Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The first thing I noticed was My legs.
Not my thinking. Not the argument taking shape on the screen. My legs. Seven hours into a late-night session with Claude, I stood up to get water and almost fell. Not dramatically. Just a half-second gap between intending to walk and walking, my body needing a moment to remember it existed in three dimensions rather than the two of the screen.
I have experienced this hundreds of times. Every builder who works long hours at a desk knows the feeling. I had always filed it under "stiffness" — a physical inconvenience, the body's complaint about a posture held too long. A minor tax on productive work.
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone would say I was classifying a cognitive event as
