AI and Naples

 Al may tell you where I took this video, maybe even what the bookseller is saying, but Al will never tell you what it smells like here or what the stones feel like under your feet. Or mine. 

To experience something somewhere, you simply have to be there. You may also get really close by reading a very well-written book about the place.

It is important to remember that AI does not share the physical reality with us and thus it cannot know what it is to be human. An AGI, singularity, is merely a pipe dream of conmen.

Naples, or Napoli in Italian, is something to experience firsthand. One cannot imagine the crowds, the roar of engines (no electric ones here), the smell of restaurants, garbage bins, shops fo fishmongers. Just looking at a video does not come close to the feeling of having hundreds of people around all the time, or the need to step aside to avoid dog poo. The misery of homelessness, the down-and-out makes one look elsewhere and then feel bad because of that. 

There is beauty, mainly in some people, but buildings are mostly ugly, cheaply built utilitarian concrete boxes at various levels of breakdown. The polluted air does not mix well with the upkeep of buildings. Maybe there is not so much interest either, since as long as it is nice inside and the building is not in danger of collapsing, one does better by buying another car or scooter, of which there can never be too many. 

I remember liking Kowloon in Hong Kong 20 years ago even though it is even more densely populated and smellier. But the noise of engines was lower there.

I walked 12 kilometres around Napoli. It was exhausting, I have now a piercing headache. The same headache I had when I had my previous walk here in 2006.