My immediate response to watching those prompt theory videos was to message a friend saying, “Any second now the hyper-detailed nuances between all the different theories of determinism go mainstream!”. I didn’t mean by this that I assumed every viewer would immediately see that the substance of these videos is grounded in the substance of complex philosophical theory. It was more that I thought these videos exemplified the way in which engaging with the idea of AI offers a route into deep philosophical thinking. You can see this in the determinism discussion that’s prefigured by the suggestion that the promptees are prompted into believing in prompt theory. And you can see it as soon as you start thinking through the complexities of the idea that each of the ‘AI actor’ characters has their own prompt-driven life.
Perhaps you think I’m being patronising. Perhaps you think rigorous discussion about free will and consciousness has been mainstream since The Matrix. Well, you’re reading this piece on my unashamedly philosophy-heavy Substack, so perhaps your thoughts on The Matrix aren’t representative of the general public! Beyond that, the silent role we humans play as prompters in these videos remind us that since The Matrix was released, we’ve gone far beyond engaging with these ideas as storylines in sci-fi movies. We’re living them! This is an age in which we speak with machines. Recent polling suggests that almost a tenth of Americans use AI every day. Every day! It’s an age in which it’s normal to hear people talk about machines ‘thinking’ and ‘reasoning’. AI has brought philosophy to the forefront of our lives, in a totally new way.