Will Artificial Intelligence Help Humankind or Destroy Us?

 If you watch the business cable news network on TV (as my husband does), then you will hear a lot these days about A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). People are making a lot of money if they are invested in companies that are developing A.I. And though as I expressed in the last blog post it has the potential to be very dangerous and get out of control quickly, it can also make great new discoveries in medicine and science and perhaps help productivity in many fields,  even in religious education and evangelization.  So is it a false idol? Perhaps it is, perhaps humans are trying to play God by developing machines and technology that is smarter and quicker than human brains, or maybe we are just using our human intelligence to go further and expand knowledge which will benefit humankind. 

No one knows, which direction this new technology will take. Will it help us or hurt us ultimately? Can A.I. find a cure for cancer or other horrific diseases? Can A.I. come up with solutions to climate change, or poverty or hunger in third world countries? That remains to be seen. 

But whatever happens, the future is now, we are living in the future of humankind and unless wise and prudent minds prevail, anything can happen. I wonder what God is thinking of all this? Is this foolishness, are we creating a false idol of the most dangerous kind or will humankind advance in ways that will help more people and create a more just society. We shall see......

NJA

The Most Dangerous False Idol of Them All-Artificial Intelligence

 I wrote a post about this topic and then deleted it. I have mixed feelings about writing about A.I. because first of all, I hardly understand how it works. But I do know what the experts say and it does scare me. This technology is moving fast and there are not regulations and people who have developed artificial intelligence are warning that it can become dangerous. 

Here is a definition I found online:

"Artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages."

The problem is the "Godfather of A.I., Geoffrey Hinton and other developers of A.I. and experts in the field are saying that we do have something to worry about and that "bad actors" can cause havoc using A.I. for nefarious reasons. Did he say, "killer robots?" Yes that is one of the fears if it gets out of control...This is not science fiction and not 30 years from now but potentially much sooner. 

It's really all too much to think about and contemplate. But is this a false idol? Is A.I. like the fallen angel who wanted to be like God. Mr. Hinton who developed A.I. at the beginning of the technology now partly regrets his life work. He just resigned from Google to spend time warning about the dangers of unregulated, uncontrolled A.I.

You can't say God didn't warn us. The warnings have been written into the Bible stories. 

Let's hope and pray that intelligent human minds find ways to control A.I. and regulate it, before it gets out of hand.

 NJA