"Is someone there?" Mr. Giles, the librarian asks while looking through books. He turns to look at a glass cabinet and catches his reflection. No one around him. He looks toward what he is sure is empty space to his side and gasps in fright as Angel, the vampire with a soul, stares at him blankly.
Giles turns back to the glass, consoling himself intellectually, saying:
"A vampire casts no reflection."
For at least 129 years since Bram Stoker's Dracula, vampires' missing reflections have been a consistent feature of this night-time creature, and I finally realized why this is such a great part of the lore: they can't see themselves!
Ok, that sounds pointlessly obvious but I think it applies directly to how we can better understand AI, empathy, and vampires. First, I want to lay some groundwork for how I am approaching monstrosity and humanity here. I think that monsters and monster stories are some of the most important stories we humans tell, but it's easy to get lost in the tension of reality and fantasy (focusing too much on the monster as either biological discovery or fantastic curiosity). Even worse, we can wield monster stories to turn actual humans into monsters for the purpose of domination, oppression, control, and/or power.
I can't make the case that all monsters are just misunderstood, nor can I say that there is not monstrosity to be found in humanity. If anything, it's dangerous to draw conclusions about monsters and humans that try to define clear lines between the two, especially if it trains us to dehumanize real people who are different than us. Monsters are supposed to be uncomfortable (and usually uncomfortably similar to us), they are supposed to play in the margins or in the fuzzy spaces where categories and simple explanations fail. That's what makes monstrosity so useful: it creates space for us to explore, to question, and to wonder.
Mirror, Mirror
Mirrors alone are mystical or symbolic to us humans. They're "windows into the soul" in one context and represent vanity, foolishness, and shallowness in another. Combine them with vampires and you've got a whole bunch of topics to ponder: pride, souls, desire, emptiness, death, etc. In a meta-sort of way, monsters can be helpful because they separate what in reality is one thing (humanity) into two things (humanity and monstrosity). The separation allows us to examine what is harder to see within ourselves, acting as a mirror to provide the reflective space to see what we can't see without it.
I'll borrow a little bit from Buffy The Vampire Slayer for how to think of vampires, since it still pretty well captures the current concept of these creatures of the night. In Buffy, vampires look like the humans that were killed and turned by other vamps, but they explicitly state that the person is gone and there is now a demon inside the body. So even if your friend gets turned into a vampire, they have the memories and the looks of the person you once knew, that person is gone. It's not just a matter of a monstrous side coming out that was inherent to the person—the monster is not the human and vice versa.
The TV spin-off series, Angel, further cements this idea because the eponymous character, Angel, is a vampire with a restored soul and when his soul is magically removed on occasion, the demon Angelus regains control of the body, as though the human soul and the demon both inhabit the body now. The soul takes precedence, but once it is gone (or suppressed by some external force/substance), the vampire—a separate entity—is now operating again.
Vampires are so close to the humans they inhabit, and yet they have no reflection. It's almost as if the soul is what is reflected: no soul, no reflection. But what if we take it further? What if we are the reflection of the vampire? Or, perhaps, the vampire is the reflection of us? Mirrors are just a stand-in for the concept of seeing that which is similar, but not the actual thing itself. My reflection isn't actually me, but it looks just like me.
Mirrors are still useful—I can make observations, gather data, and ask introspective questions with its help. Even so, the mirror is not a replacement for me. With no body, no social connection, the mirror is ultimately powerless in satisfying human needs. It isn't human or humanity.
VampAIre
If the vampire is the reflection of humanity, then it makes sense that it couldn't see itself in a mirror, because it's only apparent in the context of other humans. While no humans really are monsters, we are absolutely capable of monstrosity. It is uncanny to know a person and to also know of their actions, especially when those actions are harmful, cruel, and/or heartless, as though we are encountering their reflection. It can be hard to reconcile the monstrous behavior with the humanity they have. Outside of story, the reality is that our humanity encapsulates our monstrosity—there is no separate entity to blame.
In a way, artificial intelligence (AI) also works the same way as our vampires. AI is not "alive" nor is it "conscious," but even if we were so generous as to assume it were, AI would not be able to see its reflection either. AI is the reflection of us. It does not have humanity in itself because it is a fundamentally different being. It may be able to communicate with us, it may have our "memories" in the form of its training data, it may even have agency and goals and desires, but it is not human, because it isn't human.
Not being human is not an insult, it's an important distinction for our own safety. If we start seeing the reflection as if it were human, then we are deceived and we are opened up to all kinds of dangers; physical, emotional, mental, financial, and on and on.
AI is the reflection of its creators and trainers. It is the reflection of the person who prompts it. It appears in the form of humanity because it presents text, speech, images, videos, sounds, as if a human did it/made it. It responds to our questions and requests in ways that we can understand. However, it lacks the empathy and the social connection that would make it even more human-like. AI cannot foresee the impact of its production; it cannot feel the weight of the lives lost to its influence or the changes in the environment of the physical world. It cannot care like a human, because it is not embodied; it is not biologically nor psycho-socially connected to us. It's a reflection; abstracted, but similar enough to fool someone passing by.
While vampires are generally imminent threats to humans, Buffy explores options where vampires team up with humans against greater evil or for "aligned goals." AI does not feed off of human life, nor is it intentionally designed to be a predator (we hope, anyway). The real monstrosity of AI is in its categorically transgressive nature: it feels like interacting with a human, but it is not human. It is neither inherently malevolent nor benevolent, but it is also not neutral (it's a trickster)—it amplifies and distorts regardless of intention from either AI or its operator. Since AI inhabits this other fuzzy space, we have to accept the complexity of it, including the new work it demands of us to introspect, to examine, and to wonder about how we are teaming up with it.
Because AI can't look in a mirror to see its reflection, we have the duty to do so instead. What do we see as a consequence of our actions with AI? What are the impacts to our culture? What is AI doing to positively or negatively impact our children, our families, our coworkers, our satisfaction in life, our futures, our conflicts, our humanity?