Is That What Makes Me Human?

I have been reading the recently published book AI and the Art of Being Human by Jeffrey Abbott and Andrew Maynard. I found it a fascinating – and indeed optimistic – book, which prompted a lot of reflection, although not directly because I’ve been exploring AI myself. I haven’t (at least as yet), but the underlying theme of what it takes to be human resonated with me, even without the AI bit. I may have more to say about other aspects of the book another time, but for the moment I want to pause and think about one of the many questions the book poses:

What remains uniquely mine? – Name the experiences, feelings or qualities that can’t be captured by algorithms.

Thinking about what is ‘uniquely mine’ I would hazard a guess is not something many of us dwell on too often, at least if our primary focus is science. However, that sentiment certainly gave me pause for thought. I looked up and around the room I work in, and my eyes fell on the objects casually sitting on and around one of the (many) bookcases in the room in which I now ‘work’ (given I’m retired). It struck me how much these are symbols of the people and things that matter to me, or who have contributed to who I am. A strange collection they happen to be, but feeding into my being.

There is a conductor’s baton. This belonged to my grandmother who, in my teenage years, expended much effort every autumn on being part of running a conductors’ school; my grandparents lived with us. This was a weeklong course for those who lead things like WI choirs and other amateur bodies. My grandmother was undoubtedly musical, and right to the end would play Chopin mazurkas and polonaises with great panache but, in my lifetime, I never knew her conduct anything. Nevertheless, when we cleared my mother’s house after her death, this baton turned up and I couldn’t bear to throw it out.

Most of the other items on this bookshelf were also tied to that house-emptying, along with some of the books on the shelf itself. How can one throw out appalling Victorian tracts given to a great- or even great-grandmother as a Sunday school prize, for attendance or good behaviour? I can’t imagine reading the actual books, but inscribed books have sentiment attached it’s hard to dispose of.  Then there are a couple of pieces of damaged porcelain that were always part of my childhood. Perhaps they were valuable once, but they surely aren’t in their damaged state. I suspect anything actually valuable of this ilk was sold when we were on our beam-ends when I was around 10 and bankruptcy stalked the family.

Perhaps the item I treasure most is a print of brent geese by the naturalist, broadcaster and artist Peter Scott, dated 1939. I remember buying this – a scruffy somewhat crumpled print at the time, unframed – at a jumble sale (as I say, money was tight) for my mother’s birthday when I was a young teenager. She kept it by her bed all her life, and I treasure it because she treasured it. We brought it back to our house, and now that it is flattened and suitably framed it looks rather good. It reminds me of the days she and I used to go out birdwatching, including with the London Natural History Society’s coach trips to the Essex and Kent mudflats where we often saw brent geese. An atmospheric painting, bringing back memories of freezing cold days at the coast. But they were happy days out to places we’d never have got to without the LNHS (my mother never drove).
Hanging over the bookshelf is a penguin mobile that we must have given my daughter as a small child. It hung in her room till she left home. Indeed, it hung in her empty room gathering dust for many years and I rescued it before our house was gutted and refurbished, and now here it is.

The final item is a bronze (?) figurine of a woman standing tall and empowered. It’s about 30cm tall and very heavy. This was given to me by colleagues in the University when I stood down as the Gender Equality Champion as a vote of thanks. It meant a lot to me that they had clubbed together to give me this as a measure of appreciation for what I’d done, or at least tried to do, to support women across the university. It definitely symbolises empowerment and was created by a local artist.

So, in some ways that is a summary of significant parts of my life and the fact that I’ve kept these objects must say something about me. Is that what makes me human, because an algorithm probably wouldn’t have collected a random array like this? At least, I assume not.

Of course, that is by no means all of my past that I treasure and which I keep upstairs in nooks and crannies. There’s also my school attaché case, given to me when I was still at primary school and which – I suspect – I took in every day rather than the traditional satchel. It contains much of my past too, in the form of letters from my husband before we were married, the single letter from my father I still have with me, and my childish diaries. Curiously I had recourse to these this week: preparing a talk for the Royal Society’s meeting on practical science at school on Tuesday, I was amused to look back at what I wrote about my own days of school practicals. Suffice it to say, I was not good at them and safety issues were less on people’s minds then than now. I once nearly set fire to the chemistry lab and I had this to say about my first A Level chemistry lesson:

We did some titration and I swallowed some sodium hydroxide when trying to pipette it, but although nasty not serious.

I lived to tell the tale, and to gather all these memories – solid and ephemeral – around me. Is that what makes me human?