In his paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Alan Turing considers a simple question: “Can machines think?”¹

However, Turing begins his actual answer not with machines, but with something called “The Imitation Game.” It is basically a texting game in which two players, a man and a woman, chat with a third “interrogator” of unspecified gender.

The object of the game is for the interrogator to determine, through texts alone, which player is a man and which player is a woman. The man seeks to deceive, while the woman is trying to help the interrogator guess correctly, but of course the interrogator is not told which is which.

And so, the first form of what would later be known as the “Turing Test” was not about whether a machine can pass as a human, but if a male speaker can pass as a female.

It is only a few paragraphs later that Turing shifts his focus back to machines.

Female impersonator, human impersonator…even without going into Alan Turing’s biography—what he was, what was done to him—gender and AI are intertwined.

In 2024, Patricia Fancher wrote “The Original Turing Test Was a Drag Show.”² In this article, she noted that, for either man or machine to win this game, it is not about being a genuine or authentic woman or human, but to turn in a convincing performance of one.

Fancher leans into the possibilities opened by drag performers, wondering how such a performance might shape the development of AI.

Fancher isn’t concerned with passing the Turing test—she is excited by the magic of not passing it—and in some ways transcending it.

“Drag remakes womanhood into something entirely different. And at its best, that’s what I hope for A.I. as well. Not that it replicates human women or human intelligence so closely we can’t tell the difference.”

It is a daring and forward-thinking view of AI. However, just two short years later, it already seems strangely outdated.

Fancher ends her essay:

“ChatGPT and other chatbots can draw from the language they are given and turn what humans have written, what we have thought, argued, sung, and sketched, in order to create something that I know is artifice, a fascinating fabrication from which I can’t look away.”

Something I know is artifice.

Do we know? Can we know? This might have been possible two years ago, but now? Two more years from now?

Since 2024, AI has become far more powerful and capable. The Turing test seems almost quaint. It’s been passed, not just though text messages and simple conversations, but full articles, books, music, images, movies. There is AI Jesus, AI Buddha. There are AI kitchen helpers to scan your refrigerator and tell you how to make dinner. In early 2026, a system called AI Scientist wrote a paper that passed academic peer review.

AI has become something far more than a fascinating curiosity, a spectacle to admire. AI has permeated one’s day-to-day. It has become inescapable—inevitable. This is no longer drag, no longer a show. It doesn’t stop when the stage goes dark. It continues and continues and continues…

Think about how you use social media—how much time is being spent listening to AI-generated voices reading AI-written articles? How many times have you caught yourself wondering—is that photo, that story, that voice AI?

We can disregard AI-generated content as “AI slop” or say a piece of writing or art “is passable but mediocre.”

But how certain are these dismissals?

What happens when we can’t tell? What happens if and when it becomes impossible to tell?

Since 2024, something else has surged—the prevalence of anti-trans legislation.

And it is hard not to notice how now, just as in Turing’s time, AI and transness are connected.

As with AI, being trans is not drag. It does not stop when the show is over. Trans women, and trans people overall, do not stop being trans.

Like AI, trans people do not exist for spectacle. Trans folks are at the supermarket buying milk and eggs. They are riding the bus to some nonglamorous shitty job that never seems to pay enough.

They are doomscrolling online, going out for late-night burritos. And yes, when necessary, they are going to the bathroom.

They are just being, just blending.

And, as with AI, people are obsessed with “how can we know?”

As of this writing, 793 anti-trans bills are being considered in the United States. (Trans Legislation Tracker).³ Most of these national and state-level bills contain strict definitions of identity, with harsh penalties for transgressing those definitions.

At the time of this writing, 29 states have enacted laws that target trans youth, denying gender-affirming care to those under 17 and under. These are passed under the guise of “protecting the children” from irreversible harm.

However,  the risks of such care are vastly overstated, if present at all. In fact, the real danger comes from these bills themselves.  Study after study has revealed  the negative effects of anti-trans restrictions upon trans youth and their families—physical, social, and mental. (Human Rights Watch)⁴

Furthermore, there are different types of gender-affirming care—it does not immediately (or sometimes ever) mean physical transition, and even then, pathways such as puberty blockers are reversible.

So why all the legislation? Of course, adults have misunderstood children since the beginning of time—but could there be another reason?

Here’s something else to consider—when physical transition is started earlier, the effects are often more pronounced. Basically, trans people who physically transition while young can become more “passable” and harder to detect.

As with AI, people are uncomfortable with not “knowing.” Much fearmongering centers around the possibility of being “fooled” by a trans person.

People scan pictures of celebrities with algorithms trying to detect trans people—with the same fervor as people trying to root out AI. Many of the dismissals have the same flavor—“you can always tell.” “They will never be real.”

But again—what happens when we can’t tell? What happens if and when it becomes impossible to tell?

At this point I need to stress that it is neither ethical nor correct to equate the gravity of trans rights with the rights of AI.

Objecting to the use of AI is not the same as being a transphobe. Trans people are humans with human rights. At least for now, AI bots are not.

If you want to go pick on something, pick on a bot and leave the trans kid alone.

Trans people have not made your job obsolete or taken over the internet. Trans people will never deplete your energy reserves, threaten your water supply, or significantly contribute to global warming.

Trans people pose no new harm, no new threat to society—we’ve been part of human communities since human communities were human communities.

Why then, do AI and trans people evoke such similar levels of animosity and fear?

Perhaps, as Turing implied, it is because they similarly challenge our ideas of uniqueness, identity, and existence.

Everybody can paraphrase Descartes and say, “I think, therefore I am.” But what happens when the machines seem to be thinking, as well?

People will say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman—but what happens when the answer is not so clear at all?

Sure, one can talk about uteruses, genitals, or chromosomes—but what happens when all of these can be altered? What happens when bodies can be regrown, or consciousness can be switched between bodies at will?

Sure, this is not possible now—but who is to say that someday it won’t be? Because if we can imagine androids replacing us, we can surely imagine all of that.

What will it mean to be a human, a man, a woman, when we are no longer able to tell what is real or not? Who is real or not?

And if we cannot determine real, how will the universe know?

If we cannot tell, if the universe cannot tell the difference between us and not us—then how are we special?

How do we matter?

As humans, this might be our most basic ontological question. Most of us follow beliefs that link us to something eternal.

It might be a creator or a concept of creation or model of reality. It might have something to do with art or science…something we can hold tight when we see a friend or relative die and everything goes on as before, or read about Ozymandias and ruins and sand.

Whatever they are, these beliefs contextualize our finite lives within greater stories, stories that lend significance and meaning to our own, personal existences.

There’s something incredibly human about this. In fact, cultivating beliefs to give our lives meaning is part of what makes us human. And holding onto our faith can be a beautiful thing.

Yet, the need for faith should tell us that none of our belief systems are certain. They may not be spoken or shared, but doubts are always there.

Trying to eliminate these doubts molds so much of the human condition. From wars between empires to family conflicts or even personal existential crises…so many of these are waged against the nation, the person, even the idea that conflicts with our existential beliefs.

We tell ourselves that winning that war, converting those nonbelievers, having the last word in that argument justifies that our faith is well-placed, our beliefs are correct.

Except—no matter what we do, it’s never enough.

Actually, the more we learn about ourselves and our place in the universe, the less special, the less significant we seem to be. We have gone from being the center of creation, to a planet in the one solar system, to a star in one galaxy to well, somewhere in the Laniakea supercluster.

People might go on and on about how they learned about chromosomes in high school that XX is female and XY is male. Yet if they continue their studies, they learn that this is not always the case—there is significant variation in humans, and other species may not even have X or Y chromosomes, at all.

So how are we special? How are we significant?

At least we are still the only planet that we know of with intelligent life. The last frontier is who we are. We’re still the only ones with The Beatles and lasagna and atlatls and music boxes and VHS tapes of Cosmos with Carl Sagan.

But what happens when we find life elsewhere?

As a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer, I spend a lot of time thinking of other civilizations. Heck, I create them.

But honestly, most aliens I create really aren’t that alien. They can speak to us. They can cooperate with us, befriend us—even fall in love with us.

Basically they don’t question our beliefs—they affirm them. And this is the case for most of our aliens. Beneath the hairpieces, silicone, flashy makeup, and glittery costumes, our TV aliens are all human.

Isn’t it sort of like drag?

And as Fancher says, they are fascinating fabrications. And we can be enchanted by them, perhaps even disturbed by them. But it is a show, a performance with beginning and end.

The book closes, the house lights come on, the closing credits play…

But what about real aliens? Alien aliens?

What happens if we really seek them out, and boldly go to them. Or what happens if they come to us? What happens if they bring their own definitions of intelligence? Of creativity? Of spirituality, artistry, brilliance?

And what if those definitions challenge, equal, or even supplant our own?

For now, we can see a rainbow with our trichromatic vision and think we are seeing a rainbow.

But when happens when others see even more wavelengths of light—and write poems and songs we inherently cannot appreciate or maybe even comprehend?

What if vision itself is not the only way to see or the very idea of seeing is an outdated artifact of our provincial biological backwater?

The Fermi Paradox is a paradox only if we are significant and perceptive enough to perceive the universal conversations in the universe—their bandwidths, scales, the durations of their syntax.

But why would we assume this? Imagine our entire civilization rising and falling in the space between alien syllables. Or maybe the concept of communication is irrelevant because everyone else already knows everything, in a way that we lack the capacity to perceive?

I think of Arthur C. Clarke’s book, Childhood’s End, in particular its title. If you are lucky, you might have had a childhood with parents who loved everything about you.

As you grew up, you might have had a favorite teacher, a best friend.

But as you grow older, the world gets bigger, stranger…. You move out of the house. Your teacher might pass, you might grow apart from your best friend.

And now you’re just another person among many, not so special at all—and you are going to live and die here and that will be it.

How do we continue when so many of our childhood beliefs no longer hold true?

For many of us the answer is obvious. We become adults.

But what kind of adults do we become?

Next to alien existences, the challenges of AI are nothing. AI, for all its unprecedented capabilities, came from human knowledge and was tailored to human needs. Even at its worst, we know its origins—its creators.

And trans people? We are the same sizes and forms as other humans. We share the same biologies, the same ancestry. Compared with even the other life forms on this planet, the differences between us and other humans are imperceptible.

If we cannot respond to such trivial differences without losing our composure, our ability to reason—what happens when we encounter the truly different?

Perhaps this is what we should ask when responding to the challenges of AI or trans people or any race or religion or technology that conflicts with who we are.

As of this writing, the challenges of AI use and trans acceptance are not the same. And our responses should certainly not be the same.

But neither will come close to matching whatever otherness we encounter in the stars.

Yes, a challenge can be a fight, or even a war. But a challenge can also be a test, a goal. It can even be an opportunity to grow, to discover—to take our first steps, to prepare ourselves for the day we humans decide to leave home.

We do not know what is out there.

But we do know what is here.

We can fight as we always have, be afraid as we always have, reflexively try to eliminate what we don’t understand as we always have.

Or we can temper our responses with the knowledge that these differences are nothing compared to what we might find as we leave the cradle of the Laniakea supercluster.

We can grow, we can learn. We can evolve. We can become something fabulous.

This not a performance. Or perhaps it is. Perhaps we are onstage being watched even now.

There is no way to know.

But no matter what, how we frame these cosmically insignificant local challenges, and how we respond to them, will mold how we develop as a people, what sort of species we will be as we take our place amongst the stars—or if we even get there in the first place.

 

¹           Turing, Alan M. “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Parsing the Turing test: Philosophical and methodological issues in the quest for the thinking computer. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2007. 23–65.

 

²           Fancher, Patricia. “The Original Turing Test Was a Drag Show.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 23 June 2024, slate.com/life/2024/06/alan-turing-test-ru-paul-drag-race-queer-history-ai-openai-chatgpt.html.

 

³           https://translegislation.com/learn.

 

⁴           Yasemin Smallens. “‘They’re Ruining People’s Lives’.” Human Rights Watch, 3 June 2025, www.hrw.org/report/2025/06/03/theyre-ruining-peoples-lives/bans-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-youth.

© 2026 Ryka Aoki