From Sagres to Ephesus: What AI Still Doesn’t Understand
What gets lost when machines imitate us, but can’t feel like us?
I’ve been sitting with this question during recent travels, especially over a long weekend in the Algarve. One afternoon in Sagres, I found myself on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic; searching for perspective in the middle of a recent tension.
Somewhere in that moment, my mind jumped to Efes. Not just the beer, but the ancient city behind the name. (Sagres is to Portugal what Efes is to Turkey.)
Sagres and Ephesus couldn’t be more different, yet both hold something essential: one is symbolic for our drive to measure, map, and push forward; the other reminds us of memory, meaning, and what it feels like to “be”. This tension mirrors the central question in my latest ebook Beyond the Machine: What happens when we build systems that imitate intelligence, but leave out the one thing that defines us — the capacity to feel it?
Introduction: The Limits of Measurement
We understand more about the brain than ever before; how we make decisions, store memories, and process emotions. But even with all that knowledge, there’s still one big question we haven’t answered: what does it actually feel like to be alive? You can scan a brain and see what’s happening, but that doesn’t explain the feeling of sadness, joy, or wonder. There’s a gap between understanding how things work and really knowing what they mean. And that’s where this reflection begins.
Sagres: The Edge of the Known World
Sagres is a small town at the southwestern tip of Portugal, once believed to be the end of the world. During the Age of Discovery, it became a launchpad for European explorers who set sail into the unknown, expanding not only trade routes but the very boundaries of what Europe imagined possible. That drive (to map, master, and move outward) echoed other civilizations before and after: the Phoenicians crossing seas, or the Enlightenment’s pursuit of rational order.
I was there last week, and something in me settled. A personal conflict I had been carrying for a while seemed to loosen, without needing to be “solved.” Sagres thought me that some parts of life don’t need to be explained, just faced.
Ephesus: A Center of Ancient Meaning
In Sagres, I found myself thinking about Ephesus, not just as an ancient site, but as a symbol. One is perched on the far edge of Europe, where sailors once launched into the unknown. The other rests on the western coast of Anatolia, where knowledge, ritual, and reflection once flourished under Roman, Greek, and even earlier Anatolian influence. Ephesus was home to one of the largest libraries of the ancient world, a vast open-air theater, and sacred temples that predate philosophy itself. Sagres was part of the Age of Discovery; Ephesus, of the Age of Meaning.
Rethinking Ephesus reminded me: long before modern science, humans were already seeking to understand life not by dissecting it, but by embodying it. Stories, shared rituals, and sacred spaces were how people made sense of existence.
Together, Sagres and Ephesus capture the central tension in Beyond the Machine: the pull between outward exploration and inward reflection. Between what we can explain, and what we actually feel.
The Tension: Mapping the Brain, Missing the Mind
We’ve made enormous progress in understanding how the brain functions. Neuroscience can now show us which regions light up when we remember a face, make a decision, or feel afraid. But even with all this knowledge, one essential mystery remains: why does any of it feel like something?
This is where science, even at its best, reaches its edge. And it's also where AI enters the conversation. Today’s machines can replicate many functions of the brain; recognizing patterns, generating text, even mimicking emotion. But they don’t feel. They don’t know what it's like to be. Based on our current understanding of the world, no matter how advanced AI becomes, it can’t share with you what heartbreak feels like. Because experience isn’t just output, it’s what makes us human.
This tension — between mapping how the brain works and missing what the mind is — is the core question in Beyond the Machine. What happens when we build systems that imitate life, but leave out the part that actually matters: what it feels like to live?
Bridging the Ancient with Future
Beyond the Machine is about more than just the brain. It’s also about understanding how AI works, what it reflects back to us, and what it leaves out. AI can simulate emotion, but it doesn’t experience it. And that gap between function and feeling is what makes this conversation urgent.
It’s an invitation to think deeper — not just about what we can build, but what we want to preserve. It's for those navigating the tension between speed and stillness, knowledge and meaning, system and soul. And for those who want to understand not just how AI works, but what it means for how we live.