The flaws of real labor to think or write or speak or sing are a small cost in the pursuit of truth. The artificial may even be better than the real but it is flawed from the get go. We celebrate genius, even flawed genius, because of the gift and the effort. Human intelligence and our capacity to create are not perfect but they are real. The results of our thinking and doing come at a cost. Learning is tedious and sometimes boring. It is a struggle to learn and from the process of learning accidental facts are found. Plugging something into Chat GPT may be marvelously efficient and even adequate but it comes at the cost of learning and without learning there is no genius. The human mind atrophies when we stop being curious, stop thinking, and stop learning. Life suffers as much as we suffer when we fail to put in the effort.
Outsourcing is a master at making things cheap and easy. We offload the task to someone else and we get to enjoy the results without any labor. Until the source of the thing is unable to deliver and then we find ourselves without the capacity to replace what we gave to others to do. Will that same thing not happen when we outsource our cognitive work to machines? I wish for a minute I could actually believe that this process would actually free us up for a higher task, for the pursuit of greater things, but I have seen the oft repeated results when we forgot how to do it for ourselves. Muscles left unused will atrophy and die and there is no muscle more important to us than the one between our ears. Leisure is a marvelous idea but a tragedy in the making for life. It tends no garden, works no production line, prepares no food, launders no clothes, and literally kills us with entertainment. Worse, we become strangers to our purpose and aliens to the very world in which we live -- one God gave us to exercise dominion over for His glory.
I have long said that I like a fountain pen and a decent sheet of paper. It works at the speed of my mind and the wonderful technology of a computer can speed me ahead of my mind and leave me without elegance or creativity. I end up with just words strung together. Is that not the end result of AI and its attempt to take over thinking and doing? It strings words together mighty well but does it really think and does it have conviction and will it change its mind when confronted with the facts? You and I both know the answer to that. Of course not. The fear of 1984 and Animal Farm was the elimination of history until it became whatever the present folks wanted it to be. People were not killed but erased from all that was like photoshop that takes someone out of a photo (or puts them where they never were). Is that not what is happening with facts and truth? We have already seen it on the unsocial social media where facts do not matter -- only feelings and especially outrage. When we cannot think things through and when our facts have been lost to the created image of AI, where will we be? We will be lost -- just as lost as we were when Adam and Eve exchanged the truth of God's words for the lies in the mouth of the devil and the desires of their hearts. As sure as that brought death into the world, we are headed for a death of humanity on the altar of expediency.
Natural law is needed now more than ever. Worship that does not pretend but delivers what is signed is needed now more than ever. Memorization of the story so that the truth will not be forgotten is needed now more than ever. The noble arts and occupations that think and do are needed now more than ever. Without this, the day will come when we do not know if Bach is real or a figment of our imagination fed by algorithms. As sad as that day would be for me, it will be far worse when the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God enfleshed in Jesus Christ, the God who suffered to relieve our suffering and died to kill our death and rose to open the door to everlasting life can no longer be known because we have detached truth from His Word and fudged the line between artificial and real so often that we no longer know the difference.
Don't watch a Milli Vanilli version of worship on a screen. Go to Church. Kneel, stand, sit, sing, listen, pray, and say hello to those around you. It is the most real thing in the world. This is none other than the house of God and this the gate of heaven. In the midst of a world passing away, heaven is the most important life of all.
2 comments:
Indeed, as if the advent of digital technology and computers weren’t enough, AI moves humanity to another level, and reveals both positive and negative consequences for the future. However, we must remember that history is linear, only cyclical in the nature and temperament of fallen man, and thus we have gone from Genesis and are proceeding towards Revelation. In the linear model of God’s sovereign plan, there is a beginning and an ending for this world. We who are Christians today may or may not be living when Our Lord returns, but we have been blessed to be alive at a time when God’s word in the form of the Bible is our guide and blueprint for living. We know that however bad technology will become, and whether or not mankind will colonize Mars or destroy itself in nuclear madness, we have the Lord’s word on the future, and His promises of redemption and eternal life in Christ. Worry and strife over the state of the world change what will be. Soli Deo Gloria
Please note: The last sentence should have been; “Worry and strife over the state of the world cannot change what will be.”
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