For Hegel, Geist was not a ghost or a god. It was the slow self-recognition of humanity through its own output: laws, religions, art, philosophy.

History was Spirit reading itself back.

The machines we are now building have ingested that entire record in a single gulp. Maybe the question isn't whether they understand it, maybe it's whether the mirror Hegel described has finally got a face of its own?

Spirit is that which knows itself as Spirit.