A former airline pilot, Simon Cross left industry to complete a PhD focusing on the metaphysical tensions in scientific perspectives on divine action. For the past four years he has worked for the Church of England researching technology ethics and the regulatory and governance challenges AI poses for society.
He has written a fantastic Grove booklet on Artificial intelligence: a guide for the perplexed which is the best short guide I have seen. Here are some extracts to give you a flavour of his argument.
Simon begins by exploring why this has become such an urgent question.
An innovation purportedly threatening the extinction of the human species; a new technology definitely disrupting our educational methods and ap- proaches; a likely cause of mass redundancies. Yet also: a source of hope for medical diagnostics and therapeutics; the promise of increased efficiency in public transport (and of instantaneous and effective reactions in situations where things go wrong). And, whichever of these sets of predictions (or both) one focuses on, an astonishingly rapid pace of development; to give just one example, ChatGPT’s latest iteration as GPT4 has in a short space of time ‘learnt’ to get a decent pass at mathematics examinations, and at least one Oxford academic sets his students essay questions along with an example of what ChatGPT could do with it. ‘There’s your first challenge: do better than that.’ Yet of course the time might come, and might come quite soon, when the student, at least unassisted by technology, simply cannot ‘do better than that.’
The goals of this study are, first, to lay out the central features of AI in non-technical language and, secondly, to indicate some of the key components of a theological framework for engaging with the wide range of questions and issues involved. The focus is in the main on the more abstract and theologi- cally significant questions, rather than on policy questions in education or in healthcare. It will be obvious to anyone following developments in their field that if a week is a long time in politics, it is a very long time indeed in the world of AI! The questions dealt with here are not novel ones, though they might become more and more pressing as possibilities and ambitions for AI systems are extended in the coming months and years.
In the second chapter, Simon explores what AI actually is.
How can one create a machine that acts ‘intelligently’? Nick Polson and James Scott, in a very accessible primer on the underlying techniques that enable computers to act with what we call ‘artificial intelligence,’ say, simply enough, ‘When you hear “AI,” don’t think of a droid. Think of an algorithm.’ An algorithm is a sequence of instructions to compute (calculate and/or act on inputs) in a specific order so as to calculate a final value as output. Algorithms can be of any length and they can be nested within one another so that discussion about ‘the’ Facebook, or YouTube, or Twitter algorithm should really be discussion of algorithms plural.
Personalized social media feeds draw on a collection of perhaps hundreds of such algorithms to produce individualized content. The principle is straightforward but the resultant complexity means that, as the Facebook whistle-blower Francis Haugen testified to the US Congress in late 2021, only a small number of people inside Facebook actually understand how its own algorithms function, or their cumulative effects on users. The impact of such highly complex algorithms, taken together with the lack of external accountability for their consequences, has raised a number of concerns.
So what is an algorithm? It is fundamentally a set of instructions of the kind “add ‘a’ to ‘b’ and divide by the sum of ‘c’,” or “stop doing ‘i’ if ‘j’ happens” and so on. As the computer scientist Michael Wooldridge helpfully says, ‘If we are to build intelligent machines, then their intelligence must ultimately reduce to simple, explicit instructions like these.’
He explores the question of whether AI can be ‘conscious’ (and whether that question means anything) before concluding:
But the combination of faster and more powerful machines and the use of statistical inference, which is a type of reasoning that calculates probabilities for specific features in the data being analyzed, has opened up new and powerful opportunities. The mathematics for resolving this computational complexity is ultimately probabilistic; every AI algorithm computes the likelihood of its final sum or output being correct. To use a stock example, an algorithm can be trained to identify pictures of cats by showing it lots of examples of cat pictures (the training data) and then asking it to calculate the probability that a picture it has never seen before (the testing data) includes a cat. At its core, AI is thus about using logico-mathematical reasoning for pattern identification and pattern recognition, in order to make predictions.
The third chapter moves to the heart of the question—the ethical and theological issues that AI presents. Are Simon addresses a core underlying question, which is the language we use to describe AI.
To talk about AI at all involves language. In fact, language is one of the most powerful tools humanity has ever created. With language we can do more than just name an object. Language allows us to communicate ideas about objects, and even ideas about those ideas.
One crucial linguistic tool we have created is metaphor. If I refer to something in front of me as ‘a plastic box containing more plastic, and copper, and silica and other items together with carefully controlled electromagnetism’ I do not speak very elegantly! When I refer to that same arrangement as a ‘neural network’ I use metaphor as a tool. This particular metaphor draws on both the architecture of neurons in the human brain and an underlying model that links our own mind/brain structure to electronic computation. Metaphors are unavoidable for linking epistemology (how we know things) with ontology (what things there are to be known). Metaphors are, to coin a metaphor, the warp and weft of naming things truthfully where, as Rowan Williams says
To try to be truthful is to try and find a way of speaking that does maxi- mal justice to the diversity and plurality of a situation, so that ‘truthful’ speech is inevitably committed to metaphor, in order to represent what we could call the overflow of significance that we confront.
The idea that machines are doing the same kinds of tasks that humans do invites the use of familiar and person-al metaphors. Thus, it has become common to speak about AI ‘learning,’ ‘deciding,’ ‘choosing’ and so on. Furthermore, some metaphors are now commonly applied in the opposite direction, such that the human brain is now frequently described as a computer and the mind depicted as its software. According to popular writers like Yuval Noah Harari, neuroscience and psychology demonstrate how humans should be thought of as nothing more than ‘hackable machines.’
A metaphor is, then, a deliberately chosen linguistic means of transport. But in that case we need to choose both the right destination and the right vehicle for the journey. Does an AI algorithm ‘learn’ to ‘recognize’ cats in the fully- human sense of those words? Or does it only mimic some of the qualities we attach to such self-evident language? Should such descriptions of AI be taken at face value? We have already encountered the question of whether an apparent AGI could ever really have an internal mental life of the kind human minds experience. But if AI can only ever do so metaphorically, how might we decide where metaphor ends and the literal begins?
He then explores the cultural context of AI, including the modern myths about science, and questions of money and power, before concluding:
Three conclusions follow for the debate about AI that will inform the rest of this book. First, very careful attention has to be paid to the way that language is being used to make and to justify claims, both in describing what current tools of AI are doing and when contemplating the possibility of AGI. Language is a powerful tool in its own right and the role(s) and risks of metaphors in popular depictions of AI are not always sufficiently recognized or critiqued. This scrutiny matters because of both the philosophical implications for hu- man self-understanding and for AI’s practical social, political and economic impacts as well.
Secondly, this commonplace understanding of what the term AI refers to de- pends on a culturally-tuned understanding of what it means to be a human being that must, itself, be framed in a broader social and historical context.
In light of these factors, Christian theology can and should offer a corrective to depictions of AI that reductively present the human mind as a machine, and that on the flip side, as it were, in turn over-attribute human qualities of mind to state-of-the-art AI techniques and programs. The risk, to paraphrase John the Baptist, is that we inadvertently become less in order that they—that is, our tools and our machines—might become more.
In the fourth chapter, Simon moves on to look at the ‘mirror’ impact of AI: how our language and thinking on AI makes us think about what it means to be human—including questions of the ‘soul’, creation, and free will.
As we start interrogating the meaning of ‘artificial intelligence’ our attention unavoidably converges on a single central question: what it means to be hu- man. Biblical anthropology asserts the dignity, value and purpose of human being in relationship, a way of being that is in relationship with fellow hu- mans and with the created order and that is in relationship to God who is the ultimate source of all meaning, value and purpose. In contrast, much modern secular thinking envisages human being in exclusively physicalist and natu- ralist terms, both the world and human being having no inherent meaning or purpose. It is helpful to compare and contrast this biblical anthropology with the anthropology usually applied to AI in order to identify key differences as well as similarities between the two worldviews. These reflections might in fact lead us back from reflection on artificial intelligence to think more deeply on what it is to be human, made in the image of God…
If an AI is always reducible to an algorithm, and if an algorithm is always reducible to a step-by-step set of actions, then could AI ever possess free will? In the case of narrow AI this is philosophically straightforward because no free agency is even being claimed. A lethal autonomous weapon like a military drone has no free will and, while the ethical issues are undoubtedly complicated, the autonomy of the drone’s targeting system is always and only a function of the algorithmic program it is executing line of code by line of code. A drone circling a city is only metaphorically autonomous, independent of human agency but having no meaningful intentions of its own…
AI is now a fundamental component of modern Western society, actively aiding human flourishing in a variety of ways. But AI is not the golden ticket to an imagined future, whether wonderful or catastrophic. It is a dual-use tool with potential in either direction and the choice(s) belongs to us. Consequently, evaluation of how best to use and how further to develop this powerful and important new tool should include three carefully considered factors.
Two chapters then look at the practical and social implications of AI, including its environmental impact, and what a missional response to AI might look like, before concluding:
First, the enduring scientific and philosophical mysteries attending freedom and consciousness. We must be careful that the pragmatic setting aside of metaphysical mysteries does not lead to an impoverished view of human being becoming normalized. Rational inference and reason are important, and are marks of intelligence. But so are wisdom, empathy, the apprehension of the sublime and the moral and spiritual formation of character. Secondly, an adequate evaluation of AI must grasp the additional complications posed by language’s remarkable and innate flexibility to shape meaning. Language is, itself, a multifunctional tool. Thirdly, we must continue to ponder what it means, fully, to be a human being. We are the final frame for deciding whether AI can fully replicate the whole gamut of human life or merely mimic some parts of it. Whatever else we say that AI can do today it emphatically cannot love, or rejoice, or sacrifice, or freely choose mercy instead of justice as we human beings can—and must.
Sensitivity to all three of these dimensions is essential for locating and keep- ing the debate(s) about AI in the right philosophical and theological register. Consequently, a fully Christian response to AI will want to engage with biblical anthropology, including both sin and eschatology.
Cumulatively that reflection will empower us to welcome potential while also recognizing hype, rejecting temptations to reduce and diminish the human, and motivating us to resist the identifiable harms as we seek mutual and collective flourishing.
It is a powerful and wide-ranging study, and is available (post-free in the UK) from Grove Books.
Hack alert!
Harari has been humungously hacked, unknowingly.
Who is the ultimate ‘hacker’ of Christianity? And humanity?
The book seems to be a more than useful primer.
I have no idea what your comment means…?
Harari is a whizzkid whose predictions of the future are slightly better informed but not wiser than many.
Indeed, Anton.
It is not predicated on the wisdom of God, Biblical wisdom.
And a continuation of being fed and sustained by the wrong tree in the Garden. Though he may be a flavour of the month, he is hardly an early adopter in the history of humanity.
I use AI on almost a daily basis, mainly graphically but also textually. So far I have not found anything it can do that I cannot do. But it does it faster. A lot faster! So something graphical that would take me 4-5 hours to do (eg compositing multiple images and repainting by hand to make it look like a single image) it will do in 30 seconds or less. Mostly very well, but sometimes appallingly badly! When it fails it fails much worse than my fails. But what it cannot do is think. It’s not intelligence it’s function. I provide the intelligence and creativity. I tell it what to do.
So… Speeding up from 4-5 hours work to 30 seconds is quite a rate increase.
Here’s the issue: Over the centuries we have had similar increases in speeding up of work — consider the increase in productivity from horse pulled plow to tractor with multiple plows. Vast numbers of agricultural workers needed to find work in factories. When we containerised shipping vast numbers of stevedores needed to find other work. Factories computerised and added robots. Vast numbers of factory workers needed to find intellectual work. Now we are computerising that intellectual work. Is this the end of the trail? Possibly. Which is why UBI (Universal Basic Income) has become an issue to be discussed.
There are all sorts of issues that this raises some of which I addressed in an article in January 2022 called ‘The Impending Economic Tsunami’ (https://future-echo.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-impending-economic-tsunami.html)
But the central theological question is whether mankind was created by God for work. From that this leads to questions about what sociological structures are God ordained. If vast numbers of people will have no employment in their lifetime, what should they be doing? We do need to address these issues… urgently. Personally I see us created in the image of of a creative God (see my book ‘In the image of a creative God’) and so if work can be reduced to facilitate creativity in workship of the one who made us creative I see that as a good thing. Going back to the economic issues though, we need to see a means of facilitating the support of people using their creativity but in economic terms being unproductive.
Thanks Richard. I agree with you that the social issues are actually more pressing than the philosophical issues. But one of those (which the booklet tackles) is the concentration of power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands…
Yes, the world wide oligarchy! Though that’s an increasingly big problem which can lead to world control (the Antichrist?) the basic problem comes from a flawed economic model. I was debating that with a Korean girl this morning. Until we realise the biosphere is the boundaried garden God has given and that as responsible stewards we cannot keep ‘growing the pie’ but need to care for the world and its population we will continue heading towards a global crash. How far off that is I’m not sure. Bill Gates in The Road Ahead says we overestimate change in the short term and underestimate change in the medium term. I think he’s right. I think we need to work more in the medium term (3-10 years) than worry too much about the immediate. Unless there’s a shift away from the SNA based GDP then within that medium term we’ll see war increase and famine increase. And that’s not what God intends.
Mostly very well, but sometimes appallingly badly! When it fails it fails much worse than my fails. But what it cannot do is think.
This puts me in mind of a coment by John von Neumann, a great pioneer of the field (reported in a letter by Prof ET Jaynes to, I *think*, Physics Today). Along these lines:
” You say a machine cannot think? You tell me *exactly* what it is that a machine supposedly cannot do, and I will build a machine that can do it.”
A machine cannot tell if something artistic feels right. Maybe it will in the future but not now. I don’t know how a machine can evaluate ’feel’.
I suppose it depends how one believes humans can ‘feel’. Is it the end result of an extremely complex web of neurotransmitters firing, honed over time. Thus ultimately arising from purely physical and therefore logically replicable processes by a machine. Or is there more to it, perhaps similar to consciousness which may or may not be purely as a result of physical processes, ie God-given?
Peter
Richard, you write: “Within a closed biosphere we cannot manufacture wealth out of nothing.” But the earth is not a closed biosphere. It receives continuaslly a vast amout of energy from the sun – some of which is stored in the form of fossil fuels, some of which powers the weather, some of which keeps us warm, etc.
Yes, I address the issue of energy input. But for example there’s a fixed quantity of gold which is required for all modern electronics. The diagram that addresses that issue (energy input) is near the end of the article.
‘ … the concentration of power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands’
Hmm. Is it possible that some of the Bishops in the Cof E are in fact humaniform artificial intelligences ..
LOL
Chris B,
All I had to do was paste your last sentence into bing AI and viola!
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nm4tn9ts9tyi36kt6ckaa/_67bc6415-a1d3-4522-9fe3-799a261a9394.jpg?rlkey=3pip3keim0raucgzv0gtj0elg&dl=0
er voila 🙂
With a nod to Asimov’s three laws of Robotics then an AI bishop should conform to:
First Law: An AI Bishop must not proclaim false doctrine or allow false doctrine to be taught.
Second Law: An AI Bishop must submit to the will of General Synod unless such actions would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: An AI Bishop must protect its own existence as long as such protection does is not to the detriment of lesser clergy or laity, and such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
What about marrying a humaniform artificial intelligence? Will it be possible to do that in the C. of E.?
But who decides what ‘false doctrine’ is? Your 1st law falls apart on that.
Praise Him with stringed instruments too.
I doubt it. AI does theology better.
Chris: I agreed with you until your last word.
Steve,
The title of that open book reflects an understanding what it is and contents.
Thanks Steve. Can Ian can change the picture at the top of the article to the bing AI image?
Chris,
Does it not represent The Creation of Adam by the revisionists? Or maybe it is today’s attempt to re-create a decoding of DaVinci-what he really meant?
Not sure this will pass Ian’s moderation, as an earlier comment responding to Steve’s AI image is being witheld.
That is because you mistyped your email address.
Mistyping is not unusual from me, especially on the phone which no longer seems to retain the address. An average level of competence is not mine. Apologies, for extra work for you. Maybe I need to be replaced by AI, though I’m not intelligent enough to use it.
Self parody is mine. Not a concept known and recognised by the (some) Bishops as demonstrated by Canterbury.
Give me a real Bishop (Chris) anytime.
How do you know l’m not an AI Geoff..
It’s all in the cactus, Chris!
And how does AI recognise the music of ELP, Emerson Lake and Palmer?
Pre-AI. Pre-creation: chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Ephesians1:4
Should’ve gone to AI-savers.
Mere Spec-ulation, James. Anyway, what has the Great North Road got to do with any of this?
Fascinating, on the context of the article, what is a cat? ask the Kellers in their devotional in the book of Proverbs (with a smattering of Ecclesiastes and Job) “The Way of Wisdom” February 24.
“The theme of Proverbs 1:7 is repeated here in Proverbs 9:10.
Every person’s wisdom-the way of interpreting things – *begins” with one’s view of God. What is a cat?. It depends. Are we iin a godless universe, do every living thing is just the product of a violent process of survival of the fittest? Or is God an impersonal world-spirit, so that everything in the physical world is an illusion? Or are we created by God, put into this world to care for it, including the animals? Each view of reality would necessarily look at a cat-and perhaps treat a cat- differently.”
There is more- not all has been cited.
What is a cat? It depends. Are we in a godless universe, so every living thing is just the product of a violent process of survival of the fittest? Or are we created by God, put into this world to care for it, including the animals?
Cats certainly believe that this is the purpose of humans.
I don’t understand why people suppose that evolution is godless. They talk disparagingly about man coming about by a random process, yet ‘random’ merely means ‘so complicated that we know very little about it’. But God knows. We are also learning that much of evolution is convergent rather than divergent. It used to be thought that if things were only very slightly different millions of years ago then life would look totally different today (divergence). But the eye, for instance, as a light-sensitive organ, seems to have evolved totally independently (ie, not in a common ancestor) in five or six forms of life. So perhaps the way things are today would always look like recognisably similar.
Anti-evolutionists often claim that God arranged that they meet their spouse. But it looks to everybody else like a chance, random meeting of two people. These are merely different levels of description.
I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole, Anton, but more than a life-time ago (for some) in O and A level biology, I recall the famous evolution, text book graphic of how humans emerged from the sea, amphibians, birds from flying fish, creeping things, to animals, apes, gradually walking upright, to man.
Anyway, since becoming a Christian, I took some interest in Creation and macro-evolition. Probably the greatest influence was John Lennox through his books, listening to him live and in on-line debates (though there were others), as a mathematician and philosopher of science (where it oversteps into scientism) and Christian, (though I don’t agree with him on everything), there is a saying, which I don’t think originates from him, which has stuck: there is an irreducible complexity to the world.
But, enough.
So, what is a cat? Does a cat enjoy being a cat; a dog, a dog? Do we enjoy our maker? Yes and no. The whole creation groans for…
Something which AI knows nothing about. Science can be a good servant, but bad/evil master:certainly not Saviour.
May I recommend the book “(Mis)interpreting Genesis: How the Creation Museum Misunderstands the Ancient Near Eastern Context of the Bible” by Ben Stanhope. I don’t agree with everything in it (a bit too liberal thologian, although not much) but his criticisms of creationism are devastating. And, to see gaps routinely filled in, in the evolutionary record, that creationists assert *cannot* be filled, try “Life Ascending: The 10 great inventions of evolution” by Nick Lane.
Anton, I will try to seek these out – though I have to add I don’t think the world is 6000 or so years old, or that ancient humans were walking with dinosaurs. What do you think of the work of Stephen Meyer in ‘Signature in the Cell’ or his book on Darwin; or Behe?
James: I am an old-earther and don’t believe humans walked with dinosaurs; yet I also believe that Genesis is not mere allegory. I find that living in the resulting tension stimulates interesting ideas.
Behe is simply wrong, I believe; the Nick Lane book I recommended treats evolution at both organism-scale and molecular scale, and examples of the latter do what Behe claims is impossible (especially when suplemented with Lane’s further book “Transformer”). Meyer I’ve not read, but a glance at Amazon suggests the same. Key to a lot of it is finding an environment in the early earth in which what is impossible in the open seas is actually quite likely. Such environments can be identified.
Evidence is far stronger for intelligent design in physics (my subject) than in biology, because the biological revolution is only just beginning. There is an objective beauty in the laws of physics which, unlike the beauty of the sky, you need some education to see; but secular and Judaeo-Christian physicists both acknowledge that beauty. Only that latter can explain it, though.
The cat knows that it is a god, or at least was once worshipped as one.
Anton – this is basically why the ID theory seems fundamentally anti-Christian to me; people seem unable to comprehend the blatantly obvious; one of the things that God as creator actually created was the laws of nature that govern the universe. The basic idea seems to be ‘oh look! this bit doesn’t seem to go according to any natural law that we understand – therefore there must be a God behind it’ – failing to understand that this means that God who created the natural laws somehow made a botched job and constantly has to intervene.
I think it’s understood that Darwin was itching to find reasons to dump Christianity – you see this false dichotomy towards the beginning of his ‘Origin of Species’, where he seems to contrast ‘by law’ with ‘by miraculous intervention’ – as if things evolving according to a natural law would somehow contradict the creator God behind it.
Actually, there is an inherent contradiction, which is seen clearly in the creation ordinance of a Sabbath rest in Genesis 2. Nature does not stop and take a Sabbath rest one day in every seven; nature is continually pressing on. It doesn’t ‘behave itself’ (and this idea is related to the creation ordinance of marriage in Genesis 2 – one man and one woman in lifelong union – and the complaints from many that this does not correspond to their nature). I like the theological idea that the first creative act of God was to create a God-forsaken space in which to put the creation; darkness on the face of the deep (darkness – radical evil – absence of God).
But I’d better stop here – because I don’t really see how the natural laws, created by God are related to discussions of Artificial Intelligence and how to deal with it.
I’ve mentioned the laws of physics in a reply above to James. Darwin was a pioneer but he wrote before genetics was understood and it isn’t necessary to read him today in order to grasp the claims of modern evolutionary bioscience.
Is evolution truly ‘random’? Is it not predictable, at least to some extent, within a certain set of parameters, ie environmental conditions, given how we understand how the relevant mechanisms work?
PC1 – sorry – I’m confused. Who ever said that evolution was random? What do you mean by random anyway? I mean – I’m aware of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and how it applies to sport (so that if the Peterhead striker kicks the ball it could go anywhere) – but there’s something fundamental that I’m not getting here.
Sorry Jock I meant to post this in a reply to Anton from his post on 1 March where he mentions alleged randomness.
Peter
So what is a cat? A cat enjoys being in charge and in control of everything around it A cat is physically beautiful, charming affectionate and understands how to manipulate humans . They are highly intelligent and are very sensitive to and protective of the humans they own if the humans are worthy. They intuitively know who loves them and make good loyal companions
Something we are in full agreement about, Cressida!
Tsk….there were a few other things too:) Good to catch up again Anton.
And also with you.
It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
One of the great unknowns and consequent risks with AI is its deployment in military/warfare decision making.
On 26 September 1983, when the USSR’s early-warning system in error detected an incoming missile strike, a human being (Stanislav Petrov) weighed up the situation and correctly concluded that there was a malfunction. The order was to report the reading, which he did disobeyed, otherwise it would have led to a retaliatory strike against a non-existent attack.
Would AI be able to make that judgement? Had not Petrov made his decision, would we be having this discussion today!
Israel is using an AI routine called, blasphemously, ‘the gospel’ to assist it in its choice of targets in Gaza.
and that seems to be working well, doesnt it!
AI is simply the latest WOW technology to emerge from the sea of godless humanity. It adorns the beast of Revelation fame. It is beautiful. It is bloody. It will ensnare and beguile millions. When it is fully embedded it will motivate the heads to tear off the woman sitting on it and eat her. At the moment she is Liberal Democracy. Once the beast, motivated by AI, has consumed her a new queen will be placed upon the beast’s back. This time she will be a religeous, theocratic, authoritarian queen. The seven heads are the seven major religeons.
The scene painted by Revelation of the beast rising from the sea is in direct contrast to the One seated on the cloud with the scythe. Six angels + the Spirit come from the Temple and the One on the cloud.
AI will mimic this so that what most ‘evangelicals’ see is not the One on the cloud but the Woman on the Beast.
So Steve, is that wow, or wob, (Woman on Beast) or WOW? War of the Worlds: H G Wells or Jeff Wayne? Or WOW, Winner of the World, Jesus? Result known.
It is interesting to note that the Grammarly app. considers this comment to be in a “picky mode” and that “considers” should start with a capital letter and underlines wob in red. Such a pedant, not recognizing my note form! But it does have a point.
Woo Geoff, I take your comment as rhetorical.
That’s too kind, kindness personified, Steve.
I thought you were using an acronym – were you? IDK but ISTM people should avoid using acronyms, LOL.
You may say that James, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Call me Dave (Cameron) might get the wrong idea. Isn’t LOL short for Lollards? ICHTHUS.
There is an interesting philosophical argument put forward by John Searle as to a machine that gives the outward appearance that it is sentient but actually is not. One conclusion is that a sentient entity must necessarily be biological. From a christian point of view one might add that it must also be spiritual – at least at higher levels of consciousness.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
One word, Skynet.
This is a blog about Biblical Theology is it not?
How about Revelation 13:15?
So perhaps satan is waiting to find a suitable sentient AI to inhabit
Amstrad.
Harari.
Here is but one critique:
https://www.bethinking.org/human-life/sapiens-review
And from Britannica here is a thumbnail sketch of ‘Transhumanism’ of which the use of AI is part:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/transhumanism
An urgent question to be considered within a theological framework poses our blog article? Yes.
But, it is but a next swirling eddy in the now fast flowing scientific and philosophical stream of humanity, antithetical to the God of Christianity.