One thing about the Litmus Tests of our era is that they are learning opportunities: but more emphatically they are opportunities to learn something important and especially relevant to ourselves and this era of human history.
This is because the very success of Litmus Test issues - the large degree of (often passionate) public support they attract - makes it evident that the "tasks" of recognizing their fundamentally evil falseness is one of especially great value.
Even when we personally happen to be largely immune to the appeal of a specific Test, we can learn valuable lessons from considering the nature of their appeal - from considering what particular (maybe distinctive) modern weakness they are probing and exploiting.
The current dominating Litmus Test is probably the (post-November 2022) "AI" project; and the lesson comes from observing and analysing the nature of its appeal - from studying what it is about "AI" that AI-advocates focus upon or enthuse about - including both its actual capabilities, claims of capabilities, and hoped-for effects and consequences.
Each of these have different causes; but I have noticed that when it comes to the actual capabilities of post-2022 "AI"; it is apparent that:
Whatever "AI" can do, ought Not to be done.
Either because it is not worth doing, which covers a good deal.
Or because it is actively harmful to the human spirit that this task be automated.
To recognize this requires that we be able to detach our-selves from the here-and-now worldly imperatives, such as making a living while dwelling in a totalitarian System that has (increasingly strongly) net-evil aims, values, and methods.
If this can be achieved, then we notice that "AI" is actually being-used for anti-loving and anti-creative purposes.
(And for a Christian anti-loving and anti-creative means evil: it means an opposition to the nature of divine creation.)
I mean that "AI"-systems are being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate human to human, and therefore any potential for genuine inter-personal relationships.
Instead we get automated simulation.
And "AI" is being used to reduce and ("ideally") eliminate from tasks any potential for genuine human creativity.
Instead we get automated simulation.
This is the actual effect of actually-existing "AI" systems.
And on the flip-side there is the situation that anything "AI" genuinely does do, which is not a simulation - should not be done.
This insight can be helpful because there are many aspects of modern life that are (whether in practice, or fundamentally) unavoidable and pervasive; but which we should spiritually recognize as intrinsically un-Good, evil.
As so often, it is the clear spiritual recognition of a reality that is necessary - and that is the proper task of a Christian; and not our personal ability practically to eliminate that which is a necessity.
Because, often there is nothing we can do to alleviate an evil necessity.
But we can always recognize and acknowledge that a necessity is evil - and that is our proper task.
5 comments:
Another thing is that anytime there is an elaborate chain of reasoning there are all kinds of subtle errors or oversights that can occur. At least human reasoning can be fairly easily checked. With computer calculations, there is a greater potential for errors to creep in unnoticed. For instance, something like this (https://voxday.net/2019/10/13/the-collapse-of-science/), but it is even worse than that, because there can be a hardware bug, which might be even more subtle and difficult to detect, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug).
So it does not make a whole lot of sense that human reasoning should be or could be replaced by millions or billions of elaborate computations. I do not claim to know what will happen in the short or medium term. But people all over the world are being told to plan their lives based on the idea that this is going to be around for centuries, which clearly will not happen. The future that is being promoted will never arrive.
Odd. This was a thought similar to one I had. When I was an academic I thought decision science economics. Across the way were information systems and I atctimes taught simplified statistics aka business analytics. Recently geaduates faced difficulty securing employment as entry levelrokes were being supplated by AI. But alas thise jobs were just being button pushers for the ever geowing administrative aparatus that encroaches even the most trivial of activities. Indeed working as a barber or farmer a better path
@NLR - This problem of concealed errors has already led to some well publicized scandals - e.g scientific software for "functional" brain imaging, or the UK Post office accounting software defects - but never at the time they are happening, always located safely in the past when it is too late to prevent them.
The System operates on the assumption that new Systems must be assumed to be functional and beneficial, and installed and enforced universally on that basis - until proven otherwise, later and when a replacement System is due.
I just came across an article about Project Panama, an internal project in Claude — where obscure books, old scientific journals, etc are being scanned then shredded. Internally they labeled it “destructively scan all the books in the world”
What can possibly go wrong
@Louis - This has probably been happening for a long time. Many libraries have already done this.
"What can possibly go wrong"
I am old enough to remember the late 1990s phrase "the internet is forever" - once something has been posted it cannot be eradicated; which may be correct for the intelligence services, but nobody else.
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