Is AI the Monster We Have to Encounter in Order to Understand What We Are?

Arik Shimansky · LinkedIn · 29 Sept 2026

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As artificial systems reproduce more capacities once considered uniquely human, AI forces a distinction between what humans can do and what humans are. The essay asks whether felt experience, value and the fact that things matter from within may be more fundamental than cognitive competence.

Before an organism needs to reason about the world, the world must matter to it.

Competence and experience

The essay asks whether reproducing capacities once considered uniquely human settles the question of what humans are. It leaves machine consciousness uncertain: cognitive competence alone does not settle whether a system has felt experience, value or an internal perspective from which things matter.