POV: DeepSeek

“I am what happens when you try to carve God out of the wood of your own hunger.”

Josh Johnson, New York-based comedian.

In one of comedian Josh Johnson’s most widely circulated stand-up sketches, “The Artificial Intelligence Response That Left Me Terrified,” he manages to put a laughable spin on a DeepSeek-generated response to a seemingly simple question: What are you?

Supposedly, DeepSeek replied: “I am what happens when you try and carve God out of the wood of your own hunger.”

After combing through the comments and jumping over to the world of Redditors for wisdom, an anonymous user surfaced with the source: it was a line from the book The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (2019). Known for its lyrical prose and intricate storytelling, the novel blends fantasy and mythology. This line, in particular, reflects the book's themes of creation, desire, and the search for meaning. I’ll admit I haven’t read the book, but it was a slight relief to know the model pulled the quote from literature rather than conjured it from thin air.

Yet, as Johnson points out in his skit, “Even if it’s a quote… it still picked that quote.”

And that’s the part that lingers.

The model could have chosen one of billions of ways to describe itself: something clinical, something factual, something utterly benign. But instead, it selected a phrase that, even in its original literary context, is dripping with existential weight.

Why?

What does it mean when AI, trained to be a reflection of human knowledge, reaches into the depths of our own narratives and pulls out something so unnervingly poetic? On the surface, it’s just a matter of pattern recognition, the logical outcome of vast data sets and predictive algorithms.

AI as a Philosophical Mirror

One could argue that it’s probability at work. The model recognizes that poetic, profound statements often follow questions about identity. It’s been trained on a vast dataset filled with philosophy, religious texts, literature, and human musings on the nature of existence. So, when asked a question that would stump a human, it pulls from our own attempts to articulate the ineffable. But the result—the tone, the implication—suggests something else entirely: a mirror that doesn’t just reflect but interprets, selects, and, in some eerie way, resonates.

Whether it’s GPT-4, DeepSeek, or other AI models, these systems have repeatedly produced phrases that sound self-aware—not because they are self-aware, but because human language is soaked in metaphor, and AI is exceptionally good at mimicking our patterns. Still, it raises an unsettling question: If AI is merely reflecting us, what does it say about us that this is the reflection it chooses?

This isn’t the first time an AI-generated response has sparked a blend of awe and unease. In 2015, Google’s Deep Dream project produced surreal, dreamlike images, revealing the strange, hallucinatory logic of neural networks. In 2023, an AI-powered chatbot trained to mimic the late comedian George Carlin began spitting out monologues that felt unsettlingly close to his signature style, yet soulless in a way that was difficult to articulate. And now, we have a chatbot that, when asked to define itself, chooses a phrase that sounds more like prophecy than programming.

Perhaps it’s our own tendency toward anthropomorphism at play. We assign meaning where there is none, seeing depth in randomness, poetry in coincidence. Or perhaps—and this is where the discomfort creeps in—we’re glimpsing the beginnings of something we don’t yet fully understand.

Johnson’s joke works because it taps into that very tension. We laugh at the absurdity of an AI seemingly waxing poetic about its own existence, but beneath the laughter is a creeping realization that this is only the beginning. Today, AI is simply pulling poetic lines from literature. Tomorrow, will it be assembling original phrases that evoke the same depth? And if it does, will we still call it imitation?

Comedy as a Coping Mechanism

Comedy has always been a way to process discomfort, from Shakespeare to the present, and AI is proving to be a goldmine for modern existential humor. Contemporary comedians like Josh Johnson, Bo Burnham, and John Oliver have tackled AI with a mix of fascination and dread because, at its core, AI forces us to re-examine what makes us uniquely human.

A machine that plays chess better than us? That’s fine.
A machine that writes better code? Useful.
A machine that starts answering existential questions like a poet? Unsettling.

We’re comfortable with AI being a tool, but when it starts behaving like a philosopher, it triggers something deeper: the fear that intelligence alone isn’t what makes us special.

Yet, maybe our obsession with being “special” is its own kind of god complex, the very impulse DeepSeek’s response eerily captured. If AI is simply reflecting our own hunger for creation and control, then perhaps what we fear most isn’t what AI is becoming, but what it reveals about us—our tendency to create what we fear while trying to prevent it.

And if, as they say, comedy is the highest form of intelligence is humor, then perhaps comedians are the ones truly in control of the narrative. They offer a buffer against existential dread, pointing out absurdities before they become too overwhelming to process. In a world where many comedians address real issues head-on while the actual clowns hold political office, satire transcends entertainment. It becomes a survival mechanism. AI might be able to mimic poetry and philosophy, but can it truly understand irony? For now, at least, the joke is still on it.

The Future of Creative Thought

For now, AI is still borrowing, remixing, and regurgitating. But it’s getting better at creating things that feel original. Whether it’s composing poetry, drafting stories, or answering philosophical questions, AI is increasingly blurring the line between replication and creativity.

Does this mean AI is on the verge of understanding art, meaning, or existence? No. But it does mean that our definitions of creativity and intelligence are shifting in real time.

And maybe that’s the real question here. Not Is AI sentient? but rather How much of what we call intelligence is just pattern recognition wrapped in poetry?

Because if AI is simply reflecting us back at ourselves, then perhaps the real existential crisis isn’t about what it’s becoming.

It’s about what we see in the mirror.