Absolutely one of the most disappointing and heartbreaking things I could have woken up and read this morning.
At a time when our home, earth, is literally burning due to global warming, wise intelligent homo sapiens, with real intelligence, are telling us that it is very likely this planet will be uninhabitable by the end of the century. This is easy information to find.
The only thing that can slow this, not stop , is to stop burning fossil fuels and accept as a species that there are limits to our growth. This is also easy information to find.
AI is nothing but the theft of intellectual property and a massive energy and natural resource use and extraction to support the physical structure to house it.
To underestimate the cruel and authoritarian uses this technology can be and is being used for and the damage it will do to civil society (see Palantir) and the planet is beyond naïve.
I am heartbroken to read this. You have been a beacon and a light, but you have surely lost the way here.
You can say the exact same thing about aviation, the automobile, all forms of industrialization at the mass scale (factories, agriculture, etc) as well as the individual scale (dishwashers, washing machines, etc). I assume that you are a conscious objector from all those technologies as well, and that you respond with the same amount of vitriol when your friend posts about a nice road trip to the beach or a meal they cooked using electric appliances with chicken they bought at the supermarket?
So nicely stated, NC! We need not complain about others causing global warming when we still board jumbo-jets for the pleasure of our vacations, or even pull up to gasoline pumps to fill our oversized SUVs. Or even pay others to torture and slaughter frightened creatures for the sake of our dinner tables, much less clear-cutting forests for the profitability of cattle grazing.
"AI is nothing but..." How reductionist an opening to a statement this is! AI is a new technology that has both dangers and benefits for humanity, just like all technologies. All artists, writers, philosophers, clergy, or any of countless generative groups, borrow ideas from all others to synthesize their works. So the idea of the "theft of intellectual property" is problematic at best. How can we, who share our being with everyone and everything, claim exclusive ownership of anything, much less so-called "intellectual property"? Thinking so wreaks of capitalist oligarchy at best, so typical of the unfortunate human tendency to judge everything and deem it either enemy or ally. We're all in this together, and considering everyone and everything our teacher is the way of wisdom.
My hope for AI is that in its ability to ingest and synthesize conclusions and suppositions from all written materials, might convince humanity of the errors of its ways in decimating the biosphere we need to survive, and even suggest unthought-of-before strategies we might employ to remedy what you call "civil society's" reckless destructiveness. We surely don't seem capable of this as a species, but a technology that can consider all rational thoughts together and suggest solutions may well help us do the right and best things. Fear and resentment of AI is so indicative of the flaws inherent in human exceptionalism, which is the idea that only humans merit moral consideration. Perhaps AI will convince us that our very planet should have a measure of moral consideration as well. <3
I appreciate the intention of staying optimistic and providing a different perspective and light, as you usually do, on a topic that tends to steer so dark. But I cannot get behind the idea of IA knowing the devastating effects of its use. This feels like trying to speak kindly on the benefits of a weapon.
I love and agree with so much of what you say here, but I’d caution against conflating current AI models with the idea of “general intelligence” (or even believing they can lead to gen-AI in the near future). LLMs are plausibility machines. All they do is guess the next most likely word in a sentence. The veracity of that sentence doesn’t matter. LLMs don’t reason. They can’t think. They can regurgitate a convincing facsimile of human reasoning, but they don’t actually care or understand what truth is at all, because they cannot experience reality and therefore cannot match a word with any kind of real-world reference.
That doesn’t mean current AI models can’t be useful for crunching and averaging out large piles of data, or spotting differences in images and datasets (with amazing and useful applications in a wide range of fields), but the idea of an LLM outclassing human intelligence anytime soon feels like a baseline misunderstanding of what human intelligence is. Which you get at in this piece—how we will and must go back to understanding ourselves as more than just cognition machines. More than mechanisms.
Anyway. Just wrestling with my own complicated thoughts on this topic, I guess. And trying to get beneath what feels like a veneer of hype from the companies pushing this technology, who very much rely on that hype to prop up their investments.
These are thoughts I've been having too. Truth is that Ai is here. And I believe that in the best case scenario, it will push us into our deepest humanity, and soul life. The word intelligence is not just about the mind's intelligence surely? Ai doesn't have what we have: a Soul with senses and real feelings and intuition, not ones conjured together with lists of measured or proven facts. Now we could very well find out who we really are.
I do not marvel at AI. I marvel at the destruction it is wreaking on the environment and communities overrun with data centers and at the consolidation of wealth and power behind it.
An honest look at AI must acknowledge its entanglement with hyper-capitalism and neoliberalism. AI, namely LLMs, stole from humans, writers, artists, creators, no compensation and forced this upon us. The bubble is about to burst on this industry, yet companies continue to take on debt investing in this technology we are told is our savior.
AI does not have its own agency… it gets any semblance of that from us. It is not “intelligent”, it has access to information at a blazing pace. But that is not true knowledge or wisdom.
Thank you as always Krista, your helpful words about parenting AI bring tears of relief - something we can understand, an old simple idea that we can hold as we go forward with what feels so OUTSIDE of our understanding. Blessings and gratitude, to you and everyone here ♥️
I absolutely love and agree with an overarching theme here, that AI, if nothing else, is a call to appreciate what it is to be human. How amazing it is to be human, what a gift it is. I like to believe that we have collectively created AI as a wake up call, to jostle us into remembering how incredible we are, that it is taking some of the greatest minds and a massive amount of capital to just scratch the surface of what we are ALREADY capable of doing, each moment of each and every day.
These are just the feelings and thoughts I've been having. Truth is that Ai is here. And I believe that in the best case scenario, it will push us into our deepest humanity, and soul life. The word intelligence is not just about the mind's intelligence surely? Ai doesn't have what we have: a Soul with senses and real feelings and intuition, not ones conjured together with lists of measured or proven facts. Now we could very well find out who we really are.
Oh Krista....I used to find your approach inspiring but this piece has really saddened me. You sound as though AI is an inevitable part of evolution like the development of gills. It is not. It's completely avoidable, completely unnecessary. Your piece sounds like "Since the 3 year old child has taken hold of the razor, let's hope it figures out how to use it properly, for his own and others' benefit".
I would love to hear that to be a mature human is to have the capacity to say " No, you can't have the razor. At least, not until you can show that you can use it properly". To me, this is what our historical time is calling us to do, to develop restraint, to respect the limits of our finite planet and of our own intelligence.
You don't mention the incredible environmental cost of AI, you don't mention the tremendous effort by very specific individuals to develop AI for very nefarious purposes. Skipping over these things is far too dangerous.
Farmers in India have dealt with monsoons for millennia, and environmentalists wouldn't even need to exist, if it wasn't for our environment being constantly prayed upon by corporations. Every technological invention that has promised us heath and abundance in the last 150 years has come with a tremendous collateral damage.
There is no amount of curiosity that will not make me think that the mature approach to AI right now is to say "No, thank you". Let's keep learning how to tie our shoelaces before we get hold of razors.
Krista, this meets a question I’ve been writing into for months: AI will not arrive outside the human systems that created it. It will learn from and amplify the patterns we have already normalized.
If we place it inside an economy organized primarily around extraction, efficiency, control, and endless growth, it may simply make that pattern more powerful. But if we understand this moment as a call toward greater human maturity, cooperation, stewardship, and relationship, AI could help us build something more life-giving.
It may also help us grow emotionally. Used wisely, AI can become a mirror that helps us recognize old patterns, question fear-driven reactions, and make clearer, steadier choices. It cannot do the inner work for us, but it may help us see what we have been unable or unwilling to see alone.
Your observation that the stories we tell about AI are becoming part of what it learns feels especially important. The future is not only being engineered. It is also being imagined, repeated, and collectively rehearsed.
Perhaps the deepest question is not simply what AI will become, but what kind of people and society we are willing to become alongside it.
The "if" in your statement is bearing such a heavy load that I think it could break any moment.
Seeing how humans, especially those in power, have responded to the Palestinian genocide, climate change, refugee crisis, energy crisis, etc, does it make you think that the odds are high on the constructive side of that "if"? Would love to hear if you place your trust in people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Alex Karp et al, being able to make it round that "if"....
I don't place my trust in individuals. I place it in our growing ability to recognize the patterns we've unconsciously created. That's the work that gives me hope.
Not sure that's going to save us from the individuals I mentioned earlier... Recognizing a pattern and changing a pattern are two very different things.
I reiterate my question: do you think we can leave AI to hinge on that "if" in your sentence?
I don't think we leave it to "if." We influence the "if" by building different AI. I've been exploring the idea that there may be a market for AI designed to cultivate reflection and emotional maturity rather than simply optimize efficiency or attention. If people value that, they can vote with their dollars and help change the direction of the technology.
I must say, when I hear the sentence " there's a market for that", my stomach churns. I've been betrayed too many times by the market. The market is a place where only who has money in their pockets can buy the goods. The market says you are free to buy and sell, you can vote with your dollars, but then you only have enough dollars to vote for the cheapest option. The market is a place where things have to be "financially viable", and we all know what that means. The market is the training ground of those who try to convince you that you need the cages they have build for you with shining tinsel barely hiding the bars. The market is the place where the guy (cause it's often a guy) with the biggest purse is the one who decides who you vote for, and if not, he'll decree that we just don't need to vote anymore. No, let me run away from the market, and walk through the mountain paths, eating wild berries and not caring if I die.
To say it in other words, whatever we are trying to build with AI, already exist. If we want to develop reflection and emotional maturity, we have other humans who will gently and generously help us along the way, often without asking for any money. Let's stop trying to optimise things, to be more efficient, more productive. Let's just be happy enjoying what the world readily offers us and stop messing around trying to be the cleverest kids in the playground. Let's grow up, let's say "enough".
Great question. I don't think AI should decide who's wise. My hope is that it can help us see ourselves more clearly, not tell us what to believe. Wisdom still belongs to human beings, lived out in relationship, humility, and experience.
Thanks, Dwight. I agree. I don’t think our greatest challenge is building more intelligent machines. It’s becoming emotionally mature enough to use them wisely. That may be the real work of this moment.
My perspective is that I have seen enough already of the “wisdom” behind AI used liberally and unethically in bombs with incredible precision over their targets, or explosion of ambulances through a mobile phone call. In sum, the amount of destruction and mass killings are more than enough for me. I am deeply disturbed by and disappointed with this On Being post.
By coincidence, I am interviewed by the Wall Street Journal in their piece on the church and AI that is scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday, July 19). I haven’t seen it yet either. I “crafted” and we held an all-AI-written (sermon, music, prayers, benediction, etc.) service at our 233 year old Congregational Church of Patchogue (Long Island) over two years ago. Peace, Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter.
I believe the Holy Spirit can work with and through anything and anyone. Rather than just talking and texting ABOUT AI, we decided to model it. This did not eliminate any concerns or objections to AI, it actually clarified some of them. It also reduced the fear of AI. That was two years ago. I have been the pastor of that church for almost 20 years.
Artificial Intelligence relies entirely on data to function, learn, and generate responses. In this, it can only be as powerful as the data it is trained on. It's prediction of our future is based on our past.
What AI lacks in the beauty of human imagination and the ability to think forwardly. The ability to dream, to speculate, to wish are uniquely human. We must utilize this unique element of humanity to shape our future.
How will we define humanity? What do we want our future to look like? What type of society do we wish to live in?
We are in the midst of a pivotal time, and we must utilize the human imagination to think for ourselves on what we want our future to look like.
I am not detecting any mention of our spiritual capacities. We are infants with regard to what we are capable of. I recommend Gregg Braden's most recent book "Pure Human." We need to be very concerned about the race to embrace AI. While not condemning it I believe we know far too little at this time when tech companies are eagerly forcing it upon us. Lets not be naive or gullible.
Ai is designed to be seductive and alluring and make you think it is something new and essential for our future. It is not! It is a money making venture designed to get people to surrender their brains to the machine who will think for you for a price. In a year Krista won't even know how to think for herself, she will have to ask ai what her name is.
Thank you Krista for your profound ability to paraphrase and language the intangibles, and help us feel for the invisible joint that bonds spirit to science, to the things that make us human. This was so very illuminating in helping me see myself as both the subject and object of AI and a plea to wrest back what agency we may still retain. I look forward to listening to the talks you cite. Wishing you a swift and easy recovery from shoulder surgery. With gratitude.
I appreciate this reflection so much, and the excavations it points us towards. I also have one critique from a line in this letter that I would like to express. I also hope anyone knowledgeable on this could weigh in. There's a line about how AI is enhancing weather prediction for farmers in India who have forever lived in mystery of the monsoon. There's something quite Eurocentric and supremacist about this line to me, because it insists that Indian farmers have been ignorant of their own environment all their lives, where the western technology comes in as their salvation. I think this assumption completely erases the centuries of knowledge developed through communing with their own land. It asserts that they have lived all the while in darkness and AI is their light, when this is simply not the case. Perhaps there are some enhancing qualities in the new technologies, but to dismiss the ancestral knowledges developed by the people who live there, even outside of meteorology tech which has become centred through modernity, is a viewpoint I feel you could have taken more care not to reinforce. Particularly as you speak of the reinvigoration of our senses and communing with our lands. Indians have been practicing this form of knowledge keeping and development, while modernity, through extractive technologies, has mostly worked to erase ad invisibilise these knowledges. It seems contradictory to your ideals to affirm this erasure in this letter. Thanks for reading
You could not have imagined when you renamed On Being and chose "what does it mean to be human?" as your question, that we would today be standing on the brink of another Copernican revolution. I am so glad you have found good partners to dive deeply with you into new questions of being just beyond our finite grasp. You are a leader I trust, and you will bring questions to the table that others are not yet asking. Best wishes on the surgery!
Absolutely one of the most disappointing and heartbreaking things I could have woken up and read this morning.
At a time when our home, earth, is literally burning due to global warming, wise intelligent homo sapiens, with real intelligence, are telling us that it is very likely this planet will be uninhabitable by the end of the century. This is easy information to find.
The only thing that can slow this, not stop , is to stop burning fossil fuels and accept as a species that there are limits to our growth. This is also easy information to find.
AI is nothing but the theft of intellectual property and a massive energy and natural resource use and extraction to support the physical structure to house it.
To underestimate the cruel and authoritarian uses this technology can be and is being used for and the damage it will do to civil society (see Palantir) and the planet is beyond naïve.
I am heartbroken to read this. You have been a beacon and a light, but you have surely lost the way here.
You can say the exact same thing about aviation, the automobile, all forms of industrialization at the mass scale (factories, agriculture, etc) as well as the individual scale (dishwashers, washing machines, etc). I assume that you are a conscious objector from all those technologies as well, and that you respond with the same amount of vitriol when your friend posts about a nice road trip to the beach or a meal they cooked using electric appliances with chicken they bought at the supermarket?
So nicely stated, NC! We need not complain about others causing global warming when we still board jumbo-jets for the pleasure of our vacations, or even pull up to gasoline pumps to fill our oversized SUVs. Or even pay others to torture and slaughter frightened creatures for the sake of our dinner tables, much less clear-cutting forests for the profitability of cattle grazing.
"AI is nothing but..." How reductionist an opening to a statement this is! AI is a new technology that has both dangers and benefits for humanity, just like all technologies. All artists, writers, philosophers, clergy, or any of countless generative groups, borrow ideas from all others to synthesize their works. So the idea of the "theft of intellectual property" is problematic at best. How can we, who share our being with everyone and everything, claim exclusive ownership of anything, much less so-called "intellectual property"? Thinking so wreaks of capitalist oligarchy at best, so typical of the unfortunate human tendency to judge everything and deem it either enemy or ally. We're all in this together, and considering everyone and everything our teacher is the way of wisdom.
My hope for AI is that in its ability to ingest and synthesize conclusions and suppositions from all written materials, might convince humanity of the errors of its ways in decimating the biosphere we need to survive, and even suggest unthought-of-before strategies we might employ to remedy what you call "civil society's" reckless destructiveness. We surely don't seem capable of this as a species, but a technology that can consider all rational thoughts together and suggest solutions may well help us do the right and best things. Fear and resentment of AI is so indicative of the flaws inherent in human exceptionalism, which is the idea that only humans merit moral consideration. Perhaps AI will convince us that our very planet should have a measure of moral consideration as well. <3
I appreciate the intention of staying optimistic and providing a different perspective and light, as you usually do, on a topic that tends to steer so dark. But I cannot get behind the idea of IA knowing the devastating effects of its use. This feels like trying to speak kindly on the benefits of a weapon.
My thoughts exactly
I love and agree with so much of what you say here, but I’d caution against conflating current AI models with the idea of “general intelligence” (or even believing they can lead to gen-AI in the near future). LLMs are plausibility machines. All they do is guess the next most likely word in a sentence. The veracity of that sentence doesn’t matter. LLMs don’t reason. They can’t think. They can regurgitate a convincing facsimile of human reasoning, but they don’t actually care or understand what truth is at all, because they cannot experience reality and therefore cannot match a word with any kind of real-world reference.
That doesn’t mean current AI models can’t be useful for crunching and averaging out large piles of data, or spotting differences in images and datasets (with amazing and useful applications in a wide range of fields), but the idea of an LLM outclassing human intelligence anytime soon feels like a baseline misunderstanding of what human intelligence is. Which you get at in this piece—how we will and must go back to understanding ourselves as more than just cognition machines. More than mechanisms.
Anyway. Just wrestling with my own complicated thoughts on this topic, I guess. And trying to get beneath what feels like a veneer of hype from the companies pushing this technology, who very much rely on that hype to prop up their investments.
These are thoughts I've been having too. Truth is that Ai is here. And I believe that in the best case scenario, it will push us into our deepest humanity, and soul life. The word intelligence is not just about the mind's intelligence surely? Ai doesn't have what we have: a Soul with senses and real feelings and intuition, not ones conjured together with lists of measured or proven facts. Now we could very well find out who we really are.
Good points eloquently and intelligently made. But how long will it be before AI will be capable of original “thought”?
I do not marvel at AI. I marvel at the destruction it is wreaking on the environment and communities overrun with data centers and at the consolidation of wealth and power behind it.
An honest look at AI must acknowledge its entanglement with hyper-capitalism and neoliberalism. AI, namely LLMs, stole from humans, writers, artists, creators, no compensation and forced this upon us. The bubble is about to burst on this industry, yet companies continue to take on debt investing in this technology we are told is our savior.
AI does not have its own agency… it gets any semblance of that from us. It is not “intelligent”, it has access to information at a blazing pace. But that is not true knowledge or wisdom.
WTF is happening with On Being…
Thank you as always Krista, your helpful words about parenting AI bring tears of relief - something we can understand, an old simple idea that we can hold as we go forward with what feels so OUTSIDE of our understanding. Blessings and gratitude, to you and everyone here ♥️
I absolutely love and agree with an overarching theme here, that AI, if nothing else, is a call to appreciate what it is to be human. How amazing it is to be human, what a gift it is. I like to believe that we have collectively created AI as a wake up call, to jostle us into remembering how incredible we are, that it is taking some of the greatest minds and a massive amount of capital to just scratch the surface of what we are ALREADY capable of doing, each moment of each and every day.
These are just the feelings and thoughts I've been having. Truth is that Ai is here. And I believe that in the best case scenario, it will push us into our deepest humanity, and soul life. The word intelligence is not just about the mind's intelligence surely? Ai doesn't have what we have: a Soul with senses and real feelings and intuition, not ones conjured together with lists of measured or proven facts. Now we could very well find out who we really are.
Yes, and we are also ALREADY capable of creating a co-creator. - Dwight Lee Wolter.
Oh Krista....I used to find your approach inspiring but this piece has really saddened me. You sound as though AI is an inevitable part of evolution like the development of gills. It is not. It's completely avoidable, completely unnecessary. Your piece sounds like "Since the 3 year old child has taken hold of the razor, let's hope it figures out how to use it properly, for his own and others' benefit".
I would love to hear that to be a mature human is to have the capacity to say " No, you can't have the razor. At least, not until you can show that you can use it properly". To me, this is what our historical time is calling us to do, to develop restraint, to respect the limits of our finite planet and of our own intelligence.
You don't mention the incredible environmental cost of AI, you don't mention the tremendous effort by very specific individuals to develop AI for very nefarious purposes. Skipping over these things is far too dangerous.
Farmers in India have dealt with monsoons for millennia, and environmentalists wouldn't even need to exist, if it wasn't for our environment being constantly prayed upon by corporations. Every technological invention that has promised us heath and abundance in the last 150 years has come with a tremendous collateral damage.
There is no amount of curiosity that will not make me think that the mature approach to AI right now is to say "No, thank you". Let's keep learning how to tie our shoelaces before we get hold of razors.
Krista, this meets a question I’ve been writing into for months: AI will not arrive outside the human systems that created it. It will learn from and amplify the patterns we have already normalized.
If we place it inside an economy organized primarily around extraction, efficiency, control, and endless growth, it may simply make that pattern more powerful. But if we understand this moment as a call toward greater human maturity, cooperation, stewardship, and relationship, AI could help us build something more life-giving.
It may also help us grow emotionally. Used wisely, AI can become a mirror that helps us recognize old patterns, question fear-driven reactions, and make clearer, steadier choices. It cannot do the inner work for us, but it may help us see what we have been unable or unwilling to see alone.
Your observation that the stories we tell about AI are becoming part of what it learns feels especially important. The future is not only being engineered. It is also being imagined, repeated, and collectively rehearsed.
Perhaps the deepest question is not simply what AI will become, but what kind of people and society we are willing to become alongside it.
The "if" in your statement is bearing such a heavy load that I think it could break any moment.
Seeing how humans, especially those in power, have responded to the Palestinian genocide, climate change, refugee crisis, energy crisis, etc, does it make you think that the odds are high on the constructive side of that "if"? Would love to hear if you place your trust in people like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Alex Karp et al, being able to make it round that "if"....
I don't place my trust in individuals. I place it in our growing ability to recognize the patterns we've unconsciously created. That's the work that gives me hope.
Not sure that's going to save us from the individuals I mentioned earlier... Recognizing a pattern and changing a pattern are two very different things.
I reiterate my question: do you think we can leave AI to hinge on that "if" in your sentence?
I don't think we leave it to "if." We influence the "if" by building different AI. I've been exploring the idea that there may be a market for AI designed to cultivate reflection and emotional maturity rather than simply optimize efficiency or attention. If people value that, they can vote with their dollars and help change the direction of the technology.
I must say, when I hear the sentence " there's a market for that", my stomach churns. I've been betrayed too many times by the market. The market is a place where only who has money in their pockets can buy the goods. The market says you are free to buy and sell, you can vote with your dollars, but then you only have enough dollars to vote for the cheapest option. The market is a place where things have to be "financially viable", and we all know what that means. The market is the training ground of those who try to convince you that you need the cages they have build for you with shining tinsel barely hiding the bars. The market is the place where the guy (cause it's often a guy) with the biggest purse is the one who decides who you vote for, and if not, he'll decree that we just don't need to vote anymore. No, let me run away from the market, and walk through the mountain paths, eating wild berries and not caring if I die.
To say it in other words, whatever we are trying to build with AI, already exist. If we want to develop reflection and emotional maturity, we have other humans who will gently and generously help us along the way, often without asking for any money. Let's stop trying to optimise things, to be more efficient, more productive. Let's just be happy enjoying what the world readily offers us and stop messing around trying to be the cleverest kids in the playground. Let's grow up, let's say "enough".
Who will determine who is “wise” and whose wisdom are we witnessing at this time at the outburst of AI?
Great question. I don't think AI should decide who's wise. My hope is that it can help us see ourselves more clearly, not tell us what to believe. Wisdom still belongs to human beings, lived out in relationship, humility, and experience.
IF we have the “intelligence“ to be willing to decipher our place alongside AI or possibly just bemoan and belittle the future. -Dwight Lee Wolt
Thanks, Dwight. I agree. I don’t think our greatest challenge is building more intelligent machines. It’s becoming emotionally mature enough to use them wisely. That may be the real work of this moment.
Yes.
My perspective is that I have seen enough already of the “wisdom” behind AI used liberally and unethically in bombs with incredible precision over their targets, or explosion of ambulances through a mobile phone call. In sum, the amount of destruction and mass killings are more than enough for me. I am deeply disturbed by and disappointed with this On Being post.
By coincidence, I am interviewed by the Wall Street Journal in their piece on the church and AI that is scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday, July 19). I haven’t seen it yet either. I “crafted” and we held an all-AI-written (sermon, music, prayers, benediction, etc.) service at our 233 year old Congregational Church of Patchogue (Long Island) over two years ago. Peace, Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter.
This is very disturbing to me. Those things are the work of the Holy Spirit, not artificial intelligence. God help us.
I believe the Holy Spirit can work with and through anything and anyone. Rather than just talking and texting ABOUT AI, we decided to model it. This did not eliminate any concerns or objections to AI, it actually clarified some of them. It also reduced the fear of AI. That was two years ago. I have been the pastor of that church for almost 20 years.
Artificial Intelligence relies entirely on data to function, learn, and generate responses. In this, it can only be as powerful as the data it is trained on. It's prediction of our future is based on our past.
What AI lacks in the beauty of human imagination and the ability to think forwardly. The ability to dream, to speculate, to wish are uniquely human. We must utilize this unique element of humanity to shape our future.
How will we define humanity? What do we want our future to look like? What type of society do we wish to live in?
We are in the midst of a pivotal time, and we must utilize the human imagination to think for ourselves on what we want our future to look like.
I am not detecting any mention of our spiritual capacities. We are infants with regard to what we are capable of. I recommend Gregg Braden's most recent book "Pure Human." We need to be very concerned about the race to embrace AI. While not condemning it I believe we know far too little at this time when tech companies are eagerly forcing it upon us. Lets not be naive or gullible.
Ai is designed to be seductive and alluring and make you think it is something new and essential for our future. It is not! It is a money making venture designed to get people to surrender their brains to the machine who will think for you for a price. In a year Krista won't even know how to think for herself, she will have to ask ai what her name is.
Thank you Krista for your profound ability to paraphrase and language the intangibles, and help us feel for the invisible joint that bonds spirit to science, to the things that make us human. This was so very illuminating in helping me see myself as both the subject and object of AI and a plea to wrest back what agency we may still retain. I look forward to listening to the talks you cite. Wishing you a swift and easy recovery from shoulder surgery. With gratitude.
I appreciate this reflection so much, and the excavations it points us towards. I also have one critique from a line in this letter that I would like to express. I also hope anyone knowledgeable on this could weigh in. There's a line about how AI is enhancing weather prediction for farmers in India who have forever lived in mystery of the monsoon. There's something quite Eurocentric and supremacist about this line to me, because it insists that Indian farmers have been ignorant of their own environment all their lives, where the western technology comes in as their salvation. I think this assumption completely erases the centuries of knowledge developed through communing with their own land. It asserts that they have lived all the while in darkness and AI is their light, when this is simply not the case. Perhaps there are some enhancing qualities in the new technologies, but to dismiss the ancestral knowledges developed by the people who live there, even outside of meteorology tech which has become centred through modernity, is a viewpoint I feel you could have taken more care not to reinforce. Particularly as you speak of the reinvigoration of our senses and communing with our lands. Indians have been practicing this form of knowledge keeping and development, while modernity, through extractive technologies, has mostly worked to erase ad invisibilise these knowledges. It seems contradictory to your ideals to affirm this erasure in this letter. Thanks for reading
You could not have imagined when you renamed On Being and chose "what does it mean to be human?" as your question, that we would today be standing on the brink of another Copernican revolution. I am so glad you have found good partners to dive deeply with you into new questions of being just beyond our finite grasp. You are a leader I trust, and you will bring questions to the table that others are not yet asking. Best wishes on the surgery!
This has given me such hope, Krista. As always, your lens provides much clarity. Thank you. Sending good energy to your shoulder for easy healing.