but will humans retain their humanity in their use of AI?
If you read HG Wells’ The Invisible Man, or for you non-readers seen the movie The Hollow Man, the point is made very clearly. The man who can make himself invisible is not able to deal with all the power it gives him. He can do anything he “damn well pleases”; the emphasis being on the word damn.
Really, what started me thinking about this was the invention of a $50,000 rifle about 10-15 years ago. It was able through the use of GPS, computers, laser sites, etc., to shoot a deer two miles away. I mentioned this to a fellow hunter who responded, “Heck, why don’t you just pay someone $2,000 to go over there and shoot the deer for you.”
You see the two amounted to the same thing, but it didn’t feel that way. When you shot with the newfangled rifle, I supposed, you still felt you were doing it, but when you paid somebody $2,000 to shoot the deer you didn’t.
I continued in this line of thought, differentiating the two, for some years until one of my sons observed after my telling the above story, again, that the $50,000 rifle was really just a video game. His comment was revelatory. Since my retirement I’ve been devoting myself to virtual hunting in a video game. (I would never recommend anyone who’s never been hunting to start with these games, but that is opinion not theology.)
What is theology is that I’ve noticed in the game that I do things I would never do in real life. For example, although you can take five deer in Texas legally, I have never purposely shot one deer and then shot another next to it. Also, while I have shot multiple times at a nongame species, racoon, possum, armadillo, turtle, I don’t take multiple shots at game animals (flying birds excepted). Also since it’s illegal, I don’t “shine” deer. I’ve done all the above in this game without a second thought.
I know what you’re going to say: for crying out loud, it’s just a stupid video game. That it is, but what if I really could, through AI, have the ability to hunt anywhere in the world? And what if I could do it remotely with no consequences? Would I engage in what amounts to at least unwise hunting practices if not unethical and illegal ones in the real world?
But then what about all the other areas in life AI can empower me? Ultimately it would boil down to this question: would I cede control, or what people like to say today, ‘agency’, to AI and not feel responsible? This is where the loss of humanity comes in.
In an Air Force ROTC Class that I was taking as an elective, already being a commissioned officer in the Army Reserve, the Air Force instructor was arguing that integrity was not measured by whether you stopped at a four-way stop sign on base when no one was around in the middle of the night. I argued that is precisely when it is measured.
Back to the original question. Everyone is talking and thinking about the ramifications of AI, but they don’t, at least in my limited world, seem to be talking about the ramifications of having the power, the speed, the anonymity, that could be yours in AI. Like the Invisible Man would we be overwhelmed when we realized there were no checks on what we could do other than our own humanity? Of course if you believe in the basic goodness of humanity Which basically all of the people creating AI do, you’re not afraid of this; you’re not even considering it.
It has bothered me that the first message sent by telegraph in May 24, 1844 by Samuel Morse was “what has God wrought”. It seems to me it should have read “what has man wrought” or maybe “what have we done!”
Experiments done, I believe up until the early 70s when they were banned, where psychological researchers were permitting some subjects to shock other subjects. They were all volunteers, but the researchers were surprised at how much pain some willingly inflicted on others anonymously. I’m also reminded of the youth group “game” in which I declared the blue-eyed kids to be the slaves and the brown-eyed ones to be the masters. It devolved into a Lord of the Flies situation where it became more intense than I had foreseen.
I am not of the opinion that the question I raise about AI is a wait and see answer. I think theologians, better, parish pastors, should be discussing these things now. Otherwise, I think we will be playing catch up or not catch at all like it has been with IVF treatments. Couples would go down this path, and I would only find out about it later. There are real theological, moral, ethical implications, ramifications, and consequences connected to IVF that, at least the people I encountered, never even considered. There are more and more thorny ones with AI.
