Marvelous essay, William. I'm blessed by your thorough research. You have sparked a handful of half-baked offshoot thoughts which I may get around to sub-stacking myself. Trial run here! E.g.,
The Fall (Genesis 3:6) is bound-up in fleshly seeing. (Essentially: looks good to me!) Whether one takes a broad or a narrow view of the second commandment (Deuteronomy 5:8-10, Exodus 20:4-6) the principle is the same as that reflected in Hebrews 11, which begins, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things NOT SEEN."
The second commandment also hints at the power of images to persist through generations and to steer an entire people group off course. (The golden calf at Exodus 32, and the bronze serpent on the pole at Numbers 21:9, which goes bad by 2nd Kings 18:4 are prime examples of this phenomenon.) I.e., part of the warning for disobedience, and the promise for obedience is bound up in collectiveness--how it emerges from and "speaks" to a group of people, a society, lots of people... a hive.
AI would have no "oomph" if it had no human input to work with. That sounds rather obvious, but the big claims sound similar to the alleged computer proofs of self-generating life. All those fall apart if analyzed closely because the programmers invariably insert information, or assumptions, or a telos, or all three. They can't help themselves. They can't get out of their own way. They end up making then looking into a sophisticated mirror then using it to deny their own cleverness in making it--that is, of man being originally made in God's image instead of a cockroach writing the program. (Stephen C. Meyer's work on information theory is really helpful here, e.g., his books, "Signature in the Cell," and "Darwin's Doubt".)
So, in like manner, AI is a sophisticated way of appropriating others' creativity toward collectivist ends. (From each according to his ability, into a high-tech black-box mystery blender, and out the other end to each according to his "needs".) One could get snippy about that under the banner of copyright, but that's not the main threat or concern--not by a long shot.
The truly ominous angle seems to me closely related to what folks are wrestling with in regard to UFOs (or whatever they're calling them now), psychedelics, and the occult. A big fad idea in the 1990s, fueled by the web's birth (1994), books like Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" (1995), Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" (2002), James Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds" (2004), and a Silicon Valley resilience mindset was that the collective has an intelligence all its own.
We take this for granted now under headings like crowd-sourcing, but the basic idea is a hive mind. And so AI looks to me--as a guy who lived through and studies and writes about the '60s and '70s--like a shiny high-tech version of Ouija boards, i.e., openings (human invitations) for an unaccountable set of spirits to tantalize us with their cleverness in the visual domain... which sounds a whole lot like Genesis 3:6. Who is applying 1st John 4? "Test the spirits..."
Marvelous essay, William. I'm blessed by your thorough research. You have sparked a handful of half-baked offshoot thoughts which I may get around to sub-stacking myself. Trial run here! E.g.,
The Fall (Genesis 3:6) is bound-up in fleshly seeing. (Essentially: looks good to me!) Whether one takes a broad or a narrow view of the second commandment (Deuteronomy 5:8-10, Exodus 20:4-6) the principle is the same as that reflected in Hebrews 11, which begins, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things NOT SEEN."
The second commandment also hints at the power of images to persist through generations and to steer an entire people group off course. (The golden calf at Exodus 32, and the bronze serpent on the pole at Numbers 21:9, which goes bad by 2nd Kings 18:4 are prime examples of this phenomenon.) I.e., part of the warning for disobedience, and the promise for obedience is bound up in collectiveness--how it emerges from and "speaks" to a group of people, a society, lots of people... a hive.
AI would have no "oomph" if it had no human input to work with. That sounds rather obvious, but the big claims sound similar to the alleged computer proofs of self-generating life. All those fall apart if analyzed closely because the programmers invariably insert information, or assumptions, or a telos, or all three. They can't help themselves. They can't get out of their own way. They end up making then looking into a sophisticated mirror then using it to deny their own cleverness in making it--that is, of man being originally made in God's image instead of a cockroach writing the program. (Stephen C. Meyer's work on information theory is really helpful here, e.g., his books, "Signature in the Cell," and "Darwin's Doubt".)
So, in like manner, AI is a sophisticated way of appropriating others' creativity toward collectivist ends. (From each according to his ability, into a high-tech black-box mystery blender, and out the other end to each according to his "needs".) One could get snippy about that under the banner of copyright, but that's not the main threat or concern--not by a long shot.
The truly ominous angle seems to me closely related to what folks are wrestling with in regard to UFOs (or whatever they're calling them now), psychedelics, and the occult. A big fad idea in the 1990s, fueled by the web's birth (1994), books like Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" (1995), Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" (2002), James Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds" (2004), and a Silicon Valley resilience mindset was that the collective has an intelligence all its own.
We take this for granted now under headings like crowd-sourcing, but the basic idea is a hive mind. And so AI looks to me--as a guy who lived through and studies and writes about the '60s and '70s--like a shiny high-tech version of Ouija boards, i.e., openings (human invitations) for an unaccountable set of spirits to tantalize us with their cleverness in the visual domain... which sounds a whole lot like Genesis 3:6. Who is applying 1st John 4? "Test the spirits..."