“There is eternal life,” said Campbell, the senator who rebuked Rev. Harrison earlier this month. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, when they die they’ll have one birth and two deaths. Because they will know nothing about the afterlife, the eternity with God. But exposing them or introducing them to Ten Commandments, prayer – it asks other questions and they then have a choice in their future: Two births and one death.”So, I’ve been spending a lot of time down the wormhole of nostalgia watching “Ghost in the Shell” movies. (Always something deliciously ironic about Japanese anime taking its title from a critique of Descartes’ dualism, which most people think is meant to properly describe Descartes’ dualism.) It’s all about computers and AI and the usual fiction about AI trying to take over the world. In fact, I think most of the GitS movies/tv episodes turn on that plot. There’s almost always a “sentient” AI that goes rogue and fundamentally misunderstands human society. And it’s that gap between knowledge (what we’ve reduced to “data,” a true reductio ad absurdum), and understanding.
Let me illustrate my point this way: the rogue AI, having acquired all data, wants to exist, or experience humanity, or something. Or it could be a human hacker, wanting to straighten everyone else out, but small difference in the stories. There’s seldom real malice, but there is real disruption/danger in how they pursue their ends. Oddly, with all that data, they never manage to come up with a workable solution that doesn’t involve coercion (that’s the danger always present to give the narrative a conflict, otherwise it would just be a rather tedious lecture series (and, like most pretentious fiction, especially science fiction, a really bad set of lectures). The “innocence” of the antagonists are that they aren’t malicious; but the problem is, they have too much power, and that makes them dangerous.
But the unstated, unacknowledged problem is, they have data, but they seeking understanding. And understanding, not to put too fine a point on it, is a Human thing. Humans have to seek it, and often in these stories AI does too, without realizing it.
In fictional portrayals, AI can know, but it cannot understand; and that’s always the problem. I think that’s true of AI IRL, but that’s a subjective opinion, not a well researched and empirical one. What I’ve seen of AI use on the web, chat AI responses sound like understanding, but they are really just collections of words according to English vocabulary and syntax. Children can use words correctly without understanding. My daughter, when she was about 5, decided to show off for her grandparents (who were visiting), and, as the Lovely Wife and I sat watching “The X-Files,” the Golden Child walked into the room and asked in a loud voice: “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WATCHING?” She thought it was funny, and it was. But she didn’t, at the time, understand why.
Knowledge is one thing. She knew the words, even the syntax. What she didn’t understand was when, and when not, to ask that question. (To thus day her ringtone on my phone is the title song of that show.)
So the AI in GitS goes through elaborate machinations based on elaborate exposition (I like that kind of thing, but that’s me), to establish the motive for their actions. Now, it’s Japanese (one thing I like about; world shaking events happen in Japan, not Europe or the Americas), but the “ghost” is a real aspect of the characters; or at least they talk about it, in contrast to their techno “cyber brains.” AI has no “ghost.” Only humans do. It’s a very Western reference to a “soul,” in other words. Which is what Descartes was on about.
And what occurs to me, over and over, is that if these sentient AI’s have consumed the data on the web (always presented metaphorically as a vast, deep, and infinite sea), how are they so ignorant of the basileia tou theou? I mean, GitS never gets explicitly religious, be that Buddhism or Taoism, or Christianity, for that matter. So I’m not criticizing the reach of the fictional universe, I’m just pointing out there are descriptions of utopia (yes, I know: “no place”) available. But those concepts require understanding.
Just like the title of the series. Descartes was not, in his dualism, trying to describe a “ghost in the machine.” That is a criticism lodged against him much later. Most of us don’t understand that. We repeat the line and think we understand dualism a la Descartes (and so can simply dismiss it), when we don’t understand that we don’t understand at all.
And what does this have to do with that quote above? That’s a Texas state senator talking. The Lege is in session in Austin, and some there want to get more Xianity (but not “religion!” Just Xianity) in Texas public schools for the express purpose of saving souls, because church attendance is in decline. Now we can sidebar about how some churches are more Xianity than others. That Senator undoubtedly would make common cause with Catholics on abortion (no, not all them; I understand that), while still thinking they are doomed to damnation because the RC is the Whore of Babylon. He’s probably convinced my UCC is the devil’s handmaid, and everyone in it needs to be saved. Two things about this; his attitude explains why I’ve rejected traditional Christian soteriology; and it reflects an understanding that could read the scriptures every day and NEVER come up with the understanding of the basileia tou theou that I have.
Forget the soteriology stuff; I was going to go there once upon a time, but now it impinges here the same way the other example does: he reads the scriptures in a framework I don’t anymore (and never fully did), and understands his soteriology as the whole point of it. But I read the scriptures and understands that the point of the gospels is that that the way to contentment and , yes, world peace, and the way to follow the will of God, is through the first being last and the last first, and the first of all being last and servant of all. I see quite clearly that if you want the world to be a better place, you seek first the basileia tou theou. And then you aren’t worried about him to force salvation from hellfire and damnation on public schoolchildren, because your only power is powerlessness. And if you understand that, how do you force that understanding on anyone?
Indeed, how do you force understanding at all, about anything? I spent 20 years (!) lecturing and trying to make students understand. I couldn’t do it for them, and I couldn’t make them do it. I could lead the horse to water, but I couldn’t make him think.
Now do you understand?
So how will AI ever understand? Acquiring all knowledge didn’t make Faust understand. The Preacher (Ecclesiastes), acquired knowledge, but understood (correctly), that his pursuit was vanity and chasing after emptiness. I think I understand the gospels correctly; but so does that state senator (he also understands the First Amendment, and the purpose of public schools, incorrectly). How does he read the same words I do, and understand them so differently? Because, like the eunuch in Acts, he reads without understanding until someone explains scripture to him. And then it’s all about who does the explaining.
The last set of episodes of GisT I watched revolved around Orwell’s 1984. But the character who reads it and later models the world (or tries to) on it, says early on that he doesn’t understand it. And clearly, he doesn’t. He uses the terms: “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “Ministry of Love,” even “Room 101.” But he doesn’t use them the way the novel did. He creates a utopia, not a nightmare. But he does it through the technology of the fictional premise of GisT, and uses that to create a fiction that allows his utopia. Whether that’s an improvement, or not, is left to the audience. But without understanding, you can misunderstand a lot.
And that’s almost always the problem.
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