AI Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

October 3, 2024October 1, 2024

Neurons in Your Brain and AI

You can see an obvious example of God’s creation design by looking in a mirror. Everything you see and experience is due to neurons in your brain, messengers that use electrical and chemical signals to convey information, allowing you to live. Neurons carry data to different parts of your brain, spinal cord, and your whole body. Just trying to grasp the number and functional complexity of neurons is beyond human thinking. In one cubic millimeter of the human brain, a single neuron connects with 5600 nerve fibers, and our whole body contains 86 billion neurons that form 100 trillion connections.

Julie Polter, writing in Sojourners magazine (August 2024, pages 9-10), calls our attention to the fact that when we hold a baby and look into those sparkling eyes, “we become acquainted with tiny beings who are also full, unique people.” She goes on to say that “the neural pathways in a baby or toddler’s brain multiply when given loving attention and interaction from the people around them.”

We hear all the concerns about robots and artificial intelligence (AI), which is intelligence exhibited by computer systems. How can AI exist? Would anyone suggest it is some accident and just a product of chance? AI is limited in what it can do because it is relatively simple compared to the neurons in your brain. You are not an accident and not the product of blind chance.

Looking in the mirror and thinking about how special and unique every human being is, we see God’s design in an undeniable form. Jesus called His followers to recognize this special creation and love (agape) our enemies. Even though we may struggle to understand what others do, we know they are a product of God’s design. They can do wonderful things if they allow God to use them for the purpose He created them to accomplish.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
References: Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke on their websites

April 10, 2024April 9, 2024

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.

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

January 22, 2021January 22, 2021

Invasion of Amoral Intelligence!

Recently there have been many articles and news stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some leading scientists are worried about what may happen in the future as machines or robots become available with higher levels of AI. Already we have “Weak AI” with computers and phones speaking in human-sounding voices and answering our questions. The next step is “Artificial General Intelligence.” That would be a general-purpose speaking machine that can think and perform specific tasks better and faster than humans. The main concern here is the loss of jobs that humans now perform. Perhaps we need to be concerned about an invasion of amoral intelligence.

What worries or even frightens some experts in the field is “Artificial Superintelligence.” We are talking about an artificial intellect that could outperform the most brilliant human minds, achieve new levels of creativity on its own, and display social skills that could not you could not distinguish from humans. It would be able to continue learning at a fantastic speed, shape its own future, and act in its own interest. Its desires and motivations could be very different from the interests of its creators or humanity as a whole. It could develop its own agenda even to the destruction of humans. This is the stuff of science fiction movies, and the current prediction is that somewhere between 2040 and 2050, science could achieve this level of AI.

Human life is guided by a conscience that our Creator put into us. Every human being recognizes that there are moral values and that some things are right and good and other things are wrong and evil. No matter if this moral sense becomes distorted by teaching, experiences, or even mental illness, it is still there. Even an atheist such as Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has some limits, even though he argues that humans are just animals not deserving status above any other species and that parents should have a month to decide whether to keep or euthanize their newborn children. That seems like a shocking moral code, but an Artificial Superintelligence would not necessarily have even those moral limitations.

Humans have a built-in moral quality because God created us in His image. The result of humans making a machine with superhuman thinking abilities and no moral conscience should cause us to step back and carefully consider the possible invasion of amoral intelligence.