On Saturday 16 March, Scots’ Church, a centre of Presbyterian worship on the corner of Collins and Russell streets, hosted a night of speakers and conversation around a rapidly developing technology with the potential to bring about unique and dramatic changes in many aspects of society: artificial intelligence (AI).
Organised by ISCAST, keynote speakers of the evening included Professor Neil Dodgson (Professor of Computer Graphics and Dean of Graduate Research at Victoria University in Wellington), Rev Dr Chris Mulherin (Director of ISCAST) and Rev Dr Arthur Keefer, an Old Testament scholar who reflected on cultivating ‘biblical wisdom’ in an AI world.
Prof Dodgson, who spoke with us ahead of the event, once more contended that so-called ‘strong AI’—computer systems that effectively achieve sentience—may not even be possible, quoting GK Chesterton : ‘A machine only is a machine because it cannot think.’
Whatever the large language models like ChatGPT are doing, they are no more than that: large language models requiring ‘training’ and the input of data. It may seem like what they are doing is similar to human thought, but in reality it is quite different.
The technology has advanced enormously, and quickly, and has become so much more powerful and so much more easily available that it’s possible for anyone to fake anything.
According to Prof Dodgson, the greater threat comes from ‘weak AI’, those systems that can either enhance human persons or replace them. While AI has the potential to be used in the service of human flourishing, particularly in the arenas of education and medicine—where critical diagnoses might be made more accurately—there are also widespread concerns.
He outlined a few significant ways in which these technologies may reshape our social landscape.
One is the prevalence of ‘deepfakes’. ‘You cannot trust any video or any image that you find online,’ he said. ‘You just can’t … The technology has advanced enormously, and quickly, and has become so much more powerful and so much more easily available that it’s possible for anyone to fake anything.’
While the doctoring of political images is worrying enough, Prof Dodgson pointed to the rise in new forms of bullying whereby teenagers (and adults) are able to create totally fake pornographic material using only the faces of their peers. He also shared examples of ‘photographs’ of people that AI systems can create from scratch—entirely ‘new’ people who do not actually exist but look convincing nevertheless.
Prof Dodgson said he has worked alongside many of the major researchers who have developed these technologies, and has asked them the question, ‘What can we do? We bear the responsibility. We had helped create the problem. Could we solve it?’
‘The answer is no,’ he said candidly. ‘There [is] no automated mechanism by which you could tell a fake from real.’
Another concern with AI has to do with its potential to reshape employment, although the forecasts here vary widely, with some fearing that unemployment rates could climb as high as 50 per cent and others, like the New Zealand AI Forum, predicting that over the coming decades, AI job displacement will account for only 10 per cent of normal job creation and destruction.
If it’s at the higher end of the scale, he pointed out, ‘That would be massive societal change. At the height of the Great Depression in the USA, unemployment was running at 25 per cent, and we knew that caused massive social upheaval. How will this country cope with an unemployment rate of 50 per cent?’
Pointing to the industrial revolution and the rise of automation, where tedious and difficult jobs were replaced by machines, he said, ‘That replacement of really horrible jobs by machines was really good for society long term, [but] it was a total disaster for the human beings involved.’
Keeping this in mind, ‘What can the Church do to shape a society that will be robust to such changes?’ he asked.
What do you do when the artificial intelligence system turns you down for insurance? When it decides your child or grandchild can’t go to the high school they wanted to go to? When it decides that you, or your parents, cannot have a life-saving medical treatment?
He also spoke about the increased ‘dehumanising of decision-making’. Currently, countries like Australia run as ‘social credit systems’ by consensus.
‘You have a credit score that your bank uses to determine whether you get a loan. You have likes and ratings on Facebook and Uber and Amazon,’ he said. Aside from the possibility of governments using this data as a source of social control and manipulation, there are many processes that may be shifted to AI systems.
‘What do you do when the artificial intelligence system turns you down for insurance? When it decides your child or grandchild can’t go to the high school they wanted to go to? When it decides that you, or your parents, cannot have a life-saving medical treatment? How do we respond as a community when AI systems tell us things that are unpalatable?’
I think the Church must work actively to make society better in the face of the massive changes that are coming ... The rise of artificial intelligence can help us to rediscover the meaning of being human.
One of the serious problems associated with taking the decision-making out of the hands of humans and trusting them instead to AI systems is that it is nearly impossible to tell why the systems make the decisions they do.
‘It’s encoded within the neurons, but you can’t slice it open and work out why it’s made the decisions it just did,’ he says. ‘There is no way of knowing why the system has made the decisions it does … We have black boxes making the decisions based on where the training is.’
While many of these trajectories and possibilities are concerning, Prof Dodgson believes the Church can play an important role in wrestling with the ethical issues surrounding AI.
‘The Church is very well placed to grapple with [these] ethical problems,’ he said. ‘The Church has had centuries of intelligent debate and has a really good understanding of how value systems work.’
‘I think the Church must work actively to make society better in the face of the massive changes that are coming, be they job losses or whatever. [We] cannot just sit on the sidelines and whinge about what’s going on.’
As the rise of AI changes much about our society and touches on many aspects of what it means to be human, Prof Dodgson said there is ample room for the Church to speak into what it means to be human, and also to be community-driven humans.
‘Community is vital to the full development of human beings, and may be vital to the full development of artificial intelligences. We are not just individuals. We are all embedded in community. The rise of artificial intelligence can help us to rediscover the meaning of being human.’
Biblical wisdom in an AI world
Prof Dodgson’s talk was followed by reflections from Rev Dr Chris Mulherin of ISCAST and Rev Dr Arthur Keefer, an Old Testament scholar, on how Christian theology and biblical wisdom can help clarify some of these important issues.
Dr Mulherin spoke about the rise in ‘transhumanism’. While technology can and has been used to support and enhance natural human functions—he cited the Melbourne scientist Graeme Clark, who invented the world’s first cochlear implant—transhumanism goes further and speaks even of ‘genetically engineering’ people.
The overarching question raised by future technology is about the nature of humanity ... For Christians, there is something very definite about what it means to be human.
‘Some people argue that genetic engineering has brought us to the place where we should take seriously the possibility of morally enhancing future humans,’ Dr Mulherin said.
According to this view, the traditional limitations of human life—everything from sin to suffering and death—are becoming merely ‘bugs’ that could be ‘fixed’ with the right technology. Into this, Christian theology has much to say, Dr Mulherin said.
‘In the end, the overarching question raised by future technology is about the nature of humanity. What is a human being? For Christians, there is something very definite about what it means to be human.’
‘For the Christian, we do look forward to renewed bodies and minds, enhanced bodies and minds, beyond normal human functioning. But that is a work of God alone, and one that we will point to in faith,’ he said.
Rev Dr Arthur Keefer reflected on the meaning of wisdom in the Old Testament, drawing on Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the prophets.
‘Biblical wisdom,’ he said, ‘means taking responsibility for your character … figuring out what it means to be a godly person in your situation.’
According to the Scriptures, however, wisdom is a spiritual issue. Quoting Proverbs 9:10—‘The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord’—he observed that the search for wisdom ‘doesn’t really lead first to wisdom. It leads first to God … It puts you face to face with God.
‘When it comes to wisdom and AI, one of the questions I’d like to ask is this: where does wisdom direct our attention?’
‘We have a responsibility when we’re in communities,’ Dr Keefer said, ‘to live in a wise way, to care for other people, to figure out what our role means for loving others well. Biblical wisdom directs our attention, even enables us to see our human problems and solutions, even when living in an AI world.’
