Notes on AI, theology, imagination, and the origins that might make the difference
You could get knocked over by a 5ft wave.
You could get knocked over by a 50ft wave.
A 500ft wave would knock you over too. Or — in my thought experiment at least — a 50,000ft wave. Would that feel any different?
At what point is the size of the wave not really the point any more?
I've been thinking about this sort of thing through metaphor and thought experiments for a while.
You could be on a rollercoaster at the very beginning, all full of nervous anticipation and possibly excitement.
You could be on it at the end, feeling slightly nauseated and looking forward to getting off.
You could be midway round a multiple loop — upside down and at a strange twisted angle — and everything in you might lose all bearings and rationality as you think you're dead and you've just gone through a black hole.
But at every one of these points, you're on a rollercoaster. That didn't stop being true.
Job lost his oxen. It was a bad day.
His servants too. A really memorably shocking and terrible day.
His children too. An unspeakably horrific day.
And then— well. Does it matter what he lost next? Health? Future? Friends? Oxygen?
There comes a point, and the scale is no longer returning a correspondingly sized benefit or problem.
AI is scaring people. Even the decision makers.
The speed of progress is not just fast.
It's not even extremely fast.
No holidays, working hours, weekends off, sick leave.
No sleep.
"Faster than anything organic."
Viruses are fast multipliers, but AI's speed is exponential, cumulative, and never stopping for a breath.
Perhaps its own speed could overtake it?
Hallucinations. Resources. Diminishing returns. Unstable.
Becoming faster than the systems needed to sustain it can cope with.
...
It's about pattern matching.
Language. Maths. Physical laws.
We know that kind of thing. We have that ability too.
But this fast?
so, 1) Speed.
Also, the cost of Speed. Everything has a cost.
so, 2) Heat.
(Friction. Intensity. Tension. The by-products.)
Also, the fact it can reach nearly everyone at the same time.
so, 3) Scale
Footprint. Effects, not just local. Everywhere.
And then the question of all the unknowns.
Because it's great at pattern matching, and we can't keep up.
But if we could, we'd spot the patterns eventually, wouldn't we?
so, 4) the unknown
Hmm.
What if it began mapping things that seemed strange to us.
a) Patterns we couldn't detect however long we had.
Unmappable patterns. Correlations we hadn't noticed. Couldn't have noticed.
b) Now this is weird. Are these patterns, or just noise?
What is it tracking, measuring? What is it doing??
Already, AI knows nothing.
Not even a hunch.
But already it says it can't — do — some — things — we can.
Like, pay the cost.
Feel the feels — as far as we can tell.
Endless unmeasurables.
Especially if you believe what it says about us:
made in the image of God.
If that's not just poetry, then
let's factor it in.
I mean, if it's not just poetry, then
it's a factor.
The factor.
In a strictly data way we must seem weird.
As if we're tracking patterns that can't be seen or traced.
When we're having a laugh and there wasn't a joke.
A cry. A wonder about things. No reason.
We learn. We play. We make sense of reality. (Sorry, is that the right order? Too young to know what we're doing.
Who is to say that even at our slowest,
we might not beat AI at its own game.
Who's to say?!
Instead of trying to keep up and beat each other out of fear,
we might try a different approach. Take it more seriously.
Perhaps on a day when we realise we're up against a 5 trillion foot wave after all. As overwhelmed as Job.
After all — for a while now we've been having to speed up.
Forms. Data. Efficiency. Money-saving.
All good, right?
Faster and faster and faster and faster and —
paying the cost, as we work all seven days and all through the night.
As fast as we can go. Running out of steam, of course.
Perhaps it's not our race to run.
And perhaps AI isn't an alien power.
Just the collected waste products of our raw data.
Previously unharvested, now whizzed around at top speed, all-impressive-like. Perhaps.
It may not be intelligence at all — in the way we were thinking.
Computing speed, patterns, data, extrapolation, faster and faster… That's no way to live, is it?
And meanwhile other ways of being exist.
Kenosis, for example.
Christianity does tend to invert things.
I mean, Christ does. Famously so.
And in Genesis, just after Cain kills Abel, there's a lot of competition in the air. Self-preservation. And fear. A race to survive.
All that led to technology too.
Tubal-cain? The technologist of his day?
Not much different to this year and next year.
Fighting for air.
Then in Exodus, another major talent.
Bezalel.
Spirit this time.
Not by might or power. (Borrowing from Zech.)
But even if that's borrowing a reference
— it's the same Spirit, same God. (Borrowing from Paul.)
Spirit.
Inspiration.
Expiration.
Breathing.
Endings.
Sleep.
Sabbath.
Selah.
I'm just thinking.
