A.G.

This post will be different from what I have been posting. It’s more about something I have noticed lately, other than something directly related to covenant living.

Last year, there was a news story about a girl who took her life based on an A.I. chatbot. Sad as that is, I have also read snippets on how people all over are using A.I. chatbots for counseling. You can find many videos of people who have asked A.I. a lot of interesting questions and got a lot of interesting answers, sometimes with rather creepy results. As a computer guy, I somewhat understand what is happening behind the scenes. In a kid’s movie called “The Incredibles,” Mr. Incredible is about to fight a robot and is instructed, “This is a learning robot; the longer you fight it, the more it learns how to defeat you.” This is also precisely how A.I. chatbots process “conversation” the more you chat. They use algorithms to learn what you expect and deliver what you want to hear. This can be quite concerning; the case I mentioned led to something tragically dark, and some chatbots are programmed to pick up on those and try to turn them around for goodwill. This leads to two outcomes: one biblical and one not so biblical.

As a Christian, using A.I. for advice and counseling is shaky. I understand the secular world doing such, no different than astrology or similar things. However, the Holy Spirit should be our guide and counselor for a Christian in a relationship with Christ. I am afraid I see A.G. (Artificial God) creeping up in our lives. Instead of using scripture and seeking the Holy Spirit for affirmation and guidance, I see some using A.I. (or A.G.). Sounds a lot like 2 Timothy 4:3~4. Now, I am not saying to raise arms and lobby against A.I. First, I see no example by Christ to fight any government on laws. Second, I also use A.I. for many things and find it quite helpful for specific tasks (like writing, I am using it now to correct spelling and grammar and give suggestions for sentence structure, even then I still use a human editor, a shout out to Mike Valentino!), but using it for things I should give to God is a different matter. If you live a foundational covenant lifestyle like I have discussed earlier in this blog and in my book “Above the Tule Fog,” you do not need to go to A.I. for counsel or guidance.

Second, I have seen this for a long time, even before A.I. became mainstream. I have found following the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft fascinating. Launched in 1977, they are rather old technology-wise and will not last much longer. Last year, one of them faulted, but after months of research, controllers on Earth were able to get it back online. Now, we are talking about slightly less than 50 years of technology. Interestingly, they had to pull people out of retirement and reverse-engineer the probe to get it fixed. They succeeded, but I found it interesting that new engineers struggled with the old technology. I also follow old computer history, and it’s quite surprising seeing the human “computers,”, as they were called, that NASA used for the Apollo missions. You can find pictures of them standing next to a pile of four-foot-tall paper with all the manual calculations needed for those missions, or the first computer programmers and the skill and math required. Even more interesting is that they are almost all women, and unfortunately, not very recognized. Read the story about Jack Black’s mom (Judith Love Cohen), yes the actor Jack Black. She was the person (a NASA engineer) who did all the re-calculations for the Apollo 13 rescue, while pregnant, at the hospital, giving birth to Jack. She literally was doing advanced math calculations while in labor because she was the only one who knew what needed to be done, and there was no time to waste.

Studying the original foundations of the older systems on which the new systems are built is not done effectively. I find the same thing in my field. I can’t tell you how many I.T. guys I run into who lack the basic knowledge of how networks work. They have degrees from college but no idea about some of the basic foundations. I started at the grassroots level for my field of work, but I can figure out things some days when those other guys can’t. As technology progresses, the foundations upon which it was built can get lost or fade. That concerns me with A.I., and especially education. Sometimes, I think about my 3-year-old and what he will see compared to what I did. He has things I wish I had, but would I be where I am today if I had them? Will the next generation become so reliant on A.I. that they won’t function without it, because critical thinking is slowly fading? And that ties into the first thing I mentioned: will it become the next A.G.?

Again, I am not saying to do anything but watch out personally. It’s something we should keep an eye on and evaluate ourselves. We live in a time that has never existed in history until now. I am not fearful of it, but I am watching with a curious eye how this will all unfold.