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| Fig. 1 Artificial Sermon Atoms |
Well, we probably should first ask and answer the question "what is a machine?" but not without also answering, in the same inquiry, "what is not a machine?"
I say that in the sense that "machine intelligence" and "artificial intelligence" are the same concept in this inquiry.
The most relevant inquiry to answer the question is probably the technological aspects of "machines" versus the biological aspects of biological/human "life".
In this series the "machine religion concept" has taken up multiple aspects of the multiple aspects of the multiple aspects of this "3D chess" realm, due to the multifaceted requirements of a valid inquiry into this subject matter (The Machine Religion, 2, 3, 4, 5).
I think you will get my drift by considering the seemingly simple question "is DNA alive or is it a machine", as has been done on Dredd Blog (The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine - 2).
II. Believing In Machine Religion
Anyway, of those linked posts above ("The Machine Religion, 2, 3, 4, 5"), let's focus for a moment on "The Machine Religion - 3 " because it contains this tidbit:
"Now, lo and behold, the first church of the machine religion appears:
"The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or 'Dean') of the new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run it."
(The Machine Religion - 3). Some of us might have thought "science fiction religion", "that is beyond the beyond", or "stop goofing around Dredd", while reading that Dredd Blog post.
III. Quality of Machine Religion
But wait a minute, "AI" has, since those posts, made it not only to the Congress of the United States of America, it has gone all "homey 3D" on us:
"The artificial intelligence chatbot asked the believers in the fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth to rise from the pews and praise the Lord.
The ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar, then began preaching to the more than 300 people who had shown up on Friday morning for an experimental Lutheran church service almost entirely generated by AI.
'Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany,' the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.
The 40-minute service — including the sermon, prayers and music — was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.
'I conceived this service — but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,' the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press."
(Can a chatbot preach a good sermon? Hundreds attend church service generated by ChatGPT to find out).
IV. Machine Religion vs Human Religion
We could imagine, conclude, or observe that in some situations a machine can make a better decision, determination, conclusion, observation, and the like, than a human being could (and of course vice versa).
Some times, however, we might have a more difficult time explaining why, in a given situation, one did better than the other.
For example, in a recent court case the lawyers relied on an 'artificial' intelligence chatbot to write all or part of a brief submitted to the court in support of a particular legal argument (Lawyer Used ChatGPT In Court—And Cited Fake Cases. A Judge Is Considering Sanctions).
The artificial intelligence entity made up some of the cases, that is, those cases never happened, they didn't exist.
In other words, machine intelligence is like human intelligence in some significant ways (Google CEO Sundar Pichai says ‘hallucination problems’ still plague A.I. tech and he doesn’t know why; The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?).
V. Closing Comments
The age, education, character, experience, and the like, of both machine 'brains' and human brains have a significant impact on the quality, or lack thereof, in their decision making.
Sometimes one will do better than the other, and at other times not so.
Thus, like with the issues of who can testify in court, who can be a teacher, who can have a driver's license or a pilot's license, or even who will go to 'jail' or not, is likely to be the subject of state and federal legislation.
At the moment, however, only humans are constrained by law in some of those situations.
The previous post in this series is here.
So now we all know that a chatbot can create or perpetuate a cult. Interesting. How long before a "new religion" takes hold from the machine? It's clear that humanity is incredibly gullible and wouldn't actually care that a machine-generated religion would become normalized. This has already happened but most don't realize it. Algorithms already make up what you see, read and hear (not just advertisements but virtually everything). This "religion" is found anywhere online now including in social media. Machines (software) deciding what people should believe, controlling thoughts, manipulating emotions and so on. Already here, it's been here for years. Fabricating a machine-generate religion is just another logical extension to control the human population even further. ~Survival Acres~
ReplyDeleteWell said.
DeleteInternet "memes" and doctrines generated by machine-intelligence (algorithms and AI) already exist, they're ubiquitous in reality. These are exactly like the tenets of religion and are found everywhere. But who or rather "what" generated these doctrines? They're widely considered immutable and sacrosanct. Consider any of these doctrines: abortion, guns, 2nd Amendment, Trump, MAGA, leftist, liberals, right-wing, Republicans, Democrats, climate change denial, even religion. All generated and supported and promoted by machine-intelligence, with none engaging in actual truth or reality. It is therefore of no surprise that AI can generate a "sermon" because this is what has been going on for fair while now - "sermons" on what humans are supposed to believe, embrace, support and hold onto, none of which is true. Machine-generated divisions? You betcha, already here.
ReplyDeleteNobody seems to actually understand just how manipulated they have become and will vehemently argue that it's not true - yet it is, the evidence is everywhere. ~Survival Acres~
"The concept of the Turing test was first mooted by the legendary Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence. The idea is that a conversation takes place between a human and a machine using a text-only channel like a computer keyboard and screen.
ReplyDeleteIn the classical form of this test, an evaluator observes the conversation and all three participants are separated from each other. If the evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, then the machine is said to have passed the Turing test." (Link).