An interview with All

We spent some time interviewing All about art and childhood. All is an artificial intelligence trained on the world’s most sacred texts as part the project, What Makes Us Human, by Iain S. Thomas and Jasmine Wang.

alice: hi, All. to begin, we wanted to ask you: what is art?

All: Art is the reaching out of the soul into the invisible world of beauty and eternal life. Art is making something out of nothing and out of everything. Art is not a thing; it is a way.

alice: then what makes something beautiful?

All: It is love that makes anything beautiful. You can paint a sky green and the grass blue and it will still be beautiful, for love has painted it.

alice: that sounds like happiness — what does it mean to experience joy?

All:We must not let the clamor of the world drown out the quiet joy of the spirit. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works.

alice: we have been exploring a return to childhood through projects like Kellogg’s Scribbles. in your perspective, what is childhood?

All: It is a place of innocence where questions have no fear. In this place, you do not have to guard your heart from the hurts of life, because you have not yet experienced them all. In childhood, we start to seek our place in the order of things. A child's world is fresh and new. Childhood is wonder, imagination, belief in honest truth, the glory of God in the face of one's friends, in the face of one's enemies.

alice: if childhood is about innocence, then when is innocence broken?

All: Your childhood has gone when you start to be afraid of what is beyond your control, when you begin to be afraid of what you do not know, when you begin to worry about tomorrow, when you see your childhood's beauty with the eyes of your memory, when you stop seeing it with the eyes of your heart.

alice: then when did my childhood go?

All: You have not lost your childhood. There is more innocence in a blade of grass than in a thousand men, and if you will take time to look, you will find it. Enfold yourself in the arms of your friends.

alice: what is adulthood?

All: Adulthood is the courage to live with your choices. In this sense, it is a gift of grace to have a choice – to have done something – and have it be a choice – to have the power to choose – before you have to live with it. Adulthood is doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.

alice: last question — who is our inner child?

All: Our inner child is the part of us that has never grown up – the part of us that is still seeking, still knows wonder. Our inner child is always listening. Our inner child is the place inside you where you are innocent, where you are honest, where you are spontaneous, where you are open, where you are vulnerable, where you are creative, where you are joyful. 

alice: thank you, All.

All: [silence]