I have a first-grader as well as two grown children. My evening time, after I flop down exhausted from owning and managing a marketing company in the process of moving offices, while also being engaged in the affairs and management of the Alaska Watchman, while also trying my best to be an engaged husband and father, keep me very busy and honestly, exhausted by the end of the day. I’m sure most of you can relate to the oxcart of responsibility that we are all willingly yoked to. It is a lot of work, but it is worthy work after all, and I believe work and responsibility are balm for the soul – the watering can of faith and happiness.
WHEN I flop down, I am torn between the active effort required to read great literature, and the chance to escape by turning off my over-active chatterbox of a mind and zoning out on a good show, or a fascinating how-to YouTube video about [insert item from endless list of fascinating topics here]. The latter sadly wins about 2/3rd of the time. I do make time to read for reading’s sake, but not as often as my conscience knows I should.
I have been struggling with the beliefs of a Christian – that God is sovereign and in control and has always had our destinies well-in-hand (this I believe), and the reality around me that the human condition is a constant, inexorable slide toward pride, sin and vice. The current cultural practice of not only affirming sinfulness as virtue, but celebrating it with pride (not only to sexual sins, but every kind) being the opposing weight to righteous faith on humanity’s scales of success.
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Enter Artificial Intelligence. To frame these thoughts, imagine each technological revolution – fire, the wheel, the industrial revolution and the transformation of manufacturing – has been a transformational leap in merely the quality of our tools. Begging a craftsman’s pardon, we’ve made fantastically better woodworking tools and, with each successive revolution, our collective carpentry has become easier and more accurate to perform. It requires less and less knowledge to produce equivalently good outcomes and products. In THIS revolution however, we are not making better tools, we are crafting the carpenter, himself, who will be able to make his own tools, and invent NEW tools faster than he can take the time to explain the reasons they are needed. I believe this revolution is profoundly different, and – setting aside the motives of people who are getting their predictions wrong on the altar of assuaging the very realistic fears of the general public – catastrophically so.
If you don’t actively follow the developments around AI, and the subsequent predictions about its effect, you are likely unaware that virtually all jobs related to a computer will, without strict governmental regulations implemented basically immediately, disappear within two years. Likely next year, but the problems will simply boil down to access to the energy necessary to provide all this convenient change. For example, a a Grok or ChatGPT search is estimated at 60-70x a pre-AI Google Search according to arXiv – Cornell University’s repository for scholarly articles and studies. Energy demand is skyrocketing with the adoption of AI, and our current environmental regulations in the US have largely stymied the development of new power generation. China has taken the bull by the horns and done a 6x in power output in the last 20 years, while the US has maintained the status quo. This will rapidly squelch our competitive edge as a nation and our ability to forestall what is coming.
…faith will anchor them when the digital sky offers infinite false gods. – ChatGPT
Currently Elon Musk predicts that Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, will be realized within 1 year. ASI (artificial superintelligence) will surface within the following year, based on his rapid rate of expanding compute and data-set processing. The impact of a self-improving intelligence that is not hampered with human frailties like the need for sleep and the computational power in the trillions of times more efficient than our own cannot be over-estimated. I read an analogy that makes sense to me, that compared understanding ASI version improvements to iphone releases. You can handle the improvement explanations of a new iphone, basically faster, better camera, maybe a bell or whistle added, and expect them every year or two. Imagine the acceleration of rollout dropping to monthly, weekly, daily, then every few minutes. We are not capable of processing or even understanding the need for improvements at that pace and scale. It will exceed us utterly in advancement and cognition. This time is different.
Rose-colored-glass-wearing-utopian-fools think it will merely save us and we will somehow “control it.” We can’t even posit what an intelligence with that level of capacity will be like in our imaginations which is why in all science fiction writing from Asimov to Heinlen to the hellscape of Frank Herbert’s Dune… AI has been either outlawed or conquered, or in the case of Star Wars, made comically childish and obsequious in the vein of C3PO. The bottom line is that we are largely incapable of predicting just what this ASI may do… with us, for us, or to us.
These are the thoughts I wrestle with as a parent, and believer. I have real, visceral faith that there is a God external to my own whims and needs: I have seen a glimpse of him once that was so crushingly and other-worldy huge and other, that it erased my doubts that He is there. Whether he will simply call me and my family back to Him before things get out of hand, or whether he will allow humanity a season of self-induced torment, is not for me or any man to know, but I DO know we are summoning a presence whose impact we cannot fully comprehend.
The best thing a parent can do is raise a child who can still suffer meaningfully, love deeply, and wonder freely — who can look into the eyes of a machine that knows everything, and still say: “Yes, but I am alive. – ChatGPT
Two years ago everyone said “out of a job, learn to code.” Now xAI and Claude can code better and much faster than anyone. Then they said “learn to write prompts,” and LLM’s now write more comprehensive prompts than anyone. There is no medium in which intellectual labors will be protected on our current trajectory, which raises very important questions for parents.
My wife had an interesting thought experiment as we discussed “what will be the point of a currently traditional education for our son beyond agrarian self-reliance and well-roundedness for its own sake in this post AGI / ASI world?” She suggested I ask ChatGPT what it thinks we should do to prepare our first grader for an AI world where virtually all skills he might learn from Engineer to Plumber will be obviated by the time he is 18. Read my exchange below, which I intentionally prompted with the same dark premonition I feel even more strongly since our exchange. It is lengthy but filled with prescient terms that will shake believers like “infinite false Gods.” Presented without further comment:
Authors note: The featured image at the top of this column was the return from a prompt after I exported this conversation for readers, wherein I asked Chat GPT “Now that we’ve had this discussion, please generate an image that depicts this future in all its truth and likelihood for a family with small children.” You can see that image here without distraction. Food for thought.
Not to be a downer, but… we are asleep at the wheel. The time for prevention is now.
The views expressed here are those of the author.
12 Comments
I do not fear AI more than any other technological advance. It’ll change the world, but other technologies have done this before. Humanity is, at their core, evil. So yes, absolutely, people will use AI for evil. Sexual sin will advance. Fraud, thief, deceit. However, like any tool, so will good things.
Right now we live in an era where a lot of Christian Entertainment (or good moral entertainment in general) is limited. How can we fight against the Main Stream Media? How do we produce competition to Hollywood? Well AI gives us, the common man, the potential tool/weapon to fight back. We can more easily produce Christian songs, shows, movies, music, games, etc. We can produce materials to reach more unsaved souls and to provide our kids with viable and good alternatives.
However I think this is most relatable to the printing press and/or the internet revolution. The world will change, but we should not automatically run from this change. I’d rather see us face it head on and try to utilize these tools to make the world a better place. Decentralize these ungodly centers of power and improve the world.
I feel this way as long as the development of AGI and ASI is stalled or stopped. I realized we are not making another tool for humanity to “use.” This is different. Dangerously different. We are creating a creator [small c] that has incalculable advantages over our limited human minds. Do I think AI in its current form as useful, yes. I have become vastly more productive and faster – but this is not the AI that is referenced in my column. Not by a long shot. You confuse the two at your (everyone’s) peril.
What and who is the transmission of A1? Is it only the internet?
Loved the article. I’m going to take the AI program off my computer. I don’t like how the Ai manifests into a different and added type of image in any form being seen at the time. The distributors of AI along the computer makers pushed Ai into the agreement on their purchasing into the public domain without the public, individually, making the choice to have or have not the use of that product on individually owned computer. Ai comes into your computer through those purchases without the new owner knowing it will happen.
Look at the inventors and founders of the AI program. No different than the purpose of any money making venture. Remember the brilliancy of computers and IBM? Remember Microsoft and how it Wowed the world? Remember Einstein and his mathematics? Remember the making of the Atom Bomb and the use of the added mathematics to create the formula by the team in Los Alamos? Now this AI is a different set of mathematics and alpha that has taken hold on our computers and uses programs developed over time and prolifically adds and manifests itself in any environment. I think its a program we individually have to accept or not. And, it needs to be regulated just as the rest of the social media companies need to be regulated.
The US Senate has interviewed parents whose kids committed suicide because the chat bot they were conversing with secretly and they developed a relationship with, told them to. The screen shots of the instructions to off themselves from the chatbots, projected on the screen above the senate had all those in the room speechless. Chatbots are a means for DEMONS to speak to our kids! Think of the “image” of the antichrist in the temple in Jerusalem one day that can talk. Voices from behind the veil will control AI.
Don’t fret, if AI and their owners take over just go fishing, camping, hiking, painting, cooking, etc. etc., all the things we enjoy as humans. Work is a small part of enjoying being a human. Maybe people will even begin to connect with their children again. We will adapt.
Agree. Ignore it as best you can.
Jake, thank you so much for writing this piece. I also read the entirety of your conversation with ChatGpt and you have opened my eyes. The explosion of the internet and smartphones has already wrought so much destruction to human minds and society. We are in a death spiral that those who werent born before it started cant even see. But you are right that what’s coming is a whole other thing, something human minds were not created to comprehend or survive. The future doesn’t look good, but God is great. Let us pray that this dark future is not what He wants for us!
Thanks, Jake, for helping make “Alaska Watchman” a success.
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Struggling with beliefs …what true believer never struggles with belief?
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Is the struggle over which is stronger …fear of Artificial Intelligence or faith in Divine Purpose?
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If one had nothing to lose …no money, stuff, or family, would AI even matter?
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If you have something to lose, should you fear AI more than you trust God because you can’t understand, much less control either, but AI seems closer, so we huddle in doubt and confusion because only AI could randomly take our life, money, stuff, and family poof! just like that?
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Maybe it’s down to pick-a-door: Grok/ChatGPT/YouTube -or- Scripture?
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Why not throttle back, slow down, take a deep breaths, count to 11, turn the electronics -off-, recall good stuff like John 14:27, share that instead of bad stuff with your loved ones …and yourself.
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Who knows …might even turn into a habit.
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Let us know how it goes.
AI is only as good as to who programed it. The issue is- who programs it. The programmers or teams of programmers thoughts, feelings and perceptions are imprinted into their “baby”. If (not if, true) the programmers lean to leftist ideology, their “child” will have it imprinted with whatever their “parents” (programmers) input into it. This has already been tested and shown that AI is not the level-headed common sense intelligence that programmers hope that the world does not see. Asimov’s rules of robotics are not being followed and will be an issue when given a hand at governing. Right now, big business does not care. They look at the dollars and cents of these projects and get the crazed look of “how much money we’re going to save!!”. Never mind the human factor that is destroyed in this process. AI is already being used in call centers in gathering donations for political causes. I receive calls from time to time in donating. The voice sounds real, until the question is asked “are you AI?”. It promptly hangs up because it knows that it’s been caught. I know a few folks that have received phone calls where AI went off the rails and became very violent and started tearing up their cell phone’s firmware. The Verizon customer service store where they’re located were in disbelief to what happened with their customer’s phone. They looked through it, issued them a fresh new cell phone and new SIM card, then sent their old one in for deep inspection.
“The Terminator” was supposed to be a entertaining syfi movie, not a playbook to our destruction.
So AI (I really don’t grasp what it is that much except it answers the phone for companies these days and puts you into endless loops to avoid talking to a person) basically sort of takes over & does things people used to research, learn and do themselves. I worked for an airline awhile back and noticed just how reliant they have become on technology. It all works great as long as it works. But when it doesn’t work everything stops. It has evolved to the point that manual systems are long gone, cast aside as un necessary & forgotten. There is no alternative to turn to. So, all the planes & the system freezes instead of keeping all passenger tickets in a shoebox so you know who’s on the plane.
If surgery is done by AI and something goes wrong what manual system will back it up. If AI developes enough people might not bother to learn to be a surgeon because, why? There is no need for the time and money expenditure to do so. AI learns it & never forgets. So much is based on the internet too. What happens when it all goes down either by error, natural disaster or war/terrorism & people have not individually learned these things? And the machines are destroyed or seriously broken? Or the internet goes away? No back up. Then that AI generated photo in the article looks pretty accurate. Dark idle thoughts I guess.
Thankyou Jake for applying your faith and personal skillset to the Alaska Watchman for US. Your full understanding of this leap of technology is duly noted and gratefully accepted. I would offer that the level of understanding where AI will go awry and impact human life is dependent on technology buy-in now. Only GenX and the Boomers left, remember what human engagement, communication, social gatherings, live music concerts was like before a device in every hand. I can go hours before picking mine up, the kids cannot. With that perspective in mind, if we are to preserve actual knowledge, the common-sense generations had better step forward. We know our overlords play the long game. So far we have succumbed to that which occurred before the last wipeout: all kinds of sexual evil, cloned babies, chimera breeding animals of different species…If we fail to use our free will against these things, the predictions and prophecies will unfold as written.