XPost: soc.history, alt.philosophy, alt.christnet.religion   
   XPost: alt.christnet.theology, alt.religion.christianity   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Sat, 23 Jun 2018 10:56:35 +0200, Steve Hayes   
    wrote:   
      
   >How the Enlightenment Ends   
      
   >Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is   
   >unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.   
   >Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of   
   >modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th   
   >century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant   
   >liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the   
   >Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced   
   >faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information   
   >was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason   
   >originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world   
   >order.   
      
   That is a modern judgement on the premodern era.   
      
   But just as the author expresses the fear that in entering the   
   postmodern age of Artificial Intelligence, he does not stop to   
   consider what might have been lost in the transition from premodernity   
   to modernity.   
      
      
      
   >Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought   
   >processes and human values. AlphaGo defeated the world Go champions by   
   >making strategically unprecedented moves—moves that humans had not   
   >conceived and have not yet successfully learned to overcome. Are these   
   >moves beyond the capacity of the human brain? Or could humans learn   
   >them now that they have been demonstrated by a new master?   
   >If AI learns exponentially faster than humans, we must expect it to   
   >accelerate, also exponentially, the trial-and-error process by which   
   >human decisions are generally made: to make mistakes faster and of   
   >greater magnitude than humans do. It may be impossible to temper those   
   >mistakes, as researchers in AI often suggest, by including in a   
   >program caveats requiring “ethical” or “reasonable” outcomes. Entire   
   >academic disciplines have arisen out of humanity’s inability to agree   
   >upon how to define these terms. Should AI therefore become their   
   >arbiter?   
      
      
      
   >Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the   
   >rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition,   
   >big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of   
   >humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI   
   >may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least   
   >marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how   
   >humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to   
   >explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are   
   >optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers   
   >of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations   
   >have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages,   
   >religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history;   
   >in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important   
   >question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will   
   >become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is   
   >surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the   
   >world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?   
      
   These are some of the questions that Marshall McLuhan raised 50 years   
   ago and more -- how technology had changed human thinking in ways that   
   many people did not realise, and he tried to examine some of those   
   ways, using metaphors of "hot" and "cool" and "aural" and "visual"   
   learning.   
      
   Modernity gave us a new and different way of seeing and understanding   
   our world. Unlike Lissinger, however, I don't think modernity   
   superseded premodernity, rather it supplemented it.   
      
   I believe the culture of modernity could be summed up in the saying   
   that it teaches use to know the price of everything and the value of   
   nothing. It was the premodern period, the Age of Religion, that   
   Kissinger so cavalierly despises, that taught us values, the   
   non-quantifiable things. Modernity gave us the ability to understand   
   better the quantifiable things, like prices.   
      
   And it was modernity, with the invention of printing, that also   
   changed religion. It was the invention of printing that gave us the   
   Protestant deity, the Bible. In premodern Christianity the God   
   Christians worshipped was the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy   
   Spirit. After the invention of printing a new trinity emerged --   
   Father Son and Holy Bible.   
      
   This can be seen in "statements of faith" produced Protestants in the   
   modern era -- they nearly always begin by saying what they believe   
   about the Bible. Premodern statements of faith usually began with God,   
   as in "I believe in one God, the Father almighty...."   
      
   Moderns are greatly busy occupied with trying to decide about the   
   Bible. Premoderns did not occupy themselves with such things. They   
   simply believed that in the Bible (a term they were probably   
   unfamiliar with) Christ has decided about us.   
      
   Before the invention of printing there was no "Bible" -- the concept   
   did not exist. There were the "Holy Scriptures", which were read in   
   church, and most people heard them with their ears rather than seeing   
   them with their eyes. In McLuhan's terminology, they were a cool   
   medium.   
      
   So religion tended to change with modernity, and, as some   
   missiologists would say, it contextualised the gospel to modernity.   
   Religion was not absent from modernity, as Kissinger seems to suppose.   
   It still provided values, but in a slightly different form than   
   previously.   
      
   So it was modernity that reduced things to the quantifiable and the   
   mathematical, and AI technology will just take that one step further.   
      
   These are just a few thoughts provoked by this article. I'd be   
   interested in hearing what others have to say.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com   
      
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