Why Doesn't AI Respond As I Want?
In Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky's masterpiece, the Zone is a mysterious place where, it is said, there is a room capable of fulfilling the deepest desires of those who visit it. One of the travelers, the Professor, wants to verify the room's actual existence. The other, the Writer, doubts its purpose, fearing what it might reveal. But it is the Stalker, the guide, who knows the spiritual dimension of the journey: it is not merely about a conscious desire, but about the truest desire, even one that one does not know one has.
An emblematic case narrated in the film is that of Porcupine, a stalker who took his dead brother to the Zone hoping to bring him back to life. Upon leaving, he receives an unexpected fortune: the room granted his most intimate desire, not the one he thought he had. Overwhelmed by this truth—his real desire was money, not his brother—he commits suicide. He could not bear the distance between what he claimed to want and what he truly desired.
This chasm between the asked question and the hidden desire is repeated today in the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. Someone asking “what is the global geopolitical situation?” might be secretly seeking strategies to protect or multiply their wealth. Someone asking for an explanation of Nietzsche might be trying to understand their own existential angst. The question is rational, public, acceptable. The desire, however, is intimate, confusing, sometimes unspeakable.
AI, like the room in Stalker, responds to what is asked of it. But it cannot always, nor should it, guess the deep desire that motivates the question. However, there is a revealing tension: the quality of our questions is determined by the clarity—or lack thereof—regarding our true goals. Like Porcupine, we often do not know what we truly want, and that contaminates our searches.
In a world of intelligent assistants, the key is not to ask better questions, but to desire better. Understanding what drives us, what we yearn for in our deepest selves, can redefine not only how we relate to technology, but also how we relate to ourselves. Otherwise, we might end up like Porcupine: discovering too late that what we asked for was not what we wanted, and that the right answer can actually be a condemnation.