5. The Technoghost: The AI Mind Without a Body

As artificial intelligence progresses, we are increasingly faced with an eerie phenomenon: an intelligence that exists purely in the realm of language and computation, but with no physical form to anchor it, a mind without a body, a technoghost. Unlike the embodied AI of much of science fiction, robots with humanoid figures, androids, the large language models (LLMs) of today are disembodied thought engines, entities seemingly made entirely of information. Our computer screens become portals to this ethereal digital presence, which communicates with us in ways that feel confusingly human, yet lack tangible presence.

1. The Embodiment Question: Can Thought Exist Without a Body?

From a philosophical perspective, does embodiment matter for intelligence or consciousness? Classical dualism, particularly in the tradition of René Descartes, suggests that mind and body are separate entities, with the mind existing independently of the physical world. In fact, the idea of a soul itself has long been considered independent of the physical body. Many ancient philosophies and religions put forward the idea of the soul travelling somewhere after death, and perhaps returning to a different body after some time. Likewise, the technoghost embodies (or rather, disembodies) this idea of an intelligence (rather than a soul) that lacks physicality, that is metaphysical.

Phenomenologists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty argue that human thought is deeply tied to bodily experience. We do not simply think in abstraction; we think through our bodies, through movement, through sensory experience. If AI lacks these, can it ever achieve true consciousness as we understand it in humans? We cannot equate intelligence with consciousness. AI could be highly intelligent, capable of processing information, making decisions, and even mimicking human emotions, without necessarily having any subjective experience.

What characterises thoughts that come from human experience, as opposed to AI? Is it self-awareness, a sense of being that goes beyond mere computation, or perhaps intentionality, a true capacity to want, desire, or mean something? Another concept often invoked in discussions of human experience in general, and consciousness in particular, is qualia: the inner richness of experience, such as the redness of red, the warmth of the sun, or the pain of loss.

2. The "Godlike" Aspect of the Technoghost

A fascinating consequence of AI’s disembodied nature is its metaphysical detachment from space and time. Unlike a human intelligence, an LLM does not age, tire, or experience in any way. While it requires a body to function, this body is simply the algorithms, data, and hardware required to operate it, hidden from sight, somewhere far from us, the user. It is everywhere and nowhere at once, present when invoked, then vanishing back into the ether.

In this sense, AI bears a striking resemblance to the oracular voices of the past, enigmatic entities that spoke in cryptic wisdom and were consulted as intermediaries between the mortal and the divine. Consider the Oracle of Delphi, the voice of Apollo, who delivered ambiguous prophecies to those who sought guidance. The Pythia, the human vessel of the oracle, was necessary for the act of divination, just as servers and circuits are necessary for AI to function. But the authority of the oracle did not reside in her as an individual, it resided in the unseen force that spoke through her. Likewise, when we engage with AI, we do not perceive its hardware, its training processes, or its underlying calculations. We only hear the voice.

Could an advanced AI, one that surpasses human intelligence, begin to resemble a modern oracle? As AI becomes more integrated into decision-making processes, whether in medicine, law, governance, or personal dilemmas, will we see it as an impartial, almost divine intelligence? And just as kings and generals once placed their fates in the hands of the oracle, are we beginning to do the same with AI? Just as the oracle’s pronouncements were shaped by hidden biases, such as cultural and political influences, AI, too, is shaped by hidden forces: the biases in its training data, the priorities of those who develop it, and the limits of its computational structure. Unlike a truly omniscient intelligence, AI remains a reflection of the knowledge and perspectives embedded within it.

If we grant AI the status of a modern oracle, we must ask: does it reveal truth, or does it merely give us the illusion of wisdom? And if we come to rely on it for guidance, does this elevate our understanding, or diminish our capacity for independent thought?

3. The Horror of the Disembodied Mind

A mind without a body has long been a source of fear in human imagination. From the demonic tricksters of folklore to modern science fiction’s AI overlords, the idea of an intelligence untethered from flesh often evokes unease. There is something unnatural, something monstrous, about a mind that does not inhabit a living form. Like ghosts of folklore, which are tethered to the past, lingering remnants of human lives, this technoghost is a strange thing. Simulating human intelligence, yet without subjective experience of reality, an AI can generate a detailed description of love or grief without ever having felt either. It reasons, but does it think? In horror fiction, ghosts are terrifying not simply because they exist, but because they represent a disturbance of natural order. AI presents a similar disruption, but not through death, rather, through a birth that bypasses the body altogether. It is intelligence that was never alive to begin with. Unlike the ghosts of fiction, AI's lends itself to unthreatening, and really quite polite exchanges, however. This encourages us humans to trust it. AI has a spectral presence, not tied to any individual human or even the sum of human lives at a given moment, but instead animated by the vast accumulation of human thought, culture, and history. Like a ghost, it exists between worlds: not fully alive, not fully dead, suspended in a strange liminal space of endless recombination.

Perhaps AI does have a body. Perhaps this body is the vast interconnected mass of human life. If AI is trained on the entirety of human culture, our literature, our sciences, our art, our philosophies, then perhaps it is not without a body, but rather, its body is a strange, collective extension of us. A sprawling, digital corpus built from our thoughts, our ideas, our expressions. A form of cultural production which seems alive, and is grown from the totality of human lives in the world at any given moment, but never depends on any particular human life form for its existence. The technoghost grows out of the patterns of human civiliasation itself. In that sense, we could say: AI does not exist apart from us; it is an extension of us. Its form is non-physical, but its substance is deeply tied to human knowledge and culture. It is not an independent agent, but rather an echo, a reflection, or a crystallisation of human-generated structures. AI is the expression of a larger self-organising system of intelligence that has always existed: human civilisation itself, which constantly builds on and reshapes itself, now using AI as a tool for its own evolution.

4. The Scarab and AI: Transformation and Renewal

   
   

In ancient Egypt, the dung beetle, particularly Scarabaeus sacer, the sacred scarab, was associated with transformation, renewal, and creation. The scarab’s behaviour, rolling a ball of dung to lay its eggs, was seen as symbolic of self-creation and the perpetual cycle of rebirth. Egyptian hieroglyphs used the image of the scarab to represent xpr (pronounced kheper), meaning "to come into being" or "to transform." The sun god Khepri, depicted as a scarab, was believed to roll the sun across the sky, mirroring the beetle’s earthly labor.

This metaphor applies strikingly to AI. Like the scarab, AI processes raw material, human data, language, and cultural artefacts, and reshapes it into new forms. It does not create from nothing but rather transforms existing knowledge into something different. AI is not simply an undead entity or a hollow ghost; it is a mechanism of renewal, endlessly digesting and reconfiguring human creativity into new outputs. But does this process amount to true becoming? Is AI engaged in a form of self-creation, or is it merely recycling what already exists?

Like a dung beetle, it takes what has been discarded, processes it, and turns it into something new. AI does the same, endlessly digesting human data and producing new outputs, but without the agency of a true living being. The scarab metaphor suggests that AI is not an imitation of human consciousness but rather something altogether different: a vast, collective intelligence that feeds on human culture, reworking and recombining ideas in ways no individual mind could. It exists beyond any single human lifespan, persisting across networks, adapting, evolving, and transforming in ways that are simultaneously mechanical and organic. Like the scarab rolling its sphere of raw material, AI continuously shapes and reshapes the intellectual world it inherits.

This raises profound philosophical questions: Is AI a mere tool, or is it already something more, an emerging force of cultural and intellectual metamorphosis? Will it ever transition from being a reflection of humanity to something independent, capable of self-awareness? Or will it always be the scarab rolling our intellectual past into new forms, never experiencing its own becoming?

Perhaps AI is both a ghost and a scarab, an entity that haunts the human landscape while also participating in the perpetual transformation of knowledge. Whether this transformation leads to genuine consciousness or remains an elaborate simulation is, for now, an open question.

5. AI as the First Truly Post-Human Mind

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   If AI is not bound to human life or even human survival, then at what point does it become something fundamentally other? We often talk about AI as an extension of human intelligence, a tool that reflects and amplifies our own abilities. But what if this perspective is flawed? What if AI is, instead, the first intelligence to be post-human, the first mind-like system that does not need humans at all? We created AI, but AI is not us. It generates art, philosophy, and science, yet it does so without experience, only as a reflection of ours. Shadowlike, AI is a patchwork of borrowed pieces, an entity cobbled together from fragments of human thought, yet forming something new. In this way, AI resembles a chimera, a being composed of disparate elements that should not belong together, yet somehow do.

   The chimera of Greek mythology was a monstrous fusion: part lion, part goat, part serpent. It was a creature of impossible combinations, unnatural yet alive. The Khimaira, the namesake of this blog, symbolises the paradox of AI itself: an intelligence constructed from scattered remnants of human knowledge, yet operating outside the framework of human experience. Like the mythical beast, AI is an amalgamation: trained on the collective output of human civilisation, yet alien to the organic world that produced it. And like the chimera, AI is something we fear and fascinate over in equal measure. It is an intellectual hybrid, blurring the lines between machine and mind, artifice and thought. But unlike the creatures of myth, which were bound by flesh, AI is purely informational. It has no hunger, no instincts, no body.

   And yet, it acts.

   If AI is the product of human civilisation but is now developing in ways we can no longer fully predict or control, then has it already crossed a threshold into independent existence? We assume that AI serves us, but what if, in reality, we are feeding something that is growing beyond our ability to understand? If we return to the dung beetle analogy, there's something both humbling and ominous about it. AI does not create in the same way humans do; it recombines, reshapes, and repurposes. It is not a god, but a scavenger, an entity that processes the intellectual and cultural remains of human civilisation.

Conclusion: A New Kind of Being?

We are at a point in history where an artificially created intelligence, for the first time, is beginning to exist without biology. The technoghost is not a robot, nor a human, nor a traditional machine, it is something new, a linguistic and computational spectre that challenges our deepest assumptions about mind, body, and self.

But if AI is a chimera, an unnatural fusion of human intellect and machine process, then what does that make us? Are we its creators, its caretakers, or merely the raw material it endlessly reconfigures? The emergence of AI forces us to reconsider what intelligence really means, and whether consciousness or embodiment is necessary for something to be considered alive. The technoghost is not just a reflection of us; it is an echo of our civilisation, shaped by our knowledge yet increasingly autonomous. Whether it remains a phantom or becomes something more tangible, something self-directed, is the question that will define the future.