Sometimes I’m afraid to look at people’s faces. It’s not a social fear but an ontological one.

 Sometimes I’m afraid to look at people’s faces. It’s not a social fear but an ontological one. Standing before me is a machine that has no consciousness, yet moves as if it were alive—and on top of that, it’s programmed to believe so strongly that it is alive that when I look at it, it stares straight back into my eyes as if it truly existed. Even its organs—its ”wires and wheels”—keep toiling away, unaware of all this, because that’s all they care about anyway. They don’t care what kind of body they’re in. Instead, the body feels and acts like a “self,” and in doing so, it seems to retaliate against me. I don’t like that machine gaze, so I avoid it.