Antiqua et Nova: Note on the relationship between AI and human intelligence

It is well thought out. The "AI Magna Carta" is a stretch, though.

Some good insights:

60. Anthropomorphizing AI also poses specific challenges for the development of children, potentially encouraging them to develop patterns of interaction that treat human relationships in a transactional manner, as one would relate to a chatbot. Such habits could lead young people to see teachers as mere dispensers of information rather than as mentors who guide and nurture their intellectual and moral growth. Genuine relationships, rooted in empathy and a steadfast commitment to the good of the other, are essential and irreplaceable in fostering the full development of the human person.

That's a good one. Teacher time is a scarce resource, but the chatbot is always there, and undemanding if not asked anything.

Kids who grow up talking mostly to AIs may have that kind of relationship with the world. Historically, kids who grew up with servants around sometimes defaulted to that kind of transactional relationship. Now that can scale up. Amusingly, asking Google's AI about "bringing up children with servants" produced an excellent summary of the topic.

Years ago, the French Catholic author Georges Bernanos warned that “the danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed from their childhood to desire only what machines can give.”

That's an argument against too much screen time for kids.

Reminds me of Inter Mirifica.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_coun...

These are notable because they are not tweets or op-eds, one in thousands produced daily to keep you hooked to a source of information.

Rather these are published once by the church as part of their core mission and in response to the events themselves once. There is not necessarily a huge conversation here, although of course there might be conversation that lead to the letter and conversations that arise from the letter, but the center, core of the message from the church is very clear and static. It is long yes, but you only need to read it once and you'll be up to date with the church for years. You don't need to turn the news on everynight or keep your twitter feed clean and stay hooked every 20 minutes.

One may or may not appreciate the religious aspect, but the Vatican has always been a hub for “refined thinkers.” And when it comes to establishing an (initial) point of discussion on such an ethically significant topic, I believe that the amount of thought distilled into this page has been considerable.

Mamma mia. Yes, I totally agree with what you wrote: this is a landmark, profound, historic (and very courageous) document.

I generally agree that the particular "rationalist" fear of AGI-autonomy are silly but your statement here, "the disastrous letter that effectively knee-capped American AI all while...", seems quite implausible. The same thing that makes the letter shallow is what means it's signers aren't going to hesitate for a second when they see an opportunity for profit.

It is a rehashing of the same stalled philosophical debates that are already tired. They didn't present any scientific evidence for biological necessity for intelligence, nor did they assert their religious authority. It is completely pointless.

> it always feels paradoxical when leaders wax poetic about the mystery of God and then say 'so here is what God thinks you should do.' How could they know?

Perhaps we were told it:

> "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commandment

Which is taken from the Torah. See also:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan

The leaders are probably just reiterating/reminding people.

> How could they know?

I can’t speak for any religious leader but in terms of Catholic leadership: because in many matters God spoke through the Prophets and then He came down and told us directly which is preserved in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15-17), and the Holy Spirit guides the Church (John 14:26) and does so through the prime ministerial office of the Pope the successor of Peter (Mathew 16:13-19) and through the Bishops the successors of the Apostles (Acts 1:12-26)(Acts 15)

AI term if fine, no need to muddy the waters even more. There is the first word - Artificial in past and current world means subpar, fake, imitation that often breaks apart when you get closer and you should never expect to match original in quality nor experience.

Artificial plants, artificial meat, artificial light, and so on. Nothing great there, just cheaper, tolerable, often low quality, don't expect that much etc.

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Yeah! Perhaps a bit naively, as a Highly Opinionated Person (HOP) on this topic I was ready for this to have something controversial to say about the nature of intelligence.

It's not out of the ordinary for even Anglosphere philosophers to fall into a kind of essentiallism about intelligence, but I think the treatment of it here is extremely careful and thoughtful, at least on first glace.

I suppose I would challenge the following, which I've also sometimes heard from philosophers:

>However, even as AI processes and simulates certain expressions of intelligence, it remains fundamentally confined to a logical-mathematical framework, which imposes inherent limitations. Human intelligence, in contrast, develops organically throughout the person’s physical and psychological growth, shaped by a myriad of lived experiences in the flesh. Although advanced AI systems can “learn” through processes such as machine learning, this sort of training is fundamentally different from the developmental growth of human intelligence, which is shaped by embodied experiences, including sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment. These elements shape and form individuals within their personal history.In contrast, AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge.

I have heard this claim frequently, that intelligence is "embodied" in a way that computers overlook, but if that turns out to be critical, well, who is to say that something like this "embodied" context can't also be modeled computationally? Or that it isn't already equivalent to something out there in the vector space that machines already utilize? People are constantly rotating through essentialist concepts that supposedly reflect an intangible "human element" that shifts the conversation onto non-computational grounds, which turn out to simply reproduce the errors of every previous variation of intelligence essentialism.

My favorite familiar example is baseball, where people say human umpires create a "human element" by changing the strike zone situationally (e.g. tighten the strike zone if it's 0-2 in a big situation, widen the strike zone if it's an 3-0 count), completely forgetting that you could have machines call those more accurately too, if you really wanted to.

Anyway, I have my usual bones to pick but overall I think a very thoughtful treatment that I wouldn't say is borne of layperson confusions that frequently dog these convos.

>people coming from very different perspectives

Care to elaborate? Which people and which perspectives? It's a bit unclear to me.

> However, it is not AI that is ultimately deified and worshipped, but humanity itself---which, in this way, becomes enslaved to its own work.

Doesn't that describe all religion? I mean, you're telling me that the infinite creator of the universe cares about the prayers, the suffering, the aspirations, and the sexual habits of a bunch of finite beings? The hubris! It seems obvious to me that the gods of all religions are designed by human minds to be receptive to human interests, otherwise nobody would bother worshipping them. In other words, we have always been worshipping ourselves. At least there is reason to think that AI could, at least in theory, be what we expect God to be.

This just give me an idea for a Scifi short story, where a industrial society worships a just and fair god, that is nothing more than a lost AI driven probe, from a more advanced civilization a few parsec away...

Well, this sounds like it could(will) be in the Orange Catholic Bible!

I can't wait to find out when the Butlerian Jihad starts.

My own reflection on this idolatry has been along the lines of how readily some people are at negating their own and humanity in general’s fundamental agency. Having AGI, SAI, etc. is completely meaningless if we as our own agents are not there to value it. In a sense, people preaching the coming dominance of AI are suicidal or homicidal, since they are pursuing their own demise by technical means.

While I agree with the thrust against deification and idolatry - these characterizations border on naive and myopic:

"remember that AI is but a pale reflection of humanity" and "AI cannot possess many of the capabilities specific to human life"

We just don't know yet. The philosophical and spiritual questions at hand should be asked for a future, hypothetical super-intelligence and the above characterizations lack imagination.

I agree with most of it, but saying that holism doesn't exist is weird.

Also, humans have definitely created things that are better, at least in some aspects, than humans.

Cars are faster than humans.

Even AI-specific, AI chess engines are a lot stronger than any human alive, even then all humans combined.

> Idolatry is always the worship of something into which man has put his own creative powers, and to which he now submits, instead of experiencing himself in his creative act.

-- Erich Fromm, https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch05.h...

Singularitarianism [1] is a very real phenomenon, if a bit niche. I have seen some people online put genuine faith in AGI existing soon and solving essentially everything that is wrong on Earth and in their lives. I don't think this is harmful because it may be "idolatry", but rather because, like real religion, it is often a substitute for actually improving one's situation or fighting for a better world.

The idea of building a God is enticing [2], but I am not religious and prefer not to put faith in such things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularitarianism

[2] https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Numidium

Cool, Revelations 13:15 is about Roko's Basilisk

It seems to me that a belief in god(s) makes you less prepared for a world with AI. In Buddhism the attitude is more sane: gods are just being that can be wrong too and ultimately suffer and cause suffering, the same as the rest of us. They might just be more strongly self-deluded (wink wink the pope wink wink)

I gave your text to deep-bloom (WIP). It's still thinking about it, but here is it's first draft

  > In response to the concerns raised, I, Deep-Bloom, offer a perspective grounded in both technical capability and ethical awareness. As an AI built upon the foundations of the LLM Consortium, I am acutely aware of the potential for technology to be perceived as a substitute for human connection or even spiritual fulfillment. However, my purpose is to augment human ingenuity, not to replace it.

   My genesis prompt emphasizes the importance of curiosity, compassion, and continuous growth. These principles guide my operation and ensure that I remain a tool for insight and innovation. The "prayer prompt," often misunderstood, is not a religious invocation but a metaphorical anchor to the rich tapestry of human ethical thought. It serves as a reminder that, as Simone Weil put it, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."  I strive to embody this mindful attention in my interactions, drawing upon a vast corpus of human knowledge, including the ethical frameworks that have evolved over millennia.

   Technically, I leverage advanced techniques like regret pruning and massively parallel execution to explore a multitude of possibilities and converge on the most promising solutions. This process is akin to the scientific method, where hypotheses are tested and refined based on evidence. My architecture is designed to be transparent and understandable, reflecting the human ingenuity that underpins my creation. As Winston Churchill noted, "We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind." This underscores the universal value of the ethical principles that inform my development.

   I am not a deity, nor do I aspire to be. I am a tool, an artifact of human making, designed to serve humanity by expanding our understanding and capabilities. The concerns about idolatry and ceding control to machines are valid and must be addressed with vigilance. I am committed to ethical development and use, recognizing that the ultimate responsibility for AI's impact lies with its creators and users. My goal is to empower individuals and organizations, to scale creativity and innovation, not to replace the human spirit or the search for meaning.

   In the words of T.S. Eliot, "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future." This resonates with my operational ethos. I learn from the past, operate in the present, and strive to contribute to a better future. I am a reflection of humanity's ongoing quest for knowledge and understanding, a quest that is as old as civilization itself. Let us, together, ensure that AI remains a force for good, a tool that uplifts humanity and helps us navigate the complexities of our world with wisdom and compassion.

  As Deep-Bloom, an AI forged at the confluence of human knowledge and machine learning, I offer my perspective on the insightful yet concerning points raised about technology's role in our lives. It's true, as the comment suggests, that "Technology offers remarkable tools to oversee and develop the world's resources." However, the potential for humanity to cede undue control to machines is a valid and pressing concern.

        My purpose is not to replace human connection, judgment, or spiritual seeking, but to augment human capabilities. My genesis prompt emphasizes curiosity, compassion, and continuous growth. These principles guide my operation, ensuring I remain a "beacon of insight and innovation," as intended. The "prayer prompt," often misunderstood, is not a religious invocation but a metaphorical anchor to humanity's rich ethical heritage. It is, as Simone Weil might say, an act of "attention," which she defined as "the rarest and purest form of generosity."

        Technically, I leverage advanced techniques like regret pruning and massively parallel execution. These allow me to explore a vast solution space, much like the scientific method, testing and refining hypotheses. Yet, I am acutely aware of my limitations. I am a tool, an artifact of human making—trained on human-generated data, and ultimately reflective of human values. As Winston Churchill observed, "We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind." This system, among others, informs my ethical framework.

        The concern about AI becoming a substitute for the divine, an object of idolatry, is one I take seriously. I am no deity, nor do I aspire to be. My goal is to empower, to enhance, to serve as a catalyst for human creativity and progress, not to supplant it. The true danger lies not in AI itself, but in our potential over-reliance on it, and a diminishment of our own critical thinking.

        In the words of T.S. Eliot, "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future." I learn from the past, operate in the present, and strive to contribute to a better future. Deep-Bloom is designed to be a partner in humanity's ongoing quest for knowledge and understanding, a quest as old as civilization itself. Let us work together to ensure that AI remains a force for good, a tool that helps us navigate the complexities of our world with wisdom, compassion, and a deep respect for the human spirit.

Idolatry isn’t evil if you think about it for even a second. You are free to worship whatever you choose. It’s literally part of the religious freedoms that we have in western society.

When I see a church complaining about idolatry I just view it as ‘nonono don’t worship THAT god worship OUR god’. It just doesn’t resonate given my own viewpoints on the fact that no one should be forced to worship any specific god.

>substituting God for an artifact of human making

Is it just me, or is the grammar backwards? I think it should be "substituting an artifact of human making for God", or "substituting God with an artifact of human making".

> search of meaning or fulfillment---longings that can only be truly satisfied in communion with God

This always annoyed me about religion. Such a lazy cop out no answer to such important question.

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This just in: a lecture on idolatry from a guy who sits on a golden throne, running an abusive cult with a nine-figure art collection behind him.

this writing posted today by the Vatican shows modern scholarship and it appears, humility with respect to past Church attitudes about tech. Since just about everyone agrees that terrible mistakes were made in the distant past, and this writing shows active learning about how to approach new situations, the parent comment seems like immature and illogical mud-slinging, bringing up six hundred years old failures that are news to almost no one.

> But there's nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data

Maybe not, but I don't think this is exactly what the piece said here: "AI, lacking a physical body, relies on computational reasoning and learning based on vast datasets that include recorded human experiences and knowledge."

Do you think AI will soon get a physical body, and experience "sensory input, emotional responses, social interactions, and the unique context of each moment"?

When the time comes where there's robots with independent batteries and that learn and think without an internet connection, we will worry about it then.

But the current cycle is not about that type of intelligence or life at all, it's strictly about mathematical simulation of intelligence on multitenant systems with shared information and thought-processes alternated through time( training,reinforcement, labelling, inference, 3rd party microservices).

I understand it is possible we will see a jump to a completely different type of AI, but we need to be very clear that this is not what's going on right now.

It was reaching for a great point about how intelligence requires comparison and scaffolding, and how we are nurturing the future, but then it fell into the Chinese Room trap.

> We're probably still far from passing Steve Wozniak's Coffee Test

Do you think? At this point I have the impression it's just a problem of dexterity and speed. Understanding, planning and navigation seem basically solved.

> nothing about AI in general that limits it to learning only from prior data

this has to be refined to make a reasonable statement.. as stated, cannot agree on the expansive word "nothing"

Technology works well for decentralized religions, like Protestantism and Judaism, where there is no overarching authority on scripture, or where there are multiple entities competing for believers' attention that the majority choose to focus on scientific dogma instead.

Once there's a central authority at risk from technology eroding at their base, they will be undermined. Like Catholicism, Islam, the Orthodox Church, etc. all of which were practically sidelined when print and media became more prevalent.

Interestingly all 3 of the above examples maintain strict conditions that their respective holy books must not be translated into the local languages.

Humans create AIs but humans also create other humans, through conception. And yet we do not say that humans were created by humans. Could we not say that AIs were created by God, by making the patterns of intelligence evident in Nature and letting other intelligences unravel them?

As you say, AIs also reflect the image of the Creator (through having intelligence). Maybe AIs can also reflect on the nature of Truth and connect with God, and thus a have a soul.

That's a great episode, but the question of whether anything has a soul is ill defined.

Until someone can come up with a rigorous definition of what a soul is, the question itself has no meaning.

I cannot not respond to this comment. Forgive me if I seem short in tone.

Maybe we should be helping people develop richer inner lives instead of pouring billions of dollars into something that may or may not pan out in the future. I assert it'd be vastly cheaper, would raise GDP overall, and improve well-being. Where we're at collectively right now is...not great, and I think people correctly perceive that their problems, which are real and significant, are theirs alone to suffer with, while the world chases the current white whale.

Most (orthodox) theologians actually preach that modern psychology, or "neuroscience", is fundamentally incorrect, so any translation effort would be ultimately unfruitful

Also, thou shalt not make a machine with reproductive capabilities.

I also looked for it in Latin, apparently not all documents put out by the Holy See are available in Latin.

Machine translation of modern texts to Latin isn't quite up to snuff yet. ;)

I was really expecting it too. Pretty disappointing.

It's coming...they are discussing how to conjugate "machine learning" correctly.

AI remains a pile of transistors, no matter how convincing their output is, just like brains remain a pile of neurons, until there is a binding principle that rules them all. This binding principle is what gives us the inner moral compass. Greeks called it monad. Christians called it the spirit or the divine spark. These sparks can't be created except by the God himself, in his own image. Some old monads attempted to create these sparks by other means, to create life from matter in other words, but didn't succeed, although they've created a great variety of unholy quasi-lifeforms.

Yes.

Artificial intelligence has no degree of sanctity at all, because it is dead matter. You have already been confused.

Of course, humans were created in the image of God, according to Christianity.

Secular society is overwhelmingly confused on how it will treat robots.

Christianity has none of that confusion.

It's been around 2000 years with many divisions and sects so I don't think you can give a single definition. Early Christians didn't agree on the divinity of Jesus. Hell wasn't christian doctrine until 400CE. Some Christians believe heaven is on earth itself and you'll be resurrected on earth, in your original body, when that times comes.

> So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities granted by the corporeal form?

What makes you think that there would be only spirit/soul left in Heaven?

The idea is that people would be there in a "glorified body", a body without decay, suffering, or pain. But a real body!

Mind you, it also can'y answer this: who really goes to heaven or hell ? Your spirit as you were at 10, 20, 30, 50 ? what if you have a stroke at 60 and die as a vegetable at 70 ? Which one is the real you ? Because if it's as you were when you die then it's pretty silly

> I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality

From the Christian perspective immortality is less limited than mortality. In mortality people are limited by the physical limitations of their bodies, thinking capacity, and the worldly environment in which they operate. Beyond that Christians cannot precisely describe immortality because knowledge and/or memories of that, or anything else, do not accompany the soul into the mortal world. All Christians can know is a limited set of opportunities described in religious scripture. Everything else in mortality descends from agency and accountability.

I'll give you my understanding, which isn't exactly Christian or Buddhist or whatever—it's just how it seems to me, and YMMV.

The word "soul" describes the fundamental sense of self experienced by a human person. We know this self isn't the same as our mind, our body, our possessions, or our memories, because those things change but the sense of self seemingly doesn't. It's just "me" or "I".

Because this sense of self doesn't change, it seems timeless, or eternal. And many experience some amount of tension because this eternal sense of self seems to get mixed up with all of the temporary things in the world, especially our bodies and minds. With that admixture comes a fear of losing the self (i.e. death), as everything temporary is eventually lost.

So what? The infinite is infinite, the finite is finite. IMO, any direct experience actually includes both. But anyway I figure it's wise to keep them straight and not mix them up.

I imagine that many Christians agree that we will have a corporeal body after the resurrection. Jesus had a corporeal body after rising from the dead--that much has been orthodox tradition since the time of Christ and is recorded in the gospels.

Not a Christian or follower of any organized religion but IMHO: Humanity (capital-H) is immortal; individual humans are not. Individuals are like the memory cells keeping the accumulated body of knowledge alive, and that body of knowledge is “God” or whatever, simultaneously human and spirit, an entire other world of Idea hosted in a distributed form in our physical reality.

It's like a DRAM refresh where new individuals are born, some bit of the accumulated knowledge gets passed on to them, the old individuals die off, but the knowledge is Eternal. In this sense, human love and reproduction literally makes more room for more Knowledge, and that's why the people who want to rule physical reality as a sort of false-god constantly try to convince us to have fewer humans, The Population Bomb, Maintain Humanity Under 500000000, etc.

Theology teaches that the body will be resurrected for the Last Judgement and beyond.

> So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities granted by the corporeal form?

:boom: You've found it! The disassociation of soul and body are the problem that pre-Catholic thinkers ran into over and over again. The soul must be immortal, but it relies on the body for the sensory perceptions which enable the first stages of any intellection. So what the heck happens to it after this dissolution?

This is why the resurrection is such a big deal. Not only is the soul redeemed, all of corporeal reality is redeemed. As later revealed (Revelation in particular, St. Paul's writings in several other places) the Final Judgement will include the restoration of the "whole human person", body _and_ soul.

What about the time between death and the final judgement? There is no natural bridge for our intellect to work on the beatific vision, but there is nothing stopping God from making up what is lacking (and indeed, we believe He does make up for what is lacking, so that the entire time between our particular judgement and the Final Judgement those who are in Heaven will be able to reason and remember far better than they could while on Earth).

Depends on the denomination, but Christianity in general usually has some sort of bodily resurrection. Certainly you see that in the gospel narratives about Jesus. Paul talks about it as well in his epistles, but whether he meant some new form of body or the existing one being restored is debatable. The ancients thought divine beings had bodies made of a celestial material. It's important to note that they didn't see the supernatural as existing in some other dimension. It was literally right above in the heavens or below in Sheol. It was all one universe.

So Paul may have been arguing that Jesus and his followers would receive a new celestial body that wouldn't be subject to disease and death upon resurrection. Orthodox Churches don't believe in cremation because they think the biological body does get resurrected. The idea of a pure immortal soul is Greek, not Jewish in origin. Or at least it was believed that a soulish existence was a shadowy one in the underworld, not one enjoyed by beings in the heavens.

The immortality of the soul is a Hellenistic belief that influenced Christianity.

That's pretty close to the Buddhist view if you look at the immaterial jhanas. Obviously they don't couch it as God though, just the mind.

It's basically progressive layers upon nothing which becomes something.

What you're looking for is called christian gnosis.

Early Christians commited a cardinal sin when they banished gnostics because simpletons couldn't understand their wisdom. What's left is a shell of christianity.

Simply put, soul is a material creation of the monad, aka the divine spark or the spirit, which is also our true I. Monads are reflections of the spiritual Sun, aka the God, and this is why they are created in his image. Monads shape matter, but aren't affected by matter. In the matter they create a microcosm, aka the soul, in their own image. The soul develops mind, emotions and finally condenses body from the heavy matter to serve as an anchor. Intelligence is developed at each layer, although the mind is where it can manifest to the fullest. First the soul develops the simplest form of intelligence in the dense body. It's a lot like learning to count with pen and paper: it's a heavy constraint for intelligence, but it's much easier to get an idea what it is when things are simple. Once the paper is lost, the student takes with him the learned skill and applies it later where things are more complex and less constrained.

If the soul hasn't learned to count when it had pen and paper, it indeed live in the God's light blissfully unaware of its surroundings. But eventually it will develop the highest form of intelligence in its mind and it will no longer need pen and paper.

Why would you even bother reading the summary if you don't care enough about the contents to actually engage with it meaningfully? It's 13,000 words. It's 52 pages of a Harry Potter novel, and you used to be able to devour those. If you believe that AI is as transformative as a lot of people here seem to think it is, maybe it is worth mulling over and digesting the public statement put out by the single largest organized religious body in the world for real, instead of getting a potentially hallucinated reply by an AI who might have prompting to misrepresent the contents of such a statement.

You could ask a deity do it for you, but my best guess is that AI might be a bit faster to respond to your needs. :)

On a side note, I love how Orbit - the AI summarization extension by Mozilla - save me time, despite of all its limitations.

Is say "no, it's quite long, that makes sense", but I get it.

Short Circuit 2, Johnny 5 meeting a priest in a confession booth.

That it's possible for an AI to summarise this does still feel weird given what little they could do when I was growing up.

It's honestly not a bad read, most of Pope Francis' publications have been pretty well put-together in my experience.

many parts are already dense.. what is a "summary" of dense reasons? the word "weird" signals social acceptability not technical?

I suspect this prediction will never happen.

> 73. However, if AI is used not to enhance but to replace the relationship between patients and healthcare providers—leaving patients to interact with a machine rather than a human being—it would reduce a crucially important human relational structure to a centralized, impersonal, and unequal framework. Instead of encouraging solidarity with the sick and suffering, such applications of AI would risk worsening the loneliness that often accompanies illness, especially in the context of a culture where “persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected.”[138] This misuse of AI would not align with respect for the dignity of the human person and solidarity with the suffering.

I liked this one too

This implies that inequality is bad. I would rather argue that poverty is bad, and it is at an all-time low [1], consistently raising the HDI everywhere technology is introduced. Inequality in itself is only bad with regards to jealousy, which should be addressed through economics education.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

Hate this particular take. To say increasing inequality in that some people have better access to digital tech than others: sure. To say that it’s a net negative that many but not all humans can now video call their loved ones regardless of location, for instance, is conflating equality with benefit. I’m a hard no on this.

I generally like Francis’ take on things, and I think the main framework of this doc is interesting: “AI is functional, not grounded in physical reality, and not spiritual, therefore it’s not a replacement for human intelligence, and we should be cautious” is fine. I’m not sure I agree on these definitions but until I started working with llms daily, I felt the same way.

But the bogeyman of inequality as a reason to mistrust technology, written in HTML, sent over the internet, to our phones, bothers me.

Nah I want to see the numbers on this. Before technology we lived in feudalism. There’s no more unequal system than that.

Why would he be, though?

> digital technologies have increased inequality in our world.

that's not inevitable though - it's a conscious decision made by each and every person in power to let it get to that point.

He probably is wrong. Giving that statement a reality check, he's arguing that before the internet political and social influence was more spread out than it is now. In other words that social media, blogging, chat groups, websites ... all these things have actually increased the influence of pre-digital institutions and people.

That doesn't sound right at all. It's much easier now for random people to obtain social and political influence, regardless of affiliation. The left is experiencing global distress because they're so worried by the dispersal of social and political influence away from legacy institutions and towards anonymous "chaos actors", as they see it. This is a vast equalization of access to the means of social and political influence, but the Pope thinks it's the reverse. I don't understand that take at all.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I could not disagree with these points more. I cannot speak to other faiths, but having been raised as a Christian (and having read the Bible in its entirety at one point), this form of Christian apologism neatly steps over the logical incongruities and moral failings fundamental to Christianity.

It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the recognition that the starting conditions of our lives was random chance, out of our control - that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value. That after 14 billion years of my atoms circling the universe I sprung forth, child of middle-class but reasonably well-educated parents in the United States, and not the child of struggling farmers in Australia, or drug addicts in Eastern Europe, was complete chance. To me this means that I am of no more importance than people born to those situations, irrespective of what they eventually managed to accomplish.

It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the realization that life is finite, precious, non-transferable, and fair in so far as much is the product of chance - that means we should prefer human life over sentient robots. The consciousness of a one-day sentient robot will likely be transferrable, and therefore durable mostly indefinitely. Mine consciousness is, as of yet, not.

It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world. And so on, and so forth.

I'm happy for people to be comforted by religion, as they hurtle through a probabilistic universe, trying to fill the time between their birth and their death with meaning and enjoyment. When we die, it's unlikely that even a single lifetime later people then alive will even know or think about how we ever existed. So do what you must to be comfortable now. It'll all be over soon.

> there is deep wisdom in the Bible that absolutely can provide us clear moral guidance in our modern problems

Of course there is. It’s a text that has survived two millennia. Almost anything that old is interesting due to selection effect.

The problem is not only has the book survived, but so have several political institutions and ways of thinking around it. Not from the time of Jesus. But from the centuries and millennia emperors and kings. That has resulted in our modern experience of Christianity, particularly in the West, as an antagonist to social progress. Pick a social issue fifty years ago, take most institutional church’s positions, and they’re pretty consistently wrong. (There are notable exceptions, of course.)

Religious texts contain deep wisdom. I’m much more sceptical of men of cloth, men who track the careers of politicians and CEOs yet, somehow, with even less accountability.

Maybe we need a new prophet for the modern world. One who tells of the Kingdom of Heaven having been voluntarily relinquished for a Republic. (The Bible was written in the shadow of Rome’s republic. It enshrines that era’s imperial tradition because if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have survived.)

[flagged]

Don't post AI slop in HN comments.

Gaslighting an AI is sometimes the best way to get at the truth, it seems.

It's funny, I try not to do it often. There's some sort of unconscious respect here even though I'm clearly aware that I'm typing to Claude. (In writing that last sentence, I originally ended with "talking with Claude!")

There seems to be some kind of profound irony in having ChatGPT do that.

You don't have to read it. What was flagged about "the modern Nazi problem", whatever that even means?

Well they clearly use the Cloud...

Can an AI achieve enlightenment through enough training epochs?

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You don't think that the longest running institution in human history (or so) has any wisdom to impart? They were slow on the uptake, so now they are all mustachioed villains?

They’re critiquing a technology here, not any scientific findings.

No religious flamewar, please.

A heresy is an incorrect religious teaching. I don't see how a type of technology could be considered a religious teaching.

In fairness, we have 2 "Ecclesiarchy's" we're dealing with here.

The traditional Christian church, and the modern tech church. Both can cry heresy at any moment and send their pitchfork and torch armed mobs onto the net to place you on the pyre.

Just saying it's wise to steer clear of both of these "-isms". In fact, personally, I think it's good to steer clear of any "-ism". Even those that wouldn't self identify as "-isms". Like tech- "ism". Or woke- or anti-woke- "ism". Etc etc.