Humans used to spend a lot of time thinking about what separated us from animals. Rene Descartes, who wrote, 'I think, therefore I am,' practiced vivisection on rabbits and dogs because he thought that they lacked consciousness. Then Charles Darwin argued convincingly that humans are indeed animals'and now, in the time of AI, we tend to think a lot more about what separates us from machines. I certainly have been, especially after reading Michael Pollan's recent book on consciousness, A World Appears, and seeing his ideas reverberate in the Atlantic staff writer Judith Shulevitz's article this week about the depiction of dogs in art. Shulevitz begins her essay, about Thomas W. Laqueur's new book, The Dog's Gaze: A Visual History, by describing a sensation familiar to most dog owners (and to me as I write this and my terrier gazes up from under my desk): that we are being stared at. 'People speak with their eyes all the time,' Shulevitz writes, 'but every so often I'd be struck with...
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