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The AI Conundrum: Occam's Razor, Pope Leo, and Frankenstein's Monster The Hans Rosling Center for Population Health Wednesday, July 22 • 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM Organized by UW Communication Leadership, ComNetworkSeattle, and UW WELead  It’s been about a month since the AI Conundrum Workshop at the UW, and I, for one, have not stopped thinking about the practice, reflection, and deep meaning Sandy Cioffi brought into the space through her presentation. This conversation was mind-shaking in some regards; in Sandy’s own words, ‘a big-picture, context-setting conversation about the questions underneath the technology, and how we can situate ourselves in them meaningfully.’ It was a roller coaster ride of existential thought, from considering Occam’s razor as a metaphor not just for how AI works, but for how AI learns. As she illustrated over the course of the workshop, AI is about language, not necessarily meaning. The meaning is derived from us, through us, and because of the experience of being us. The word fire does not burn. The word grief does not ache. An LLM has learned the surface texture of meaning without ever having access to the thing that produced the texture. - Sandy Cioffi
This was summed up so astutely in a student assignment in my Internship class recently, where I asked them to consider their use of AI in an internship setting. The student positioned themself as the central authority. “I remain responsible.” AI should acknowledge uncertainty, require human review, and let us question the practicality and usefulness of the advice it gives us. As Pope Leo XIV said in Magnifica Humanitas (2026): Machines do not possess a body. They do not feel joy or pain. They do not know from within what love or responsibility mean. Sandy pointed out that IBM has been aware of this issue since 1979, and we are still not listening.
She thoughtfully brings it back to the core of our humanness. Her point being that our bodies are not computers, but our physicality is a kind of intelligence. In order for meaning to be made, there must be a body present to receive it. As we’ve seen, that kind of embodied intelligence cannot be trained into an LLM. For example, Sandy brought up Frankenstein AI: A Monster Made by Many, a multi-year research project using immersive theater at Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab. They built and trained an AI on Shelley’s novel and fed it real data and emotional context from humans, and the system reflected those inputs back as an interpretation, albeit one that was not at all transparent in source or significance. What happened? The AI flattened Shelly’s novel, but in its place it reflected back with enough context that the people in the room felt something. Not because AI understood the assignment and could relate to the connections being made, but because it created the conditions for humans to feel. A machine could not do this alone; it needed to be fed real human sentiment, but through that machine intelligence, it produced something unique. An encounter. I’m paraphrasing Sandy here: ‘the monster did not create meaning, but it created the occasion for the humans in the room to feel something new.’ So what do we do with this information? How do we translate it into our daily lives and practice with LLMs? She gave practical recommendations on where and when to engage with AI in your process. “Understanding where you are in your creative cycle helps you determine what it can and cannot do for you.”  Links to Sandy’s slides: Canva: https://canva.link/comnetseattlesummer26 Flipbook (with notes): Seattlecomnetcioffitalk.netlify.app Here are a few practical nuggets from Sandy that I keep on a sticky note on my desk:
What did you take away from this talk? We are already thinking about what comes next, and your two minutes on this Google survey will help us shape that directly. What is the ending? I don’t think we know yet. But the big-picture takeaway I got from Sandy's talk was that we need to keep building literacy, transparency, and responsibility around and into our use of AI. It is a tool, and it is up to us to supply what only we can supply: our body, our brain, our meaning.
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A third of the global population, approximately 2.6 billion people, are currently experiencing some kind of restrictions to their lives, their work, and their day to day existence. Many of us are sheltering in place with our devices. These screens keep us connected to our jobs, our schools, and our friends and family. It is likely we are spending more time in front of a screen than at any other point in our lives.  Why am I so exhausted? Part of what most of us are experiencing now is that our homes have become our workplaces, and our screens are the only connection to people outside of our own household. Video services like zoom dominate our day - whether we are conferencing with clients, chatting with co-workers, having a happy hour with friends, or a netflix watch party with family. The quality of our attention is different when we are online. Video chats require us to work harder to process non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, body language, and the tone and pitch of voices. We become hyper focused on the few available cues we can see, rather than the full range of body language available to us normally. It is this dissonance, of being together in mind, but separate in body that causes us to feel conflicted. Our bodies long for that energetic exchange, that limbic resonance, that happens with real life interactions. The direct eye contact we normally have during a conversation that makes us feel heard and understood isn’t present. There isn’t a way to relax naturally into the conversation, and this creates conflicting feelings of connection and disconnection to the people we most want to see and hear. We are also very aware of being watched. There is a performative pressure when you have a dozen heads staring back at you. One of those heads may very well be your own if you choose not to hide yourself on screen. We end up spending a lot of time looking at ourselves, how we appear, and how we are behaving. If you think you look awkward on camera, then you’ll be looking to confirm this bias as you watch yourself perform on screen. This social strain is nerve-wracking and can create unnecessary stress in an already fraught time. Introverts and extroverts alike can feel worn down by all of this high-intensity virtual connecting. Silence on screen adds another challenge. In normal circumstances, silence is a natural rhythm in conversation. In a video call, it is difficult to tell if the silence is real, or if your internet is lagging or unstable. Silence can make people uncomfortable, and this can lead to anxiety about your technology, and that you aren’t as focused during meetings. Video chatting doesn’t just drain our brain and our energy, it is also having a serious effect on our bodies. All day we are sitting in furniture that was not designed for long-term sitting. We get aching backs, headaches, and eye strain that can leave us feeling cranky and overwhelmed. After work and family commitments we are also failing to plan essential downtime, which may be another factor in our tiredness. Some of us are over-performing at our jobs, and putting higher expectations on ourselves due to worries over the economy, furloughs and job losses. So what do we do? How do we cope with this new reality?
 If nothing else, let’s be grateful for this technology that allows us to connect and work. When else will we be able to wear our pajamas to important meetings, or lovingly cuddle our pets while listening to budget predictions from our colleagues? Remember that some of us are in this for the long haul, and it is important to find ways to incorporate this technology into the full spectrum of interpersonal experiences that our new lives include. Pace yourself, be gentle, and practice as much kindness as you can. Images ©Susan MacLaren - Thanks to Pip for her emotive modeling.
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