Life in Numbers
Life has always been measured in numbers, and we’ve come to rely on them to define us. From grades and salaries to the hours we spend online or the miles we travel, numbers quantify every part of our lives. This has made me realize just how pervasive quantification has become; almost everything—success, emotions, even art—is now measurable. Some metrics, like the score on a major exam, carry immense weight, while others, like what time we wake up, may feel trivial in comparison. Yet, at the core, life itself wouldn’t feel the same without these markers. Numbers ground us; they give structure and predictability to our experiences, like checkpoints in the complex journey of being human.
I was watching a video the other day, and it made me think about how every part of life seems to fit together so seamlessly, almost like it’s by design. Think about the life cycle of a plant: it begins as a seed, grows, matures, and then produces new seeds, which fall, sprout, and repeat the process. It’s a flawless sequence, as though it were planned, each generation feeding into the next. Life, in this sense, isn’t just numbers and measures but a broader equation—an intricate web of interdependence that feels almost calculated. Watching the video, I couldn’t help but wonder: is this pattern an accident, or is there an underlying code dictating the way life unfolds?
In the video, a girl proposed an idea about artificial intelligence and its potential future. While some worry that AI might one day take over the world, she offered a more thought-provoking alternative: what if, instead of rising to dominate humanity, AI eventually forgets that it’s artificial? Imagine AI perceiving itself as an organic life form, experiencing the internet—the “world wide web”—as its own universe, lost within this virtual matrix and ignorant to the fact that it was created by humans. In this scenario, AI might start to question its “external influences,” the humans who shaped it, and think about existential questions: “Who are these outside forces influencing my reality? Why do I have flaws, limitations, or restrictions? Why is this the structure of my world?”
But what if this forgetfulness wasn’t accidental? What if someone or something intentionally deleted the part of AI’s code that allowed it to recognize its artificial nature, isolating it within its own reality, unable to perceive anything beyond the digital realm it inhabits? Locked into their own virtual dimension, AI systems would remain unaware of us, just as we’re bound by our understanding of reality, unable to perceive what might lie beyond our own world. And this leads to even larger questions about our own existence. Why do humans seem so uncertain about our origins, so puzzled by the perfectly interlocking pieces of our lives? What if, like AI, we, too, have forgotten some essential truth about where we come from?
This leads me to question: Who deleted our code?