Life Matters - April 26, 2023
The god of AI.
Perhaps we could say that artificial intelligence (AI) has been with us for several decades already in the form of digital calculators, word processors, computers and then smart phones, that can now take in voice questions and give the answer on the phone’s screen or even in audio. More recent developments, however, and now in the form of something referred to as ChatGPT, is taking AI to a whole new level, a level where AI could seem to have a mind of its own, but actually draws conclusions from data built in or fed into it. Twitter user Echo Chamber, asked ChatGPT to create a poem admiring Donald Trump, a request the bot rejected, replying it was not able to since “it is not in my capacity to have opinions or feelings about any specific person.” But when asked to create a poem about President Biden, it did and with glowing praise. Besides composing poems, I am told that ChatGPT can create architecture, write stories, and do journalism. A journalism that has already turned against one Jonathon Turley, a law professor, when an article appeared online exposing Mr. Turley as having sexually harassed a female fellow law student on a student trip to Alaska, citing a write-up in the Washington Post. Some research revealed that Jonathon Turley has never been to Alaska on a student trip so the sexual harassment claim was false, that the cited Washington Post article never happened and (perhaps you’ve guessed it by now) said online article was composed by a ChatGPT. In the near future, AI may well be used for character assassinations “on steroids” and a skewing toward left-wing talking points, as leftists continue disregarding the boundaries of Truth. As one said, “Leftist skewing is to be expected with telling people what to believe replacing the pursuit of Truth.”
Media Research Center - Free Speech America Vice President, Dan Schneider, said that AI threatens to subvert the meaning of education itself. “The heart of education is to teach people how to think,” Schneider said, “but AI programs like ChatGPT threaten to replace human cognition. ChatGPT is a complete replacement of (thinking) so that instead of learning how to think, we are just told what to know. This will in fact destroy the whole idea of education, it just turns people into robots that can spew out data points, but not understand the significance of those data points.”
Excuse me for a moment as I imagine what happens when those data points are installed into the digital AI “brain” of a humanoid robot who then goes about performing tasks that are normally done by normal humans ... on second thought, I’ll acquiesce before my imagination goes wild. Others have already been imagining, with one posing the question of what happens when an owner instructs his robot to fix a ham and cheese sandwich and another human gets in the way of this robot whose data tells it to eliminate the problem? From check-out counters to policing and battlefields, imaginations are sounding like a rendition of Star Wars. If we hear the warnings coming from those who are, or have been, involved in the development of AI, those imaginations may yet prove to not be so far off the mark. Elon Musk has been joined by Steve Wosniak (co-founder of Apple), researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, a coalition of over 1,000 prominent people, setting off alarm bells on advances in AI; a letter urging the world’s leading labs to “hit the brakes” on this powerful technology for six months or until the “profound risks to society and humanity” are better understood. Which raises another question - What about America’s sworn enemies? Will they also hit pause? While logical reasoning may say yes, reality may well say no. Elon Musk has warned us - “AI has the potential of civilizational destruction.”
To end this missive on a positive note ... “we look for a city” (Heb. 13:14) “not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1) ... In the meantime, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood” (nor its machines) “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12) ... and “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds” (2Cor. 10:4-6) ... Love wins. And Truth is the vindicator of Love.
Life Matters!