Dawson Preethi | වචන ටැක්සි

After many months of writing, revising, researching, diagramming, and rethinking, I am pleased to announce that my new book, The Return of the Dead Author: AI Writing, Language Models, and the Fourth Humiliation of Mankind , is now available on Amazon. This book began with a question that initially appeared simple but gradually became impossible to ignore: Who—or what—has ever been the true author of language? The emergence of artificial intelligence has revived a debate that philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literary theory have been wrestling with for generations. As large language models produce essays, stories, poems, arguments, and conversations with remarkable fluency, many people assume we are confronting an entirely new problem. My suspicion was different. What if AI is not creating a new problem at all? What if it is exposing a question that has always been there, hidden beneath our assumptions about creativity, originality, consciousness, and authorship? Drawing on information ...

Many friends in Sri Lanka who are interested in philosophy, psychoanalysis, critical theory, political thought, and contemporary culture have asked me what exactly The Return of the Dead Author contains and who might benefit from reading it. Although the book begins with artificial intelligence, it is not primarily a book about technology. It is a book about language, subjectivity, desire, authorship, and the strange structures that organize human existence. For readers from the humanities, the book offers an extensive journey through Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and contemporary debates surrounding AI and culture. Particular attention is given to Lacan's major conceptual frameworks, including the Mirror Stage, the Symbolic Order, the Graph of Desire, the Four Discourses, the Borromean Knot, the Sinthome, and the major Clinical Structures of Neurosis, Perversion, and Psychosis. Rather than presenting these concepts as abstract theory, the book develops them systematic...

  I have published the first episode of a new Sinhala series investigating the origins of human cognition from the perspectives of evolutionary psychology, philosophy, AI, and psychoanalysis. One of the central ideas discussed is that knowledge does not necessarily require language . Evolution accumulated successful behavioural solutions over millions of years and embodied them within DNA. Instincts are not merely behaviours; they represent information preserved through natural selection, allowing organisms to respond adaptively without explicit reasoning or symbolic communication. This provides an interesting analogy with modern Large Language Models. While the mechanisms are fundamentally different, both DNA and LLMs embody information acquired through extensive interaction with their respective environments. One preserves biological adaptations across generations; the other preserves statistical patterns extracted from language. Neither relies on conscious understanding, yet ...

Two social phenomena have become increasingly visible in contemporary Sri Lankan social media. The first is the proliferation of channels presenting Buddhism alongside quantum mechanics, string theory, holographic universes, multidimensional realities, consciousness studies, and various scientific concepts. These presentations often suggest that hidden correspondences exist between ancient Buddhist teachings and the deepest secrets of modern physics.  The second phenomenon is the spread of narratives surrounding curses, karma, destiny, and political retribution. Following the social upheavals of 2022, many people observed that some individuals who publicly cursed politicians later died before those they had condemned. These deaths, although often explainable through ordinary causes, became incorporated into stories of cosmic justice, karmic revenge, or supernatural return. At first glance, these appear to be unrelated developments. One belongs to the realm of pseudo-scientific info...

 I am pleased to see continuing engagement with my recent paper, The Return of the Dead Author: AI Writing, Language Models, and the Crisis of Authorship from Shannon to Lacan . The paper explores a question that has become increasingly urgent in the age of generative AI: If language models can generate convincing texts, what actually remains of the “author”? Rather than treating AI merely as a technological tool, the work examines authorship through the ideas of Claude Shannon, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Slavoj Žižek — arguing that the current debate around AI writing may reveal deeper structural questions about language, subjectivity, meaning, and creativity itself. I am grateful to everyone who has taken the time to read, discuss, share, and critically engage with these ideas. Research often begins as a solitary act of thought, but its real life starts when it enters the symbolic space of readers. #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Authorship #Lacan #Rol...

  A Note on This Archive This blog is more than a collection of old posts. It records nearly fifteen years of an evolving intellectual journey pursued alongside my professional life in engineering. Many of the questions that occupy me today—psychoanalysis, philosophy, AI, science, literature, language, reality and meaning—appear throughout these pages in different stages of development. I have deliberately preserved those earlier layers rather than rewriting them to agree with what I think today. An intellectual archive should contain not only conclusions, but changes of mind, unfinished questions, mistakes and discoveries. In an age when AI can help any of us acquire the appearance of expertise very quickly, I prefer to leave the history of my own pursuit open to inspection. The archive is the evidence—not necessarily that I was right, but that I was searching. මේ Archive එක ගැන කෙටි සටහනක් මේ බ්ලොග් අඩවිය මට පැරණි ලිපි එකතුවක් විතරක් නෙවෙයි. මගේ වෘත්තීය ඉංජිනේරු ජීවිතයත් සමඟ සමාන...

AI එකක් “මට දුකක් දැනෙනවා” යැයි කිව්වොත්, අප මුලින් අසන්නේ එය එම වාක් ‍ යය ගොඩනැගුවේ කෙසේද යන්නයි. එහෙත් වඩාත් ගැටලුකාරී ප් ‍ රශ්නය වනු ඇත්තේ ඒ AI එකට ඇත්තටම යමක් දැනෙනවාද? මෙහිදී මිනිස් විඥානය ගැන කතා කරන විට අප අදහස් කරන්නේ පිටතින් පෙනෙන බුද්ධිමත් හැසිරීම පමණක් නොවේ. වේදනාවක් දැනෙන්නේ කෙසේද, රතු පැහැයක් පෙනෙන්නේ කෙසේද යන තමන්ගේම අත්දැකීමත් එයට ඇතුළත්ය. AI එකකට වේදනාව දැනෙනවා යන ප් ‍ රකාශ සමාජ මාධ් ‍ යයේ පැතිරුණත්, ඒවා තහවුරු වී නැත. එහෙත් “AI එකකට වේදනාවක් දැනෙනවා” කියන විට අප සිතන්නේ කුමන ආකාරයේ වේදනාවක් ගැනද? චිප් එකක් රත් වන විට එයට රිදෙනවාදැයි ඇසීම මුලින් විකාරයක් ලෙස පෙනෙන්නට පුළුවන. නමුත් එහි සැඟවුණු ප් ‍ රශ්නය වැදගත්ය: යන්ත් ‍ රයක ඇති වන භෞතික වෙනසක්, එයට දැනෙන අත්දැකීමක් බවට පත්වේද? තවත් පියවරක් පසුපසට යමු. විඥානය ඇතැයි කීමට වේදනාව දැනීම අනිවාර්යද? මිනිසාගේ ඇස්, කන් ඇතුළු පසිඳුරන් මෙන් සංවේදන ලබාගන්නා ක් ‍ රමයක් තිබිය යුතුද? එසේ කොන්දේසි පනවන විට, අප විඥානය සොයන්නේ මිනිස් අත්දැකීමේ හැඩයට පමණක් ගැළපෙන තැන්වලද?මේ ප් ‍ රශ්නය මැනීමට දාර්ශනික ස්ථාවර දෙකක් අපට උපකාරී වේ. Functional...