AI Can Be Used or Misused

Artificial Intelligence is the latest marvel of science flooding every part of human life – for good or evil. On November 39, 2022, a company known as OpenAI launched an artificial intelligence application, a chatbot called ChatGPT, making it available to anyone wanting to use it. Since ChatGPT can write papers, students started using it to meet course requirements. Religious groups have trained chatbots to use religious texts. More than 200,000 people worldwide have used QuranGPT. Other chatbots such as Bible.AI, Gita GPT, Buddhabot, and Apostle Paul AI have appeared. Chatbots have been trained to give answers, imitating Martin Luther, Confucius, and even the Delphic oracle. Like everything else, AI can be used or misused.

Alarmists have suggested hypothetical scenarios in which AI could take over the planet. The adage “garbage in leads to garbage out” applies to AI. However, innovators can do many very positive things with this new technology. One example is the ability to read ancient documents that have previously been unreadable.

Pyroclastic flows from Mount Vesuvius buried a library in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum in AD 79. Those volcanic flows generated temperatures of 900 degrees and buried the scrolls under 60 feet of debris, baking them into charcoal. The process preserved the scrolls, but scholars could not unroll and read them because they would crumble. Using high-energy scans, scientists created a 3-D image of the scrolls and used AI to analyze the ink patterns and determine the words on the scrolls.

AI will allow scholars to study documents and other materials that were previously unreadable. This process can potentially be applied to biblical scrolls to verify the integrity of the Bible manuscripts. AI and its related tools like ChatGPT can expand our knowledge of the past and solve insoluble problems. AI offers medical advances at all levels to improve human life. Like everything else, AI can be used or misused, but the notion that it can take over all technology and eliminate the human race is science fiction and not something we should fear.

— John N. Clayton © 2024

Reference: “What We’re Learning From AI” in Scientific American for April 2024