We must not allow AI to replace the soul powers of intellect, will, and emotion. AI bots should not replace human emotions, affection, and love. All of these things define our humanity and are given by God to help us know, love, and serve Him.
Proponents of artificial intelligence (AI) like to portray it as a tool for navigating an increasingly busy and complex world. Data processing apps help users organize, create, and understand things.
Some believe that AI has even more power. They claim that their chatbots can provide useful interactions and emotional support. The power of these apps allows people to insert themselves into stories that entertain and excite.
Thus, praise for AI focuses on how it enriches our individual lives. Advocates believe that AI can help us reach our full potential and become all that we can be.
create a framework for discussion
I don’t think we should frame the discussion around the practical tasks that AI helps humans perform. This is not the main issue.
The problem with AI, ChatGPT, and chatbots is much deeper. It involves our perception of reality, not practical needs. It can affect how we interact with others and organize our lives.
AI is so scary not because it can be everything humans can be, but because it can make it everything humans can’t be.
attack the sense of being
AI represents a revolution in thinking that can change the process by which we know things with certainty.
Every individual has a sense of being, from which comes the perception of one’s identity. For example, a person senses their own presence and distinguishes it from others. Therefore, he can say, “I am.” With this affirmation, he defines his identity and recognizes his limitations. He affirms the otherness that only he has. He senses other beings through his own perspective. On this basis he constructs objective reality.
AI thinking works from a variety of assumptions. It refuses to define its identity or recognize its limitations. In terms of AI, there is a tendency to reduce everything to the essential elements: data and algorithms. Adam Kirsch wall street journal The editors summarize this vision of AI reality in their book. rebellion against humanssex. He argues that the traditional method of constructing reality through the power of the soul is wrong. He says that the human mind is completely material. “There is no immaterial soul or spirit in our bodies. The experience of being ‘me’ is produced by chemical-electrical processes in the brain.”
challenge our sense of existence
The AI revolution thus challenges our sense of existence by turning everything into an objective, open-ended process. AI facilitates changing identities so that identities no longer correspond to reality, but to what a person desires or imagines. In an AI-driven world, men can become things they are not, including animals, avatars, and women.
In this way, AI can undermine certainty. It thrusts us into a realm of false identities, deepfake portrayals, and AI-generated narratives where we don’t know what’s real and what’s fake.
People are sometimes forced to say things they didn’t say or to be in places they’ve never been before. For example, people could act within an AI application and commit acts of extreme violence without immediate consequences.
destroy me
When AI becomes dominant, humans will be unable to think outside of new processes for perceiving and interpreting reality. AI solves any question, solves any problem. Soulless AIs can also take on the role of humans as comforters and advisors.
We no longer think in concrete terms, derived from observations derived from the affirmation “I am.” By blurring identity, AI obliterates “me” and “am,” drawing everyone into an imaginary world of uncertainty and fantasy.
dazzling speed
All of this is done through the vast computing power of AI applications that simulate alternate realities in real time.
AI will be able to express all of this at an unprecedented scale. These depictions, actions, and identities can be broadcast across multiple platforms at incredible speed. Directed by algorithms and Big Tech programming, it can do this without human intervention.
When this kind of perception becomes commonplace, people lose the ability to make sound judgments.
3 things AI can’t do
Therefore, AI cannot be three things.
It cannot be the arbiter of reality. When we assume this role, we seize control, co-opt processes we don’t understand, and produce actions forced by algorithmic interactions that we cannot stop.
AI cannot enable imagination and set free unbridled passion. That way you will be able to change identities and simulate corresponding actions without consequences. Such a scenario would degrade us to barbaric acts fueled by the basest desires, or to the most irrational models currently enabled by AI imagery.
Finally, AI cannot completely replace humans. We need to recognize the definable limits to what is possible or permissible.
power of soul
We must not allow AI to replace the soul powers of intellect, will, and emotion.
Therefore, we must not abandon the uniquely human intellectual processes that allow us to think, ponder, and reflect on the most important things in life, such as salvation.
We cannot allow AI to dictate our moral decisions because it does not recognize a set of moral values, only the interaction of data. We need to reserve for ourselves the moral decisions that strengthen our will and form our character.
AI bots should not replace human emotions, affection, and love.
All of these things define our humanity and are given by God to help us know, love, and serve Him. We risk losing them as AI takes over our lives.
__________
This essay is the second part of a series on AI. You can read the first essay here.
imaginative conservative Apply the principle of appreciation to cultural and political discussions and approach dialogue with generosity rather than mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in today’s increasingly contentious discourse? Please consider donating now.
Featured image courtesy of Pixabay.
