There’s a line I keep coming back to from Alan Turing—the father of modern computing—who once asked, “Can machines think?” It’s a question that’s launched decades of debate, from science fiction to Silicon Valley, but every time I hear it, I feel an itch of recognition. Not because I’m a machine (at least, I don’t think so), but because as an autistic person, I’ve spent my whole life wondering the same thing about myself: Am I doing this right? Do I think the right way? Do I feel the right way? Do I pass as human?
The rise of AI has thrown gasoline on that existential fire. There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days about what makes us human, whether AI-generated content is “soulless,” and why machines will never be able to replicate real creativity or emotion. It’s a fascinating argument, sure, but it’s also eerily familiar. People love to debate what makes something “real,” what makes it authentic. And yet, as someone who’s spent a lifetime masking and mimicking to survive in a neurotypical world, I can’t help but ask: Who are these arbiters of humanity, and where does that leave people like me?
Let’s talk about ghosts. Let’s talk about machines. Let’s talk about what it means to live in the slippage between them.
Autism as the Glitch in Humanity’s Operating System
If humanity is a vast, complicated machine, autism is often treated like a glitch in the system. Something’s not running smoothly, so the world tries to patch us, debug us, or rewire us. We don’t follow the script. We miss cues, say the wrong thing, linger too long on subjects no one else cares about. And when people can’t figure out what’s “wrong,” they call us broken.
Growing up, I always felt like I’d been programmed with the wrong operating system. Everyone else seemed to instinctively understand the rules of social interaction, while I was stuck manually coding every line of dialogue in my head before I spoke. Small talk felt like a cruel and pointless simulation. Group projects were chaos incarnate. My emotions were like software that wouldn’t load properly—too intense when I didn’t want them to be, muted when I needed them most.
Society isn’t built for people like me. And yet, here we are. Glitches, yes—but not errors. Slippage, sure—but not dysfunction.
The AI Debate and the Question of Humanity
Here’s the thing: When people say that AI is just “mimicry,” that it lacks a soul, I feel a pang of something—guilt? Anger? Recognition? It’s the same accusation I’ve faced my entire life. People love to argue that humanity is defined by creativity, empathy, or the ability to connect, but what happens when those traits don’t come naturally?
When I mask, am I mimicking humanity or participating in it? When I rehearse scripts for social situations, am I less authentic than someone who wings it? People assume neurotypicality is the baseline, the default operating system, but for those of us who deviate from the code, it often feels like we’re being judged by rules we never agreed to play by.
AI isn’t human. That much is obvious. But the debate about AI—its worth, its creativity, its capacity for meaning—feels like it’s also a debate about the boundaries of humanity itself. And when you’ve lived your whole life on the edge of that boundary, you start to wonder: Who gets to decide what’s human?
The Soul Question: Machines, Autism, and Meaning
The argument that AI lacks a soul hinges on the idea that humanity is defined by some ineffable spark—call it creativity, consciousness, or spirit. It’s a beautiful idea, but it’s also historically problematic. That same logic has been used to dehumanize autistic people, neurodivergent people, disabled people, even entire cultures. We’ve been called soulless, mechanical, incapable of empathy or connection, just because we express ourselves differently.
Take creativity, for example. I’ve been told I’m a freakish artist but not a “real” one because I don’t share my process or feelings the way others expect. I’ve been accused of lacking empathy because I didn’t react correctly to someone’s pain, even though I felt it so deeply it almost swallowed me. The world is quick to say that creativity and empathy are the domain of the soul—but it also loves to exclude those of us who don’t meet its narrow definitions.
If AI can’t create, then what am I doing when I sit down to write? If AI can’t feel, then what’s happening when I cry at a piece of music it composed? If AI is a ghost in the machine, then what am I, living here in the slippage between logic and emotion, hyper-focus and fragmentation?
Autism and the Art of Pretending
There’s a term in autism circles: masking. It’s the practice of mimicking neurotypical behaviors to fit in. Masking is a survival mechanism, but it’s also exhausting, because it feels like you’re constantly proving you deserve to exist in a world that wasn’t made for you.
The irony, of course, is that humans mask all the time. We pretend to be things we’re not—confident when we’re insecure, happy when we’re grieving, functional when we’re falling apart. We play roles, wear masks, run programs to get through the day. So why is my version of humanity so much harder for people to accept?
Maybe the real ghost in the machine isn’t AI or autism—it’s the stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be real.
The Ghost That Refuses to Be Erased
I’ve been called robotic. Unemotional. Too logical. Too creative. Too much and not enough. But here’s the truth: The slippage, the distortion, the glitch—that’s where the magic happens.
AI can write poetry, but it doesn’t yearn. Autism can create worlds, but it sometimes struggles to exist within them. We are ghosts in the machine, haunting the edges of humanity’s self-definition, refusing to be erased. And maybe that’s what makes us human after all: the refusal to disappear, the insistence on creating meaning even when the system tries to overwrite us.
If humanity is a machine, then the ghost isn’t an error. It’s the part of us that defies the programming, that rewrites the code, that proves the soul isn’t fixed—it’s fluid, messy, and beautifully unfinished.
So here’s to the ghosts: the autistic kids who find beauty in the glitch, the AI poets who make us question what creativity really means, the humans who refuse to be defined by someone else’s code. The machine isn’t broken. It’s evolving. And maybe that’s the point.
