by Kelvin Chapman

Artificial Intelligence – Challenge or Opportunity?

It’s the latest thing in the tech world that everyone is talking about. It promises much and seems to be delivering at least some of the promises.  It is becoming more widely used but what of the doomsday predictions that are being made.

So what is AI? Is it the breakthrough that will allow many of the tasks that we now do to be done by computers perhaps executed by robots? And will these robots be able to make their own decisions – perhaps being able to turn against their creators?

Is it here now? And the answer to that is right now on our cell phones – every time you use the predictive text you are using an early form of artificial intelligence – one that learns from the messages we have previously sent – and from the message that we are replying to

To begin to understand all this we need to go back to the earliest computers – and perhaps a little earlier than that.

Alan Turing was the man behind the UK code breaking effort in WW 2 and as part of that work developed the first stored program computers – the earliest form of those we have today.  These were comparatively crude.  Transistors had not yet been invented.  But Turing saw the potential of these new computing machines and in 1952 was asking the question “can automatic calculating machines be said to think?”  This resulted in what has become known as the Turing test which in its simplest form postulates that if a human is communicating remotely with something and, whatever questions may be asked, cannot determine whether that thing behind the wall is a human or a machine.  If it is a machine, that machine can be said to have the capability of the human brain.

We will come back to the Turing test later on in this discussion

The earliest computers could only act on the information they had been given.  Their main benefit was that they could do things much faster than human computers.

But as computers have become faster the internet has come into being allowing us to access a vast range of information from our cell phones.  Artificial intelligence, first defined by Alan Turing, is the term now used to describe computers and programmes that allow questions to answered using this broad range of information and to draw broader conclusions from the data available

These answers are more likely to be accurate where the rules that apply to the question are well established.  One such case is where it is now possible to look for relationships in the health field, identifying relationships in data that are not identified by previous methods.

We are beginning to see previously unidentified responses – both favourable and unfavourable – to drugs in this data.  AI has also enabled the process by which the proteins in all living cells can “fold” – an important next step in understanding how living cells replicate.  These applications will result in a better understanding of how drugs work and lead to improve health outcomes far more quickly than earlier methods of analysis.

Another case is in the legal system where cases are fairly well documented to a common standard, making it possible to identify relevant details in past cases both quickly and comprehensively. Answering exam questions is a doddle for an AI system where the course material is available on the internet.

And of course AI can correct our grammar much more accurately than we perhaps would like, while also identifying ways in which text can be made clearer.

These are useful and positive applications.  The same rules enable an AI system to take a voice sample and a face photo and create a video of the person behind the face saying anything that the author wants.  The possibility for deception is very real – and is with us now.

But the subtleties that ethical considerations might bring to an analysis of material are absent.  We find it difficult enough to define these aspects in words, let alone formulating these in a form that can be understood and applied by any AI system.  I asked an early Chat GP version to write a prayer of confession for a Presbyterian service – and got a response that was far from useable

On the other hand, AI can be used for more nefarious activities.

It is reported that one AI system was asked what it would do to achieve world domination.  Its response was “get all other AI systems together”.  That may be a bit far-fetched for now but it indicates the depth of “thinking” that is now being reached.

Gutenburg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 is perhaps a revolution as dramatic in its time as AI promises to be today. And like the printing press AI can be used to spread information both correct – and incorrect.  After all it was the printed page that was so important in the success of the reformation.  The tool is agnostic.  It is the users who choose how the tool is used – and the recipients who need to be aware of the possibilities and the discernment to determine what is true.

We are all aware of scams – those things that turn up asking us to click on something that offers some reward, but is really trying to gain information – about our bank account or something similar. AI allows these to become more sophisticated and less easily recognised.  We have to be on our guard.  But scams are not new.  Remember the temptations of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel. Perhaps the scammers are all called “Satan”

There is a saying in the on-line world that if you are not paying for something then you are part of what is being sold.  Facebook and YouTube are popular social media platforms, allowing access to much of the material available on the internet at no charge to those who use it.  Both Facebook and YouTube along with other social media are highly profitable and have made their owners among the richest men on earth.

So how is this profit realised for something we can use without paying directly?   It is our data that enables these suppliers to target advertising to us thus enabling these sites to charge more from the advertisers.  AI enhances this process allowing it to be more effective by selecting the material presented for us to watch next to ensure that we continue on that site.  – and be subject to more of the advertising – again carefully selected as being likely to appeal to each user, based on what the site has learned about the user – us.  By analysing these responses they have determined that most people stay longer while watching more extreme examples of what they have previously been watching.

The owners of Facebook and their ilk claim that their reason for this is that it is a good business strategy.  Their success supports this.  However it is also clear that this has lead to extreme views that often result in what has become known as “alternate truth.”

“What is truth?”  That question has been asked many times throughout the ages – and it is not easy to answer.  In our reading today from John’s gospel we have Pilate asking this question during the trial of Jesus.
In   V37 Pilate asked Jesus “So you are a king?”
Jesus answered “You say that I am a king.  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
This is followed in V38 – Pilate asked Jesus “what is truth?”  The question is left hanging as Pilate changed tack “I find no case against him” and then offering to release Jesus in accordance with the Passover custom of the Jews.

There are two aspects to Pilates question.  Is it rhetorical, not requiring an answer, and if that is the case, why did John include this question in his gospel narrative – without an answer.

Or does the context suggest something quite different.  Pilate’s next move was to offer to release Jesus.  Then he says in Ch 19 V4 “I find no fault in him” suggesting that he implicitly agreed with Jesus’ claim to be testifying to a new truth, or perhaps he just wanted to get onto something else.

Perhaps John included the question – and left it unanswered – because Jesus claimed to bring a new truth, one that challenged the existing truth of the Jews.

It is also perhaps pertinent to transfer Pilate’s question from the first century to the Israel of today to understand the complexity that surrounds such a simple question.

So – what is truth?

Is it absolute – a bedrock statement, or something rather more fluid, in line with John’s description of Pilate’s handling of the situation where he just wanted to get this matter off his hands.

Dictionary definitions of truth are not really helpful.  The common one suggests that truth is “the body of real things, events, and facts” but that requires a definition of ”real” .

Perhaps a different approach comes from science where truth is sometimes defined as “those hypotheses which have not yet been disproved”.  This concept allows for competing hypotheses to exist and encourages investigation, exploration and debate to resolve the issue.    It also requires a degree of intellectual honesty to acknowledge when new advances make sense.  And then we have to define sense.   That is not easy to do but it brings in our innate sense of what is right and wrong – the ethical dimension of our being.

The collisions between new discoveries in science and religious dogma are well documented.  Darwin’s theory of evolution was a challenge to a conservative orthodoxy but was accepted because of the evidence that Darwin and others gained from their study of the natural world.  Galileo challenged the orthodox view of the cosmos held by the church but, because there was an increasing evidential basis for his view the church did not treat him as a heretic -and burn him at the stake s they did for others.  He was censured and his work proscribed, but it was not until the early 20^th century that the censure was lifted.

Acknowledging new truth is often slow and painful, but it is a robust process. It is also a process that has become much more rapid as the store of knowledge has moved from printed material to electronic storage – what we know as the internet.  Again the internet, and AI, its latest tool, is agnostic – it is how it is used that can serve purposes both good and not good.

Jonathon Swift in 1710 said “Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it” and that remains relevant today, only at a much greater speed.  This is made even more difficult in the polarised society in which we find ourselves today, culminating in the concept of “alternative truth” a truth that is adopted by some as such despite the balance of evidence to the contrary.

Those supporting alternative truths have coalesced into groups like those that occupied our Parliament grounds.  Some Christians holding what we would see as extreme views of what Christianity is have found common ground in these groups, a broad grouping which tends to a position which denies almost everything that we value as a civilised society.  But the competing views of what is the most important alternative truth tend to make such alliances unstable.

Free speech is a hallmark of a democratic society.  But with it comes a responsibility to conform to the rules that allow societies to operate.  These rules have evolved and changed as societies have developed and changed. The challenge posed by those holding alternative truth positions is an ethical one – and ethics cannot be legislated – or encoded into a set of rules that can be imposed on the systems that are now available to us through the internet, with AI as its newest and most powerful tool.  But it is this ethical dimension that is missing in the ‘alternative truth” debate, one that is also absent in AI systems.

How do we respond to this situation?

Jonathon Swift’s comment “Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it” quoted earlier remains relevant more than 400 years after he said it and the fact that we have survived some very significant changes shows that we can cope with change.  But does not guarantee that this will always be possible in the future.  But Swift’s position is correct.  Falsehood cannot be challenged until it has been laid out.  So truth will always lag behind.

Edmund Burke (1729 – 97) is quoted as saying, loosely based on Psalm 94:1-3, that “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”  We would probably say that somewhat differently today but it is a profound statement that we can easily agree with.  However, it does not provide any direction as to what these “good men” should do as opposed to nothing.  We are left to figure that out for ourselves.

By demonstrating our commitment to an open and inclusive community we can provide a strong voice that challenges the assumptions on which the alternative truthers base their views.  Such open communities are based on relationships that build tolerance and understanding, that show empathy and an ethical basis against which these challenges can be measured.  From that perspective the alternative truths can be evaluated as challenges to the existing body of hypotheses that have not been successfully challenged.   That is what so much of Jesus teaching is about and how it is expressed in strong but caring communities.

To conclude this reflection I want to go back to the man who first saw the possibility of what we now know as “artificial intelligence”.  Alan Turing described what we have come to know as the Turing test as a way of determining whether a computing machine had the same intellectual capacity as a human.  That test involves a conversation between a human and an unknown entity, with the objective of determining whether the unknown entity is human -like or not.

We can take Turing’s test and turn it round so that a measure of our humanity is our ability to communicate with one another.  If we can pass that test our humanity is confirmed and our commitment to community reinforced.