Published on June 23, 2025 2:00 PM GMT
People keep saying "AI isn't magic, it's just maths" like this is some kind of gotcha.
Turning lead into gold isn't the magic of alchemy, it's just nucleosynthesis.
Taking a living human's heart out without killing them, and replacing it with one you got out a corpse, that isn't the magic of necromancy, neither is it a prayer or ritual to Sekhmet, it's just transplant surgery.
Casually chatting with someone while they're 8,000 kilometres is not done with magic crystal balls, it's just telephony.
Analysing the atmosphere of a planet 869 light-years away (about 8 quadrillion km) is not supernatural remote viewing, it's just spectral analysis through a telescope… a telescope that remains about 540 km above the ground, even without any support from anything underneath, which also isn't magic, it's just "orbit".
Making diamonds and rubies by the tonne isn't a wish made to a magic djinn, it's just chemistry.
Flying through the air, or to the moon, isn't a magic carpet, it's just aerodynamics and rocket science respectively.
Reading someone’s thoughts isn't magic telepathy, it's just fMRI decoding.
Knowing your location anywhere on the surface of planet, at any time of day or night, in any weather, isn't magic, it's just GPS.
Forecasting the weather days in advance isn't the magic of divination, it isn't precognition, it isn't limited to the visions of prophets and oracles, it's just fluid dynamics simulations and Monte Carlo methods.
A bracelet that can detect when you fall and summon help automatically isn't a guardian angel, it's just an Apple Watch with Fall Detection.
Sensing through rock to find hidden water isn't dowsing or water divining, it's just geotechnical survey tools such as ground penetrating radar and electrical resistance surveys.
Seeing someone's bones without flaying the flesh from them isn't magic, it's just an x-ray.
Curing congenital deafness, letting the blind see, letting the lame walk, none of that is magic or miracle, they're just cochlear implants, cataract removal/retinal implants, and surgery or prosthetic exoskeletons respectively.
Condensing sunlight in the daytime, in order to heat and illuminate your home after dark, that isn't magic, it's just photovoltaics and batteries.
Cooking without visible flame isn't magic, it's just an electric hob. Doing it without even a hot work surface for the pan still isn't magic, it's just a microwave oven or an induction hob.
Curing leprosy is neither biblical miracle nor magic, it's just rifampicin, dapsone, and clofazimine.
Immunity to smallpox isn't a prayer to the Hindu goddess Shitala (of many things but most directly linked with smallpox), and it isn't magic herbs or crystals, it's just vaccines.
The end of famine in the industrialised world wasn't magic, it was just mechanised farming, synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and systematic government policy to get farmers to over-produce.
Even stage magic isn't magic, it's just a lot of practice, sleight of hand, etc. — as the stage magicians Penn and Teller (well, just Penn) said, stage magic is about making something very hard look easy, so much so that your audience simply doesn't even imagine the real effort you put into it.
So sure, AI isn't magic in the "supernatural" sense, but as Clarke said any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, which is how we have come to have what are essentially synthetic Húsvættir in the form of Alexa and Siri, where us knowing their (if you will excuse the occult reference) true names allows us to bind them to our will — which, thanks to the mundanity of reality, is mostly just turning lights on and off for us, or adding things to shopping lists…
…or playing music from any of more artists than you can name, living and dead, which also isn't magic, it's just recordings and a loudspeaker.
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