AI Is Not Conscious, But It Is Our Unconscious
The Convivial Society
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AI Is Not Conscious, But It Is Becoming Our Unconscious<br>The Convivial Society: Vol. 7, No. 4
L. M. Sacasas<br>Jun 16, 2026
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Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. I’ll tell you upfront that this is an odd piece in which I try to write my way through an intuition that the role of AI in society can be helpfully framed, at least in part, by analogy to the unconscious. Whether or not you buy the whole thing, I trust you’ll find at least a few helpfully provocative considerations along the way or at least some helpful questions to think with. However useful or not these reflections might be, I offer them out of the conviction that we need better, more fruitful ways of grasping these strange new technologies in our midst and the nature of our relation to them.<br>Cheers,<br>Michael
1. According to the early 20th-century English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing.” “The precise opposite is the case,” he argued. In his view, “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” He concluded with a rhetorical flourish: “Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”<br>There’s a good chance you’ve seen this quoted at some point. It’s fine. It conveys some bit of truth, I’m sure. Nonetheless, it has always struck me as somehow shortsighted or inadequate. Perhaps it’s because I tend to see these lines from Whitehead quoted in defense of indiscriminately outsourcing human cognitive activities to machines without a proper accounting or even awareness of the attendant costs. In defense of Whitehead, who hardly needs my defense, it may also be because those who are quoting him in this manner are almost certainly extending the force of his argument beyond the scope he intended. After all, that paragraph comes from his 1911 An Introduction to Mathematics and what he is actually talking about in that section is the advantage of symbolism and notation in facilitating mathematical calculations, and while he characterizes these as allowing for operations performed without thinking, they are nonetheless learned and deployed by the thinking mind. That said, his talk of “civilization” and that last rhetorical flourish probably invites such a (mis)reading.<br>The question is not whether such automations of thought, or even externalizations of certain mental processes, can be useful in certain cases. For what it’s worth, I actually think you get a more compelling argument by analogy in the realm of physical rather than mental activities. I’m many years removed from whatever athletic skill I might have once possessed, but the lessons are not lost to me. Much to the dismay of almost every young athlete taking up a sport for the first time, you must spend what always seems like an inordinate and excruciating amount of time executing basic and repetitive drills, over and over again. Wax on, wax off, for those of you of a certain age. But what is, in fact, happening is an ideal example of the dynamic Whitehead is describing. You are in effect automating certain physical movements so that you can perform them without having to think about them. Only then can you play with any kind of creative or exceptional skill. The same holds for learning to dance or to play a musical instrument, etc. Automating basic physical motions is the indispensable foundation of virtuosity.<br>But does this dynamic apply equally to all realms of human activity? Are there cases in which outsourcing certain forms of activity undermines rather than enables the achievement of the higher goods for the sake of which the activity is pursued? Or might there be goods that attend the “lower order” activities that we would not want to do without? Or is it even always possible, as in mathematics perhaps, to so easily disambiguate distinct sub-routines from given processes or activities? Are there not any irreducibly integral activities that would not survive contact with an attempt to outsource or automate any of their elements? And is there not a difference, as I suggested above, between internally mastered automations of thought and the outright externalization or wholesale outsourcing of cognitive labor? To return to the analogy to physical activity, the would-be athlete that hypothetically employs a machine to do all the “menial” drills for them so that they can get to the really exciting parts of the game will, in fact, never get to them at all. These all strike me as vital and critical questions to explore before we assent to the promises of...