Part 28 asked whether AI can provide belonging. The answer was no. Belonging requires others. The self cannot belong to itself. An AI companion is not company in the way that matters.
Before we ask how to build it, we must understand what we’ve lost.
Social consciousness is not merely awareness that other people exist. It is the felt sense of being constituted by relationship. The experience of self as inherently social. The internalization of a “we” that precedes and enables the “I.”
What does it mean to know a field?
Not to have read about it. Not to have studied it once. But to know it. To hold it in your mind as a living body of understanding that grows, shifts, updates, connects.
The moment a person receives a diagnosis, language reshapes reality. “Dementia patient” is not the same person as “Eleanor.” The label precedes the person into every room, every interaction, every assumption about capacity.
What makes expertise valuable?
For most of history, the answer was simple. Expertise was valuable because it was scarce. The doctor knew medicine. The lawyer knew law. The engineer knew structures. You paid them because you did not know what they knew, and acquiring that knowledge would take years you did not have.
Margaret sits across from her daughter Sarah, frustrated. The AI assistant on her tablet just suggested she might enjoy a podcast about cryptocurrency investing and intermittent fasting.
Margaret is 78. She has never owned cryptocurrency. She eats breakfast at 7am because her diabetes medication requires it. The suggestion makes no sense.