many years ago, distrustful of what has now become the LLM instantiation I science fictioned an idea of a analog engine that inter-laced with our neurology, not to replace or augment, but to provide a pathway to another substrate: a ship of perseus with real upgrades not just replacements. A psychopomp not a soul-eater. (And not digital as we know it), heuristics (after Douglas R, Hofstadter) do not impress me as ghosts, even for selves that do not exist. Given the copy has even less soul I still think that neural lacing idea provides a better analogy (pun intended) than heuristic mapping (the map is not the territory. Even if our flesh is given into predicative generations and generative hallucinations (AKA expectations & routines).

It is not even that there is an elusive something to be capture that mapping cannot do, merely that even is we are a map ourselves (of the world, of ourselves) this non-existence is still happening to some one instance, and that materiality is what matters, and calling that a soul or spirit is one of our most misguided hallucinations

my criticism is one of commodification rather than the aggregate though