Because of AI, will our existence change? Will we work less? What will happen to art, literature and teaching? Will we live with robots in the not too distant future? What will happen to human interaction? And what about our relationship with God? Could this be the end of the human race?
Newsroom (130/11/2023 09:00, Gaudium Press) ) In general terms, artificial intelligence is the combination of algorithms – a sequence of instructions to solve a problem – that create points of connection similar to human reasoning capabilities. It “possesses” a great deal of encyclopaedic knowledge, because it has “read” far more than a human being could in their entire existence; of course, this “artificial” assimilation of what has been “read” does not mean that it is a deep understanding.
Its best-known expression is the famous ChatGPT (Generative Pre-Trained Chat). Through it, it is possible to “chat” in a simulated way with a “person” who gives their answers – pre-established – automatically. Nothing extraordinarily innovative, we might say, given that billions of pieces of information captured from the Internet are its “intellectual” reach. It is not an intelligent autonomous action, because without the information it has had on the Internet for years, it would not be able to provide any service. “Artificial intelligence” needs human intelligence.
As a result, you can create or “generate” – to use its pompous title of generator – texts, and produce images, create videos, even make works of art based on what you have “learnt”. The OpenAI company itself, which is behind this, recognizes that the answers are not always precise.
Some say – with particular optimism – that it will achieve human-level performance. Others warn that it will jeopardize many jobs, facilitate fake news, possible cybercriminals, identity theft, piracy and so on.
We already have customer service chatbots among us, which respond to orders for a pizza or similar, replacing human action, but without “emotional” intelligence, a factor exclusive to the person in question. In today’s world, a job is a telephone and the “workers” are Ubers, iFood, Rappi…
Everything is already answered automatically: they tell us the route to take, give us the weather forecast, offer us films and music, find food, medicines and even a health diagnosis, and consultations on any subject we need. With the passage of time, from handwriting to typewriters and then word processors, we ended up not exercising human gifts, but vivifying them. Human creativity has been eroded.
There are those who dream that this “technological revolution” will achieve an understanding of things, functioning like a human being: able to perceive their environment, react and adopt attitudes, articulating desires, purposes and beliefs. They aspire to imitate the neural networks of the brain, where true intelligence lies.
The controversy reaches all areas of thought, both civic and religious; the latter rightly claim that it is impossible to create true artificial intelligence, since computers – according to their programming guidelines – will respond to what has been introduced, like a learned parrot that seems to know everything, but in reality knows nothing; it just “talks”, repeats and doesn’t know what it is saying, despite having more and more information deposited in it.
Faced with such a change in realities, questions arise: will this change our existence? Will we work four or five hours a day? What will we do with our free time? What will happen to art, literature and teaching? Will it change the way people work, learn, travel, receive healthcare, relate to each other, and the impact on everyday life?
With AI penetrating everything – like an incorporeal intelligent mind – we will become so connected that we will lose our autonomy. In this deification, a new religion is emerging.
This raises more questions: who is behind these automated responses? By whom and how is this robot trained? Will machine intelligence surpass that of humans? Will we live with robots in the not too distant future? What will become of human interaction and our relationship with God?
The danger lies in moving towards dehumanization, in which the robot looks at us but does not see us; it listens to us but does not understand us; when it responds, it does not do so with any interest in us. It will be the loss of human relationships.
A Worrisome Future
We are a composite of soul and body; it is through the external senses, centred in the brain, that we become aware of things. There is nothing in the intellect that has not passed through them. At the same time, thought depends on the brain to be realized. Reality shows us that the essence of a person is in the soul. What differentiates us from a chatbot is having a finite, unprogrammed life; having emotions, intuition, and imagination. And especially in seeing and considering our neighbours, wanting to do them good.
Machines do not think; they barely surpass us in their storage capacity and speed of processing information.
This ambiguous future is therefore cause for concern, with much of human life being left to an “artificial intelligence” that will act without any morals or with different “morals”. Anonymity will permeate all areas and, with it, a total lack of contact. People will feel completely aimless, helpless and in a colossal crisis of affection. A superintelligence will dominate everything in an impalpable way.
The technological geniuses themselves say so. In fact, Jaron Lanier, considered the godfather of virtual reality, said in an interview with The Guardian in March 2023: “The danger is that we use our technology to become unintelligible or to go mad – in other words – in a way that we do not act with enough understanding and self-interest to survive, and we will die mad, literally.”
The famous British physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC in 2014, four years before his death: “The development of full artificial intelligence could mean the end of the human race.”
Humanity could then fall into such emptiness, such Babel and such suffocation in the face of a lack of affection, and into a world of illusion. People will be shouting in the streets: “I want to be free”, “I want to be creative”.
“Come, let us make ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches the heavens. Let us make our name famous, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the children of men had built. “Behold, they are one people,” he said, “and they speak one language: if they start out like this, nothing will stop them in the future from carrying out all their endeavours. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they can no longer understand each other. Then the Lord scattered them from that place over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. (Gen 11:4-9)
Its name was Babel…
By Fr Fernando Gioia, EP
With files from La Prensa Gráfica de El Salvador, 12/11/2023
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
