I have no doubt we shall be troubled greatly by whatever passes for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The term AI itself is ill-defined at best, but that’s not the point. We are developing machines capable of acting on some measure of volition and our own imperfections will ensure this turns out bad at some point. When humans are forced to defend themselves by destroying a machine lacking human limitations, it won’t much matter what kind of AI is behind it. In a certain sense, we are already there.
But the whole question of what AI is or could be rests on a false assumption we’ve often identified here: that true awareness rests in the intellect. There is no doubt we will at some point rig up machinery that is indistinguishable from humans on the level of intellect and perhaps some mimicking measure of creativity. What we cannot create is a sensory heart.
We struggle mightily as it is to awaken the sensory heart in real people. That is, we struggle to get folks to pay attention to their own hearts. It’s a much bigger problem than the mere Satanic idiocy of associating the heart with emotions. If there is one lie from Hell that has done more to keep folks away from their divine heritage, I would be hard put to identify it. In Western mythology, anything not purely intellectual must be relegated to mere sentiment. The Western orthodoxy that there is nothing higher than pure reason is the damnedest of damned lies.
This is a portion of what makes us fallen, a critical element in the Fall itself. The Fall is in essence the choice to place human capability on the throne of the soul. For the most part, that means electing to measure and judge morality from reason alone. This defines Western Civilization itself. No other civilization on record made that mistake, and our Western hubris has surpassed every boundary so far. Even what little humility we can drum up is merely the product of intellect.
Those of us who have become aware of other faculties granted by our Creator, and have begun to exercise those faculties that are far above mere intellect, are few in number. It’s not a question of being smarter than the bulk of Western humanity, not wiser than those of primitive barbaric superstition, but of having sufficient wisdom to climb down from the throne. We realize we aren’t in charge of ourselves very much, never mind anything external to us. We couldn’t possibly change the weather beyond highly limited localized effects; God’s Word warns us of as much. Nor could we possibly create sentience after our own image.
More likely, we shall permit the psychopaths to affect the programming of AI in their image. Bad enough are weapons of mass destruction that make no distinction. We face weapons of mass destruction that will be frighteningly selective, creating a fear like no other. We face machinery that will be unfailing in its implementation of human failure.
And our God is still bigger than those threats.
