Even an illusion has a basis in reality. Recently, I watched a cardinal attack its own reflection in a car mirror, mistaking its appearance for another bird. Human beings make similar mistakes in subtler ways. Every work of art appears to place another consciousness before us.

Whether watching a magic trick or standing before a painting, we know that beneath the illusion lies an actual human mind making deliberate choices. The illusion is an expression of reality. Artificial intelligence reverses this relationship. It produces something that resembles the products of human consciousness while entirely lacking the conscious reality from which those products arise. It is appearance detached from being — an effect without a cause. It is, ultimately, a simulacrum.