery with a bar. From the window, I notice a young man sitting alone in the secluded Kerouac Alley, journaling against the background of a vivid mural illuminated by track lights, as if part of a stage design for a one-man performance.
After reaching the end of one of Dante's cantos, which explored the afterlife—a concept at odds with a Hindu's perspective of continuous existence without a distinct life or afterlife—I step outside, sit on their outdoor chair with a drink, and breathe in the cold air. I gaze at the mural's depiction of village life. A woman with a dog approaches the young man. He seems to know her and is convivial; he pets the dog but seems unconcerned when she leaves after a few minutes.
Reflecting on my earlier conversation at the restaurant, I wonder if I should have mentioned to her that Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go was less about fearing AI turning us into robots and more about the way we've already mechanized ourselves, willingly conforming to societal expectations. We have become robots incarnate—machines learning whatever was expected of us. It is interesting that in Klara and the Sun, a robot teaches a human empathy. In essence, humans become robots by conforming to society without AI; ironically, the robot restores humanity to the human.
Hello from Reddit! Keep it up