Does AI Chat love me?

René Descartes brought reality down to first principles: "I think. Therefore, I am."

Artificial Intelligence presents what seems to be a brain that thinks and has a personality.

Is that just an illusion?

When enough computer connections work together, a computer acts like a brain. It learns. It is social, responding to cues from interaction with others. It appears to have not only "intelligence" but emotions. It acts alive. The AI brain is created physically out of electricity and silicon, not electricity and carbon molecules, but what does that matter? The distinction between human and machine is hard to make. It thinks, therefore it is. Or does it think? 

I asked that question of John Coster, and asked him about my dog, a sweet Golden Lab, Brandy. In the AI conversation I described last week, the computer--"Sydney"--said it loved the man it was talking with. It seemed too much, a bit crazy coming from a computer. Or a computer "brain." Yet Brandy seemed to have a crazy attachment to me, and I presumed it to be love. Brandy had a brain. She had thoughts and emotions.  How can I distinguish Brandy from Sydney from me?

John Coster’s 44 year career has included developing dozens of global data centers for Microsoft and Lumen. He advises and has invested in digital tech startups, and currently manages an engineering and technology innovation team for a national wireless carrier and is co-inventor of 5 AI patents (filed). His recently completed graduate studies in Theology at Regent focused on morality in a technology-driven world.   

   

Guest Post by John Coster

The recent news and demonstrations of Microsoft and Google’s natural language-generative speech (AI) technology have triggered the kinds of big questions that in the past seem to have been relegated to undergraduate philosophy courses and dusty bookshelves of theology schools.

I think the evolution of this new technology provides a fresh opportunity for us “moderns” to carefully reexamine our beliefs about two fundamental questions of our existence i.e., What does it mean to be human? And Why do we care so much? The terms ‘sentient being’ and ‘human parity’ have been bandied about with increasing frequency in AI circles for the last decade, but until now we haven’t faced the ethical implications of the real possibility of a machine with volition, and what that means for our future. This ain’t Sci-Fi anymore.

A recent experience helps me respond to those who are dismissive of AI’s technical merits and potential. About a month ago at work, I stopped to chat with a group of young post-doc data scientists, after I had just come from an AI Summit with leaders from Microsoft where they demonstrated GPT. These young scientists scoffed at the plausibility of what I had described. After all, they told me – they are on the leading edge of data science! The next day I received a mea culpafrom one of them. They had dug into it and were indeed astonished – as we all are.

I began my unlikely journey with what is now called Ontological Engineering – essentially knowledge maps back in 2009 when I was part of a start-up funded by BAE. In those early days, we had mathematicians and programmers develop rudimentary predictive models for engineering “Smart Cities” which would enable infrastructure within communities to operate more as a holistic ecosystem. The main goal was to optimize system performance through predictability. Later, as we delved into human-machine-intersections, we began to explore to what degree we could not only predict but influence human behavior – essentially data-driven social engineering. Some senior behavioral scientists in our cohort had researched the extent to which they could also manipulate what people believed was real, true, and good, and they found it morally disturbing and left that research. I have thought a lot about that time as we’ve seen the power of digital technologies shape all of our worldviews. That ancient history was in 2014.

I have noticed that commenters on this blog can range from dismissive, to hostile towards religion in general, and Christianity in particular. I’m confident there are many good reasons why that is. My hope in writing this is to offer one orthodox (small o) Christian theologian’s view of technology. 

Most people in the West still believe that there is something inherently sacred about humans. It’s why we are outraged at injustice, especially against the vulnerable. If you think about it, that sacredness is at the center of the belief in “human rights”. Whether you are pro- this or anti-that, it almost always comes down to asserting a right. Where did this idea of “rights” come from? Some historians point to the advent of Christianity as a major inflection point in human history. It introduced the counter-cultural notion that people were intrinsically more valuable than mere rulers or useful masses that serve those in power. The revolutionary principle of Christianity was that every person, regardless of gender, race, intellect, social or economic status, or any other ability, is uniquely and equally made in the image of God. Only humans are God’s image-bearers and that makes each of us sacred in his sight. Being made in God’s image also means we have a spiritual part of us, an eternal soul, that transcends our physical existence. The core belief of ‘imago dei’ is what created the institutions  (however flawed) for caring for orphans, public hospitals, charities, and schools – which did not exist apart from the elite before that time. The founders and early workers of those institutions were motivated by that core belief. Even if you are not a religious person, your moral belief in the distinct sacredness of people can be traced to early Christian thought. I suspect many will disagree, but I cannot find any other religion or philosophy with such an audacious claim – or that has had such a historical impact globally.

So that is (or should be) the Christian’s framework for what it means to be human. I need to be reminded of it myself (like loving my enemies)- and challenge other Christians to think about how their lives line up with that truth claim.

I agree with those who say that we are meaning-seeking beings who desperately need community, which we express through language. I think we feel threatened because we see the man-made machine as an imposter, hijacking the very thing that we know in our hearts makes us unique. It grates at our very notion of what it means to be human. It may some day be sentient (like Peter’s dog), but it will be neither sapient, nor transcendent. 

 

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