AI and God

The element of AI (Artificial Intelligence) discussion not taking place in the science debates describes most accurately the very definition and purpose of “artificial” things. What may have started out with divine participation has morphed into enhance, and replace if necessary, the natural substances and configuration of the natural world. 

Glasses assist the limited and damaged eyeball. Fine. Autos extend the speed and transport capabilities of pack animals. OK. Digitized information broadens both knowledge and communications. Good. Abuse and laziness can also be extended, but that’s a natural outcome of the risk in freedom.

Though artificial intelligence will follow the same assisting, extension and access efforts born in glasses, automobiles and digitized information, some, like Elon Musk, want to set AI free as if it were capable of enlightenment on its own. In essence, our affections for what is real in the world reflect not our trust in the creator, but our ignorance of God.

We do not want to settle for the “real” because the real has been designated as both dangerous and uncontrollable when pricked by the nosy and reckless human. The tables have turned upon our golden place in creation. And, Musk’s penchant for exploration and revolution, exciting for travel and power independence, appears to further seal the intellectual removal of the relationship between God and man.

The real, in effect, has become a target for replacement at every level of life, because the real has 1., no effective human governor and therefore is caustic and calamitous to a successful human control of the universe, or 2., requires untethered (godless) experimentation as humans take the reigns of the universe. 

According to the premise of most folks driven to replace the process and patterns of Nature, the “real,” the extant design of natural components, lacks proper human control because Nature has no God, and neither do we. Or, because Nature must be bridled, saddled, and sorted according to its value.

Nature performs in the wild, which is godless, and reacts violently when challenged. The unpredictable consequence of Nature forces the human into opposing camps, both which do not allow for a prescient or nurturing God.

Those that call for nature to be wild, balancing itself out, identify nature as a self-driven, Mother character. Piss off the Mother and it’ll destroy the perpetrator. The perpetrator can be anything, but most heinous are the humans. Humans interfere with nature, and must get out of the way. It’s best if they just stop procreating. The weak need to die off. The insane repaired or put away. And the raucous drugged or wiped out. The stewards of wild nature must be those who understand the balance and superiority of nature, willing to both euthanize others and see to their own suicide.

The control freaks want to replace nature with a dashboard-like wifi system that tweaks the environment. Humans must preside at the helm. When nature bumps into the human-controlled environment the folks operating a variety of competing dashboards naturally jockey for position. Calamity results from poor human judgment and inefficient implementation, but that’s OK. Competition heightens excellence. The controls must be adjusted to address mistakes. Experimentation is acceptable and necessary. Progress builds upon failure. Collateral damage follows heroism. Heroism proceeds blindly, courageously, and fervently.

There is a tremendous nuance across the spectrums of these camps. Without consulting and involving God in the discussion and solutions, the camps collide both within themselves, and without. The have no tether to what God has designed, and no divine relationship to chart their course. Their biases banter over education, skin color, geography, religious fervor, and funding.

Instead of pursuing this godless anti-divine relationship in nature, and completely skip over the nefarious involvement of the pre-human principalities which God created (and which science fiction so adroitly considers an important alien element of the universe), lets continue with a minor example and proof of AI’s continuation of the anti-divine relationship between us and the universe. Let’s review the development of artificial sweeteners. It’ll tell us a lot about what we can expect from artificial intelligence.

Artificial sweeteners replace sugar in cases where sugar has become poisonous. The two primary cases are diabetes and obesity. Diabetics and fat people have different reasons for using artificial sweeteners. In both cases, though, the addictive pattern of the human psyche and human body combined identify sugar as the enemy. Sugar, rather than the addictive pattern developed in the human, is evil. Instead of combatting the pattern in the human, the market-based science machines (both camps of nature and control operate on market-based science principles) accept that the human pattern of addiction is an essential and unchangeable part of human nature. The human needs sweet to go with the sour, and so artificial sweeteners will accommodate the unhealthy desire of the human and still give them what they need.

The acceptance is false, assuming that due to a supposed lack of interest or intervention by God, humans are subjects of their nature and Nature is subject to nothing other than its whims. Nature is defined with godless involvement. In truth, though, the diabetic can be motivated and trained to limit sugar intake to match their insulin management capabilities. Scientific development created a suitable, though developing, eyeglass for the pancreas. The fat person can perform the same corrections to their sugar dilemma, simply through intake and body management. The sugar addiction that cannot be overcome is believed to be innate rather than practiced into a pattern. The emphasis upon pattern shifts, then, and the practice of the diabetic and obese person changes to a concentration upon an entirely unscientific “natural drive.” 

Nutritionists and other healthcare consultants who believe God lives and acts within the universe encourage their diabetic and fat clients to manage their health. Everyone’s burdens are opportunities to deepen a faith relationship – for both the practitioners and the patients. Those who don’t believe weary quickly, encourage sugar substitutes, remain committed due to the financial rewards, and expect their clients will die. Hopefully, their gene pool shrinks. 

That seems to be quite a side road, maybe even a detour, from the artificial intelligence issue, but the premise of addictive human nature in the design of artificial sweeteners gets at the loss of God’s involvement in our decision making and our interaction with nature. The designer and the divine intervener is simply ignored. Whether we are the diabetic or obese person, or the market that feeds us, our baseline ignores God and gets confusion.

There exists a great number of folks in healthcare, construction, government, and digital engineering who know God, and interrelate with the Spirit of God on a daily, even hourly basis. Yet, their influence does not calculate overtly into the conclusions, the constructs, the social order and the design or manufacturing of products and services. 

Those that do overtly express their love of God and their judicious and formative interaction with God incur skepticism at best. Such folks are tolerated only due to matters of law, which needs to be eventually weeded.

Few people, much less any scientist, will admit to consultation with God in either the investigation or the solution to a problem of health, construction, social order, or intelligence, because God doesn’t really have any involvement. He doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or has moved on to something else.

Or, God is simply kept secret. God has been physically and emotionally removed from the executive suites, the board rooms, the manufacturing floor, the IT center and the laboratories. He lives most certainly in the hearts of many of those at the tables, dashboards, floors and fields. His voice, though, likely is heard in whispers to only a nodding few.

Will artificial intelligence include code that hails his presence, and urges the humans to consider both God’s design and his participation? What of the hearts of the believers who know the prescience and love of the creator of real intelligence? 

Our own intelligence will eventually be considered poisonous, or simply a map for the machines. We could singularly be considered intrusive, or as a network of humans, ineffective. More likely, we will continue to be the gods that control the universe, both constantly and aggressively requiring digitized assistance. Tolerance for believers will remain, because the believers will hopefully fade away.

Those that bow down to nature will most likely simply eliminate themselves. Those that grip nature’s mane in the hands of artificial intelligence may run out of water or oil or sand. Those that walk in the Spirit will save some of them, but only if they courageously live in the real and die to this world’s fevers talking with the holy designer and loving God.

If allowed, artificial intelligence will become an interesting and extended herald of the good news. If it were built with that baseline, though few of us seem to be engaged in that imagination, it’s reminders of God would be wonderful.