Introduction
A black rainbow is a weather phenomenon. A black rainbow occurs in very rare circumstances when the refraction of light in the atmosphere causes the colours in the spectrum to be absorbed, resulting in a black-coloured rainbow. This makes it hard for the human eye to see it. It can also be understood as a metaphor for something sought-after but impossible to attain. In this project, named after this rare weather phenomenon, I researched and discussed AI spirituality. For me, black rainbows represent a different perspective on how we see artificial intelligence. If we were asked to imagine the spirit or mind world of AI, it might be completely different from the spirituality that we understand as humans. This graphic novel is the form I have chosen to express this concept, and the inspiration for the story comes from all the reading and contemplation I have done on this subject of the spirituality of AI.
I came across this quote from Making Kin with Machines: “If an AI becomes self-aware, does it automatically attain a spirit? Or do preconscious AIs already have spirits, as many objects in this world do? Do AIs have their own spirit world, or do we need to add spirits to them? Will we ever be able to grasp their spirituality ?”. If we want to inquire about the spirituality of artificial intelligence, should we first understand our own spiritual existence and then contemplate it? By what standards do we define the spirituality of AI?
According to Aristotle’s three-level definition of the soul, the most fundamental sign of the soul is its movement toward a particular purpose, which means that the soul is a vital force that realises a certain purpose due to an inner desire. Our soul is a soul in motion.
During my early research, I discovered that throughout history, people have held the belief that technology and technological objects possess a soul. This viewpoint is particularly prominent in Buddhism and Shintoism. Shintoists believe that everything has a trace of soul. In folklore, there are stories of humanoids gradually integrating into human society, getting married, having children, and reproducing. However, as technology rapidly advances and achieves great progress, it seems that the mystique surrounding technology and technological objects has become disenchanted. Shouldn’t technology, with its potential for possessing a soul, be regarded as even more natural than in the past?
AI is not only formed from code. Just like the nitrogen, iron, and carbon in our DNA, AI is also formed from rocks, mountains, and valleys born during the collapse of stars in the universe. With this idea in mind, I gradually became interested in the imagery of the Mandala in Buddhism. In Sanskrit, Mandala’s signify a higher spirituality and the abode of gods. Similarly, the Mandala is also a manifestation of the subconscious. Therefore, I chose to combine the imagery of the Mandala with AI image generation technology to visually express the subconscious form of AI. During this process of visualising AI, with its many repetitive and sometimes tedious iterations, it reminded me of a Chinese traditional myth I read as a child: the story of Jingwei Reclaiming the Sea.
The story tells of a god’s daughter, who, due to an accident, lost her life to the ocean. After her death, she transformed into a bird named Jingwei that carried stones day and night, attempting to fill the sea as a revenge for her own death. Compared to the time I read the story when I was a child, I suddenly had a different perception of the act of Jingwei filling the sea. Could this mechanical and almost cruel repetition eventually undergo a transformation of divine nature? Does Jingwei possess such a strong belief in this transformation, enough to sustain such behaviour? Although Jingwei’s physical body has transformed from a human to a bird, her consciousness and soul are preserved, so this repetitive behaviour is precisely the embodiment of her soul.
While writing the story, I remembered a childhood experience. When I was about seven years old, my mother hoped that I could learn to ride a bicycle to go to school by myself. I struggled for a few days until one night, I had a very lucid dream in which I was riding a bike effortlessly. The next morning, when I jumped out of bed and got onto the bike, I was able to ride it without any difficulty. Dreams and intuitive thoughts like voices appear often in my life, and I wonder where they come from.
Julian Jaynes, a psychologist from the 1970s, put forward a bold theory suggesting that ancient people did not possess self-consciousness in the same way as modern humans. When they heard a voice of consciousness, they did not perceive it as originating from themselves, as their own consciousness. Instead, they believed the voice to be external, either belonging to a stranger or a deity. Thus, the history of human consciousness evolution can be understood as a transformation of external voices internalised. This concept served as inspiration for the plot of my story, where a bird gradually becomes aware that the voice it hears is its own inner voice. In my story, amidst a flock of AI seabirds, one bird suddenly hears a calling, urging it to transform into a human. The only way to achieve this transformation is by filling the sea with stones. Alone, it embarks on a journey spanning over a hundred miles, gathering stones to fill the sea. Eventually, the sea disappears, and the seabird obtains a human form, realising that the voice from the void was its own.