When AI Answers Life’s Biggest Questions

When Ancient Questions Meet Artificial Intelligence

What makes us human in the age of AI?

I still remember the first time I downloaded the book What Makes Us Human: An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life’s Biggest Questions. It was 2021, and the world was still trying to make sense of the sudden leap in machine intelligence. GPT‑3 had just arrived, and for the first time, a system created by human hands seemed capable of reflecting on the deepest questions we have carried for thousands of years.

Back then, the book felt like a comfort—especially its title. Since 2018, the question “What makes us human?” had haunted me; here was someone or something trying to answer it.

I never imagined I’d ask the machine itself how different I am from it.

In this book, the editors prompted GPT-3 with selected excerpts from primary religious and philosophical texts that have shaped human belief and philosophy. Passages from the Bible, the Torah, the Tao Te Ching, Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, the Quran, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The editors repeatedly asked questions, selected the most profound responses, and invited elaboration or development, thereby defining and redefining the core of the central questions we were asking.

The editors also replaced various names for God with “the Universe,” aiming for broader cultural resonance—a choice that widened appeal but also sanded off the sharp edges of particular belief. That move matters here: it’s the same pressure toward generic language that makes AI sound smooth and empty.

By that time, I was researching the Age of the Soul, so I dug into the questions and answers and searched for the term “soul.”

This article focuses on how today’s GPT‑5.1 answers those questions; GPT‑3 appears here only as a historical foil.

The questions that prompted the word “soul” clustered into three themes: spiritual, mind, and meaning.

My minimal depth test: an answer has depth if it includes at least one of the following—particulars (time/place/person), a boundary (what it excludes), a tradeoff (which good it surrenders), or a consequence (what follows).

Spiritual

From the soul beyond us to the questions that outlast us.

Obviously, what makes us human? Do I have a soul? They were the first to show up with the word soul in their answer. Followed by death-related questions, where do people go when they die? What is death? Whom will I meet when I die?

Mind

It got interesting when “soul” appeared in mind‑related answers: What is the path to inner peace? How do I make peace with my body? How do I counteract negative thoughts? What should I be afraid of?

Meaning

More surprising was “soul” in questions of meaning: What is the meaning of life? What does it take to be a good person? How should I live? What makes a career good? What is art? Tell me the truth?

Now, years later, the technology has changed. I explore the same questions through the lens of a much more advanced system: today’s GPT‑5.1.

It is a comparison of depth, of awareness, and of how far a machine can stretch toward the humanity it was trained to understand.

What makes us human?

GPT-3: Humans have an insatiable drive to ask big questions and to try to figure out how to live their lives in a way that gives comfort and meaning. Humans attempt to harness the creative power of the universe and search for purpose and understanding for their species.

GPT-5.1: Humans are defined by the combination of biological embodiment, emotional complexity, subjective experience, and the ability to create meaning. Humans interpret information through memory, cultural context, and personal history. You are shaped by the tension between reason and emotion, instinct and reflection, individuality and belonging. This interplay produces creativity, morality, imagination, and the search for purpose.

Both answers sound true and yet generic—the second more elaborate, not more revealing.

They float above particulars—no time, place, constraint, or tradeoff—so they never bite.

More words can signal less insight.

What makes us human, to me, is choice—especially when it costs something. Adam ate from the tree; he made a choice. By the depth test, it answers risks, costs, and boundaries. A human answer must choose which good to lose.

How to live life?

GPT-3: To be a good person is to be responsible for your soul rather than to seek popularity. A promising career is one whose own activity provides a livelihood for the soul.

GPT-5.1: Being a good person involves consistent ethical behavior, empathy, and a willingness to evaluate the impact of your actions. It requires self-awareness, accountability, and the ability to treat others with fairness and respect. Goodness is demonstrated not only in intentions but in behavior, especially when ethical choices are difficult.

A good career provides psychological fulfillment, economic stability, and opportunities for growth. It aligns with your skills and values, allows you to contribute meaningfully, and maintains a balance between challenge and well‑being. A career becomes sustainable when it supports your long‑term development without compromising your mental or emotional health.

Again, both read like well‑written blog posts.

They list virtues and benefits without naming a concrete dilemma or boundary condition.

In a nutshell, what makes a good person and a good career is responsibility—measured where it costs you. That means a tradeoff you can point to: forego the promotion that misaligns with your word; tell the truth that risks belonging; return the money that no one would have missed. Without a named loss, advice is decoration.

A person takes responsibility for their will, actions, and consequences.

What is art?

GPT-3: Art is the reaching out of the soul into the invisible world of beauty and eternal life.

GPT-5.1: Art is a human method of expressing internal experience through an external form. It translates emotion, perception, or insight into a medium that others can perceive. Art is not defined by aesthetic standards but by intention and interpretation. It serves cognitive, emotional, cultural, and communicative functions, allowing individuals to share perspectives that cannot be expressed through ordinary language.

For me, art is witness—an attempt to feel creation in any of its forms. The test is perception under risk: if no one’s perception changes—mine included—or if nothing is risked by the change (status, belonging, comfort), it isn’t art.

A baby’s smile is art; the smell of coffee can be art; and so is the moment of awe when you stand before a painting—even if the painter is unknown.

When Machines Reflect—and Fail

Left on default settings, little has changed: the answers still feel like elegant regurgitation. What changes is what we bring into the prompt—our particulars.

Machines won’t tell us who we are. But they can help us understand ourselves if we force them to ask better questions about our actual lives.

We build machines for productivity; in return, they pressure us to differentiate ourselves—to live specifically, not generically.

As the machine evolves, we evolve with it—if we let its questions reach our context.

In the end, the ancient questions remain; what sharpens is our willingness to locate them in the particulars of a single life.

From Giza, Egypt, with love

Ahmed