For most of human history, literacy bestowed power. Power bestows privilege. And so, not surprisingly, the rarity of literacy was assiduously – sometimes even violently – protected. Once women can read … Once our slaves can … Can the same can be said of intelligence? We don’t seek it in our women. And certainly not in our slaves. We’re happy to have them take over rote tasks, like food preparation and data entry. But nothing involving higher level problem solving, like designing a food or data processor. So yes, AI is threatening. Couple it with robotics and it’s terrifying.
At 76 I’m not long for this world. So for me this is a you problem. Very soon now – if not already – there’ll be no need for classrooms and professors. What it took me and thousands like me our lifetimes to synthesise and disseminate can now be done by a vastly better informed avatar in minutes. The house it took someone four paid days to paint will be done robotically within an hour.
Large language models gorge themselves on everything ever printed or said. But suppose that after I’m dead my widow wants to know what I would have said, if I could have said it, about this, that, or the other thing in the news. Ask Chat GPT to restrict itself to what I have written or said on related topics and then just let it infer.
Give the avatar my voice. Then give it a replica of my body. Then put it to the Turing test. For that matter, put it to the test while I’m still alive. Since all I do in formulating my responses is consult that same data base, from my wife’s perspective, isn’t my existence now just a tad redundant?
Is this science fiction? No it’s not. But then surely it’s dystopic. How so? Because, you say, what it is to be what we are is not just what we say and do. It’s our being conscious of what we say and do. So if saying and doing what we would say and do is not us saying and doing it, AI is just a species of the human extinction project. In Charlottesville it was “The Jews will not replace us!” But apparently, if we don’t stop AI now, our former slaves will replace us. True enough. But if “The Jews will not replace us!” is racism, why is “AI will not replace us!” any different? Especially when, how, other than by accessing a purely arbitrarily diminished data base, do we say and do what we do?
The above, in a nutshell, is where the angst over AI now stands. But what does the Serenity Prayer counsel about it? There are things people want done better than they can do themselves. Name me a technology, where this desideratum is met, that we opted to forego. What can be done will be done. Government can’t stop it. So if the chips are going to fall where they may – and they will – shouldn’t we find something else to angst about?
To angst about yes. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to think about. There’s no point angsting about Hume’s ‘problem of induction’. Or over whether the Holy Spirit proceedeth from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone. But angst-worthy or not, these are the kinds of things, the former for philosophers, the latter for Christians, that the mind demands be resolved. So 1) what exactly is the thing about AI that must be resolved? And 2) how might that thing, whatever it is, be resolved?
In PART TWO I think I have an answer to (1). I’m pretty sure I’d have an answer to (2) in PART THREE. But I’m equally sure I’ll never write it.
Categories: Angst, Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask
Paulosophical Vimplications 
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