They are still minds, though. And there's no reason to believe they're actually unknowable. You're trying to inject more mystery than is actually warranted. Ancient people have a lot in common with us just by virtue of being similar physical beings in similar environments with similar problems.
We can debate fine meanings of ancient texts. But at minimum the bare facts of, say, the story of Gilgamesh passed through ancient humans' minds in a similar way as it passes through ours. That's still more than we can say for AI-written text.
> One can just as easily contemplate the method through which human writing got distilled into a matrix of numbers
Humans aren't matrixes, though. Humans want to communicate with other humans, beings who face the same problems we do. That's why we care about human thoughts. No one cares what a matrix thinks, no one healthy anyway.
We can debate fine meanings of ancient texts. But at minimum the bare facts of, say, the story of Gilgamesh passed through ancient humans' minds in a similar way as it passes through ours. That's still more than we can say for AI-written text.
> One can just as easily contemplate the method through which human writing got distilled into a matrix of numbers
Humans aren't matrixes, though. Humans want to communicate with other humans, beings who face the same problems we do. That's why we care about human thoughts. No one cares what a matrix thinks, no one healthy anyway.