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Artificial Intelligence

I admit I approach this inspirational piece with much trepidation.  The most obvious reason is that I don’t know anything about AI, as it is called.  I know about it; I know folks who work in that field.  I know it has much to do with computers.  I know it is real, whatever that means.  As an old farm boy, I remember when we sometimes used artificial insemination on our cows.  That meant some guy came to the farm and impregnated a cow and no bull was in sight!  It worked.  And I am sure AI works.

All this was piqued when I read a fascinating article about artificial intelligence.  The headline of the article drew me into reading: “7 lessons learned from the Vatican’s artificial intelligence symposium.”  I did not know the Vatican held this conference, but I was not surprised.  And I am quite pleased they did it.  Since the Catholic Church is so large, it has quite a number of highly educated, bright people all over the place---literally all over the world.  The folks are not all priests nor theologians.  I can be a computer science genius and still be Catholic.  Also, having a symposium like this means the conveners can call upon other, non-Catholic experts to participate.  I jumped into the article because I wanted to know what were the seven lessons learned.

The article is written by Jesuit priest and professor, James F. Keenan, from Boston College.  The symposium, which happened in the Fall of 2021 with more than one hundred people attending, grew out of some discussions by various folks.  The initial gathering listened to a panel of speakers asked “to clarify how and to what extent the emergence of AI requires us to rethink what it means to be human.”  Even that line makes my head swim!  So, artificial intelligence is going to force us to think again what it means to be a human being.  That is pretty basic.  I know folks who are not even sure now what it means to be human.  

To give you a flavor of some content, Keenan quotes some opening remarks from Christof Koch, chief scientist of an Institute of Brain Science in Seattle.  One line particularly caught my attention.  Koch described “a future where the boundary between carbon-evolved and silicon-designed life becomes ever more porous is approaching at warp speed.”  Whew!  I know carbon-evolved describes life as we are now living it.  And yet, everyone reading this participates also in the silicon world.  I could not be using a computer without that world.  Computers, chips and all the rest are products of the silicon-designed world.  And according to Koch, the lines between these two worlds are porous.  That means there are holes and openings.  Those two worlds are no longer distinct.

This leads to the first lesson Keenan learned and that I now share.  He says, “First, the advances of artificial intelligence are staggeringly more rapid than anyone ever anticipated.”  Some of us will read this as a warning.  It can also be read as a matter of fact.  Effectively, Keenan is telling us that world is coming---ready or not.  And it is coming quicker than you would ever imagine.  Probably this is because most of us are not even imagining it.  But I come away saying, “yep, my kids and grandkids will have chips implanted and all the rest.”  If we don’t die pretty soon, we also might see it!

I liked Keenan’s take on this.  He said it was all “unsettling.”  I agree.  The second learning is interesting, but not one I want to develop.  Keenan says, “Second, the discourse on artificial intelligence is occurring within very different language games.”  By this he means, it is interdisciplinary.  No one can know everything about it.  Scientists talk one way; theologians talk another way.  We have to have this conversation together.

The third point is very interesting and could be a book.  Essentially, Keenan learned that the human being to be seen “as both a contradiction and as a mirror to AI.”  To me this means humans are both like and not at all alike to computers with AI.  That makes sense to me.  Rather than chase the arguments here, I reflect on my own use of the chip driven world.  I use the computer “like a right arm” in the sense that it feels perfectly normal.  I use the phone to connect with a friend in Australia as if he lived next door.  I don’t even think about it nor find it surprising that I do it.  When I was a kid, it would have been unimaginable.

This might seem like it has nothing to do with the spiritual or with God.  But I argue it has everything to do with spirituality.  For example, I believe God created the world and me.  Most spiritual folks I know also hold some version of this “doctrine,” if you will.  And the human I think God created surely is undergoing some dramatic changes.  And even more change is in store for us.  Where is God in all this?  So many more questions come tumbling out of my brain.

Personally, it makes me re-think how do I teach about human nature in my classes?  What will it mean to claim that God created me and you in “the image and likeness” of God?  I don’t want to be “Amish” in my teaching.  To me that means teaching things that no longer make sense in a world that has already moved on.  This is nothing more than irrelevancy.  I compare it to theology professor teaching that the world is flat or that God created the world in six literal days.  Of course, I can believe that, but it makes me seem totally out of touch with truth, as most folks know it.  

To be effective, those of us who want to be spiritual have to stay engaged with how things are evolving.  Our sense of who God is has to be able to make meaning of all this.  That is why I appreciate the Catholic Church’s lead on this topic.  I can’t do it on my own.  I want to be relevant and responsible.  Only then do I have a chance to be authentic as a human being, a leader and to be able to do ministry. 




https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/7-lessons-learned-vaticans-artificial-intelligence-symposium


  

  


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