Is Intelligence Artificial
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How many of you are worried about AI?
How many think that one day it will become sentient and destroy mankind?
There’s been a fair amount of talk lately about “Artificial Intelligence”. Some people see it as a boon for mankind, others foresee our eventual enslavement.
I have some experience with the technology, and I have a different question.
How should the disciples of Christ look at this idea of artificial intelligence, and what should we do about it?
What is Intelligence?
What is Intelligence?
To understand artificial intelligence, we need to look at what intelligence is in the first place.
the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations
One sense of the word is the ability to learn. That seems easy enough, but is learning the only test of intelligence?
After all, my dog learns, but I’m not worried that she’s going to suddenly decide to take over the world.
Intelligence is also the ability to understand or deal with new situations.
However, in another sense, the one most people I’ve encountered tend to think of when they use the term “artificial intelligence”, it’s:
the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria
You see, it’s one thing to learn, and to use that information to deal with a new situation.
It’s quite another to think about that situation abstractly.
When Lucky is sitting on the porch, she’s not considering the ethics of chasing squirrels, rabbits, and deer, she’s looking for squirrels, rabbits, and deer to chase.
When most people consider “artificial intelligence”, they compare it to a movie like Terminator or the Matrix.
They picture a computer that is self-aware, can make decisions by itself, and eventually decides it doesn’t need humans anymore.
In other words, something that resembles a human.
But there’s a fundamental flaw in that view.
The assumption that intelligence is nothing but a function of computational power.
Imitation Intelligence
Imitation Intelligence
What most people refer to as “artificial intelligence” is more accurately described as “imitation intelligence”.
One of the fathers of modern computing, Alan Turing, came up with a test to see if a system was a true artificial intelligence.
You take two entities and allow them to communicate without seeing each other.
If the human thought he was communicating with another human when he was actually talking to a machine, that machine was considered an “artificial intelligence”.
Not because it was intelligent, but it could imitate human intelligence.
Today, man has made computers that imitate the human brain.
They are called “Neural Networks” because they are networks of computers designed to function like the neurons in your brain.
However, unlike the most basic of animals, these neural nets do not start off with a basic instinct.
Only the programming to receive and process input.
These networks are then trained to identify a pattern, match it to something they’ve been exposed to, and provide an output.
Intelligence
Intelligence
Intelligence, true intelligence, is not a function of brain size or computing power.
A gorilla brain has about half as many neurons as a human brain,
But an African Elephant has almost three times as many neurons as a man.
So why has man been able to go to the moon, while gorillas and elephants need to be protected by us?
Because of a fundamental difference in their creation.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
God made the beasts of the earth,
From my dog to the elephant, and everything else.
But when God created the beasts of the earth, He did not create man.
That was a separate step.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
We are different from the beasts.
We are made in God’s image.
But God is Spirit, not flesh,
So how are we made in His image?
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Man has the breath the [nâshamah /nesh·aw·maw/], the spirit of God.
There is a fundamental difference between man and beast.
Which is why God placed Adam in the garden to tend it.
Why Man, not animals, has the responsibility to care for God’s creation, including the animals.
And why, no matter how much we anthropomorphize them, animal intelligence is nothing like a human’s
Creating Like God
Creating Like God
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
One sense of the word [yadaʿ /yaw·dah/] is to make known or declare.
Since the day in the garden, when Eve saw that the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil would make her like God, mankind has tried to be a creator, just like God.
We see this in the city of Babel.
And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
Similarly, today mankind is trying to make a name for himself by creating an intelligence greater the himself.
God confused our language at the tower of Babel to prevent us from getting to big for our britches.
Will He have to do something similar to keep us from creating our own tower of artificial intelligence?
Good and Evil
Good and Evil
Do I think that mankind will one day make a super intelligence, one greater than mankind?
No.
For one simple reason, we cannot breath the Spirit of God into it.
That’s not to say I’m not concerned about what mankind may do with his creation.
Remember, an Artificial Intelligence starts as a blank slate.
While mankind cannot breath life into AI,
Mankind does train the AI.
Eve thought that the knowledge of good and evil was a good thing.
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
Today, mankind is defining good and evil for our creation, AI.
Imagine an AI designed to monitor the world’s communication for “disinformation”.
Who decides how to train this AI?
Who decides what is true and what is fiction for this machines?
Will it be Jesus?
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Or will it be someone more like Ahab, the king of Israel, who, when he was given a prophecy from God said:
And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”
The fundamental problem with AI is not that it is artificial,
But what is it built upon?
“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. “But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”
Conclusion
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is neither good nor evil.
It is a tool, nothing more.
It is not the tool that performs evil acts, but the person wielding it.
I do not see how true artificial intelligence could ever come about.
Because, without the spirit of God, an AI cannot be truly creative.
If I were to ask an AI to write a sermon on Artificial Intelligence, it would write one.
But it would not be a creative endeavor,
Merely a compilation of the information the AI had been given access to.
So if AI is neither good nor evil, what is there to be concerned with?
The fact that AIs are creations of man.
Artificial Intelligence is something that comes out of a man.
So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?” And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
An AI is merely a reflection of those who trained it.
Therefore, it is no more to be feared as evil than a mirror is to be feared as ugly.
As Jesus said:
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Do not worry about what some AI may do in the future,
With the concerns we have about who is programming them, today has enough worry for itself.