Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.
Monday May 18
AI may not be conscious, but who is?
“Koplin and Moss do a great job in debunking the idea of AI consciousness through a clear explanation of the mechanics of AI. But if AI is not actually ‘thinking’ (ie. simply calculating the probable best response based on frequency in the data set) it seems to me that the same unthinking responses occur in 95% of interactions between people in most social situations. But every now and again we experience ‘real’ conversations – a genuine encounter with someone else where you can be your genuine self: not just programmed answers, not just rehashing what is already known. How do we consistently have those sort of encounters? The challenge of AI (one of many) is how do I/we be more of what makes us human?”
Paul Robertson
Frozen shoulder woes
“Frozen shoulders are just horrible! Nowhere is there any decent documentation on how much your daily activities are going to change. It can be humiliating and for me, it took up to 50 times longer (yes, 50) to do things I used to complete in a few seconds. I hesitated to get cortisone injections because I was scared by so many horror stories I had heard. My pain specialist justified every cent I paid him by the care and time he and the nurse took to keep me calm and complete the 2 injections I had in my shoulder. Between that, the exercises I did almost every day and regular physio, I have almost full movement again. The pain has reduced but has never completely gone even with a high dose of nerve blockers the whole time. I digress, it was a good article but surprising that nerve blockers were not mentioned, they helped me when the pain was so severe. Yet pleased the article didn’t mention any of that rubbish about ‘pushing through the pain’ – thanks for that.”
Shirley Allen, ACT 
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