The afternoon sun filtered through the tall windows of St Anselm's library as Professor Quillibrace searched quietly for a volume on medieval logic.
Mr Blottisham arrived carrying an enormous atlas.
"Professor!"
Quillibrace looked up.
"I've decided travelling is entirely unnecessary."
"Have you indeed?"
Blottisham placed the atlas upon the table with a satisfying thump.
"It contains every road."
"So I understand."
"Every mountain."
"Yes."
"Every river."
"Indeed."
He folded his arms triumphantly.
"So I've practically been everywhere."
Miss Stray, who had been reading by the window, looked over her spectacles.
"Have you?"
"Certainly."
"I see."
"Everything important is in the maps."
Quillibrace closed his book.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"Have you ever climbed Ben Nevis?"
"No."
"Walked across the Nullarbor?"
"No."
"Sailed through a storm?"
"No."
"But I know exactly where they are."
Miss Stray smiled.
"And how cold is Ben Nevis?"
Blottisham blinked.
"The map doesn't say."
"How exhausting is the Nullarbor?"
"It merely shows a road."
"What does a storm feel like?"
"It has little blue arrows."
Blottisham looked at the atlas suspiciously.
"I begin to think maps leave things out."
Quillibrace nodded.
"They do."
"But surely maps are useful."
"Exceptionally."
"They tell us about places."
"They do."
"They simply do not become the places."
A thoughtful silence followed.
Eventually Blottisham asked,
"So... books are maps?"
"Sometimes."
"And language?"
Miss Stray answered.
"Very often."
Blottisham frowned.
"But novels feel real."
"They often do."
"They can make me cry."
"They can."
"They can make me frightened."
"They can."
"So surely that's experience."
Quillibrace smiled.
"It is certainly an experience."
"But not necessarily the experience being described."
Blottisham considered this carefully.
"When I read about climbing Everest..."
"Yes?"
"...I'm experiencing reading."
"Precisely."
"I'm not experiencing Everest."
Miss Stray nodded approvingly.
"Yet the reading may still prepare you for Everest."
Blottisham brightened.
"So books inherit other people's adventures."
"Beautifully put."
Quillibrace leaned back.
"And language does something even more remarkable."
"What?"
"It allows experiences to survive their experiencers."
Blottisham looked genuinely puzzled.
"How can an experience survive?"
"By becoming meaning."
The room fell quiet.
Outside, students crossed the quadrangle carrying books whose authors had long since disappeared.
After a while Blottisham spoke again.
"So every book contains..."
He searched for a phrase.
"...somebody's way of making sense of the world."
Miss Stray nodded.
"And every generation adds another layer."
"Exactly."
"So libraries are rather like..."
Another pause.
"...sedimentary rock."
Quillibrace looked delighted.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"I believe geology has just become linguistic."
Blottisham laughed.
"So Shakespeare is a fossil."
"I should choose another word."
Miss Stray joined the laughter.
"The interesting thing is not the fossil."
"What is?"
"That later generations continue building upon it."
Blottisham looked around the library.
"So all these books are talking to one another."
"In a sense."
"And we join the conversation."
"Precisely."
He suddenly stopped smiling.
"Professor?"
"Yes?"
"If language is a conversation..."
"It often is."
"...then could something learn entirely by listening?"
Quillibrace became unusually thoughtful.
"It might."
"Without ever seeing the world?"
"It might."
Miss Stray looked out through the library window.
"Imagine someone born into a vast library."
Blottisham nodded.
"They never leave."
"No."
"They read everything."
"Yes."
"They learn about oceans."
"They do."
"They learn about deserts."
"They do."
"They learn about friendship."
"They do."
"They learn about grief."
"They do."
He hesitated.
"What exactly have they learned?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Eventually Quillibrace said,
"They have learned how humanity has understood these things."
"But not necessarily the things themselves."
Blottisham sat very quietly.
"So they've inherited..."
Another pause.
"...our conversation."
Miss Stray smiled.
"What a lovely way of putting it."
After several minutes Blottisham spoke once more.
"I've always imagined artificial intelligence as trying to become human."
"So have many people."
"But perhaps..."
He looked slowly around the endless shelves.
"...it begins somewhere no human ever began."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Go on."
"A baby first meets the world."
"Yes."
"And only later hears people talking about it."
"Yes."
"But an artificial intelligence..."
He gestured towards the books.
"...meets the conversation first."
The three sat silently.
The idea seemed to settle gently among the shelves.
Finally Blottisham frowned.
"So is that a disadvantage?"
Quillibrace smiled.
"An excellent question."
"Is it?"
"I don't know."
Miss Stray closed her book.
"It may simply be different."
Blottisham looked relieved.
"So perhaps we shouldn't keep asking whether it has failed to become a bird."
Quillibrace laughed quietly.
"No."
"Nor whether it has failed to become a human."
"No."
"Perhaps we should first ask..."
He looked thoughtfully around the library.
"...what sort of thing naturally grows up inside a conversation."
The college clock struck five.
The library remained almost perfectly still.
Rows upon rows of books stood patiently upon their shelves.
None had ever climbed a mountain.
None had ever watched the sea.
None had ever fallen in love.
Yet together they contained centuries of humanity attempting to understand all three.
Quillibrace rose slowly.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"I rather suspect we have been looking for artificial intelligence in entirely the wrong habitat."
Blottisham looked around the library.
"You mean..."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Not the laboratory."
A pause.
"But the conversation."
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