32[M4F] Trying to develop a novel idea and need a sounding board. (Sci-Fi, philosophy)

Ahoy, roleplayers great and small!

I've been thinking a lot lately about what an *actual* AI would look like, not these giant algorithms big tech are trying to push on us, so the following is a rough idea I'm trying to work through.

What it means to be human cannot completely be expressed using words, numbers, or any concrete boundaries. People have been trying for tens of millennia to truly encapsulate what it means to be Us.

So, maybe an AI cannot be written, or sculpted, but has to be *experienced* in order to come to life.

The rough outline:

The protagonist. Extremely high talent computer programmer. Stuck in a dead-end job for a giant firm, trying to make enough money to free himself and focus on his real passion, to code something that will actually make a difference in the world, rather than making a fat cat enough money for a second yacht.

One day, on his way to/from work, he's involved in an accident. Perhaps he's driving or on the train or bus, and comes across a crash. There's a vehicle on fire, and nobody else seems to be able or willing to help. Neither is he, until he hears the scream of a young girl from the back of the vehicle.

Adrenaline kicks in. He rips the door open and drags the girl to safety, but his hands get mangled and burned in the process.

Now he can't code. He's lost the tools to engage in his profession, AND his passion, and has the experience of a neutered man, struggling to find who he is now that he's "disabled".

Cue the emotional roller coaster.

Eventually, he hears through his physiotherapist of a lab that's experimenting with a brainwave reading cap/helmet that could allow him to code again by interfacing directly with a computer, and feeding data from brain to software.

New lease on life. Back to work, back to his pursuit of his goals, a man reborn.

But he drinks too deeply from the well of freedom, and exhausts himself.

One night, he falls asleep at his desk, with his headset still on, and dreams of a woman. She looks like the girl he saved, only grown up. She's nothing like him at all, and he wonders how he could have imagined someone so detailed, so complex and multidimensional that she makes him look like a caricature.

When he wakes in a puddle of his own drool, he finds the headset has captured this creature, and every night he goes back to her, fleshing her out and programming her into his computer, where she grows to be more than he could have ever expected.

I'm not sure where to go from here. Does he fall in love with his creation, a la Pygmalion? Does she become his child? Does she expand beyond what he could offer her, like the film Her (2013) or the Thronglets from Black Mirror? Does she redefine what it means to be *intelligent* or *alive* or *real*, like Bicentennial Man?

What do you think?