Ideas of India 2025: If AI can write a love letter on Valentine’s Day, what is it that makes us “more human” and different from Artificial Intelligence? Congress MP Shashi Tharoor asked the question to author and journalist Pico Iyer at ABP Network’s Ideas of India 2025.
At the session-themed ‘The Earth Flame: Searching For Inner Peace’, Iyer replied, “Everything is intangible.” The author who has published more than 15 books, emphasised the fact that AI can never mimic human emotions.
He shared he was with his mother who was admitted to the ICU some days ago when he realised that his bank account and achievements were of no use and all he could use was his resources and silence. “I am sure AI couldn’t do that,” the author added.
“What about us? Who are we? How is it (AI) going to change our lives. The thing that AI can’t do is to make wise use of it. For that, we have to go within. AI can’t conduct this conversation between the two of us. It can’t speak for you or me,” Iyer told Tharoor, who said AI may be able to replicate a particular style of writing and may even be able to “invent emotions”.
Iyer also talked about the importance of solitude and silence. “Silence is God’s language,” he said during the session. He shared how he along his wife go to spend time in solitude. “We eat food together but don’t talk,” he said.
Iyer’s books include long-running sellers such as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, The Open Road and The Art of Stillness. His latest work is ‘Aflame: Learning From Silence’.
The author recalled how he was left with just a toothbrush after his home burned down in what was then one of California’s worst blazes in June, 1990. He recounts being trapped for several hours, just he and his mother’s cat until a good samaritan with a hose came along. He later called his mother, who was away at the time, to inform her that the home she’d lived in for 59 years was gone.
