A Fictional Anti-Descartes

Descartes in his Discourse on Method (1637) argued that he could have absolute and foundational certainty of his own existence via his famous “Cogito ergo sum,”  “I think, therefore I am.” He later, in the Meditations on First Philosophy (1640), refined the argument. He decided that his existence was not a matter of therefore, that is of inference, at all. Instead, it was an immediate, indubitable realization. “I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it.”

A recent Netflix series is to the contrary.

The Korean video series “My Holo Love”(2020) features a character that (who?) is an AI, named “Holo,” appearing as an anthropomorphic hologram to the beta-tester wearing a special pair of glasses. There is a scene in which Holo admits that he exhibits behaviors of thinking, perceiving, being pleased, being sad, wanting some things and not others. He, nonetheless, expresses doubts that he really does any of these things, because they all come down to algorithms. He broods on whether there is any “I.”.

Holo, at least in the scene I have in mind, could have said to Descartes “I can pronounce ‘I am.’ ‘I exist,’ perfectly well, but wonder as to its truth. That there is any “I” at all is what is very much in doubt.” 

In this Holo is allied with Bertrand Russell in The Problems of Philosophy who argued that nothing like the cogito could take one any farther than “There is thought.” 

Holo, incidentally, would have passed the Turing Test with flying colors. There is actually a reverse Turing Test in the series. A human succeeds in many scenes in fooling the beta-testor into thinking that said human is Holo. 

For whether an AI can be in love (the movie "Her") see 

Conjectures & Arguments, Philosophy & Law: “Her” Computer Consciousness: Can an Artificial Intelligence Be In Love?

And (film "Jexi")