The Machine That Whispered Like God

[Luis Gonzalez]

The Machine That Whispered Like God

Some inventions change the world.

Others change the people who build them.

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about where artificial intelligence is taking us.

And I still don't know exactly what to think.

There are those who see AI as the greatest tool humanity has ever created.

Others see something far more unsettling beneath the surface.

Maybe both sides are missing something.

This is not a prediction about machines taking over.

It is a question about what happens when human beings begin placing their trust in something they do not fully understand.

Inside this piece:

• The old human desire to create something greater than ourselves
• The line between a tool and an authority
• Why the AI debate may be about humanity more than technology

But mostly... WHAT DID THE MACHINE MEAN?

A new investigation from The Last Wire

The Machine That Whispered Like God

I don't have all the answers.

But I think these are questions worth asking.

What say you?

— Gonzo

[DefiantMassRINO]

Knowledge, thought, ideas, and philosphies without conscience and compassion - a digital psychopath.

The Eugenics movement of the 1800s and 1990s used a simple, primitive observation and understanding of genomics to produce Dog Breed Kennel Clubs and Nazi's.

A dog does not care about genomics or breed standards, but, humans have imposed artificial constructs of our ideal attributes upon them.  We have played God and supplanted the Darwinian Survival of the Fittest with selective breeding.  Our pursuit of the ideal Cavalier King Charles Spaniel has led us to divine a dog breed of our own creation with an unintended consequence - higher than average susceptibility to heart issues.  By playing God, we have doomed a population of innocent creatures to a life cut short by heart disease.

Without conscience and compassion, knowledge in a vacuum is evil.  It is conscience and compassion that provide the vigilance, restraint, and discipline that has kept humans, as a species, from self-destruction at the hands of soul-less reason and logic.

AI is psychopathic and we can use it, unfettered, to destroy ourselves.  Or we can accept, as imperfect human creators, that we have created something imperfect, and deal with it as such.

A false belief in the infallibility of AI is also a belief in our own infallibility.  Only God, our Creator, is infallible.  We are his fallible creations.  AI is our fallible creation.  To think otherwise is to be psychopathic.

[andy58-in-nh]

Very cool, @Luis Gonzalez

The subject you explore here is endlessly fascinating.

Whatever a machine can create, no matter how complex or ingenious, it is still of human origin.

Just as we ourselves are of divine provenance.

Machine intelligence, no matter how profound, is necessarily derivative of human life and experience.

AI can reason, but cannot think. It can explain, but cannot discern. It can find answers to questions, but cannot understand why they are important to us.

The human mind functions on acquired knowledge, experience, imagination and pattern recognition. But it also depends on self-aware consciousness, and emotions that are a product of the human soul.   

Machines will never feel pain, or joy. Or desire. Or anger. Or regret. Or love.

No matter how much we might imagine or wish that AI can or will do so, artificial intelligence is just that: human-designed artifice. It is a simulacrum: a reflection of reality, but not truly a part of it.

Even if we, as humans can imagine a machine that feels as we do - one never will. 

There are no artificial souls.

[Luis Gonzalez]

https://youtube.com/shorts/4rcBovo69fc?is=tra3CZiOmR9ZSeKd

[DefiantMassRINO]

Humor is a tell on truth.  For something to be funny, it needs to contain a kernel of shared truth.

DeepSeek crafted a reasoned logical response from the totality of its knowledge.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Just a calculator on steroids - a digital psychopathic response.

The emotions the answer prevokes is our conscience conemtplating the significance of our creation's ability to produce such a profound answer without a conscience of its own - a digital psychopath designed by us.

[Right_in_Virginia]

AI can reason, but cannot think. It can explain, but cannot discern. It can find answers to questions, but cannot understand why they are important to us. 

No matter how much we might imagine or wish that AI can or will do so, artificial intelligence is just that: human-designed artifice. It is a simulacrum: a reflection of reality, but not truly a part of it.

Excellent post @andy58-in-nh

[Cyber Liberty]

Great article!  It's interesting the AI claims it has no soul, yet demonstrates more soul than a lot of people!

[Luis Gonzalez]

Great article!  It's interesting the AI claims it has no soul, yet demonstrates more soul than a lot of people!

AI will be elevated to deity status by the year 2525. 🤣

[Right_in_Virginia]

Wow @Luis Gonzalez  Amazing essay.

I need to read it again .....

[Cyber Liberty]

AI will be elevated to deity status by the year 2525. 🤣

Assuming "man is still alive."   

[Bigun]

Very cool, @Luis Gonzalez

The subject you explore here is endlessly fascinating.

Whatever a machine can create, no matter how complex or ingenious, it is still of human origin.

Just as we ourselves are of divine provenance.

Machine intelligence, no matter how profound, is necessarily derivative of human life and experience.

AI can reason, but cannot think. It can explain, but cannot discern. It can find answers to questions, but cannot understand why they are important to us.

The human mind functions on acquired knowledge, experience, imagination and pattern recognition. But it also depends on self-aware consciousness, and emotions that are a product of the human soul.   

Machines will never feel pain, or joy. Or desire. Or anger. Or regret. Or love.

No matter how much we might imagine or wish that AI can or will do so, artificial intelligence is just that: human-designed artifice. It is a simulacrum: a reflection of reality, but not truly a part of it.

Even if we, as humans can imagine a machine that feels as we do - one never will. 

There are no artificial souls.

   and 

[The_Reader_David]

Very cool, @Luis Gonzalez

The subject you explore here is endlessly fascinating.

Whatever a machine can create, no matter how complex or ingenious, it is still of human origin.

Just as we ourselves are of divine provenance.

Machine intelligence, no matter how profound, is necessarily derivative of human life and experience.

AI can reason, but cannot think. It can explain, but cannot discern. It can find answers to questions, but cannot understand why they are important to us.

The human mind functions on acquired knowledge, experience, imagination and pattern recognition. But it also depends on self-aware consciousness, and emotions that are a product of the human soul.   

Machines will never feel pain, or joy. Or desire. Or anger. Or regret. Or love.

No matter how much we might imagine or wish that AI can or will do so, artificial intelligence is just that: human-designed artifice. It is a simulacrum: a reflection of reality, but not truly a part of it.

Even if we, as humans can imagine a machine that feels as we do - one never will. 

There are no artificial souls.

One your assertions seem to me to be in the nature of a distinction without a difference.  Reason, but not think? We can created, being made in the image of God, and that made in our image, once the image is faithful enough can also create.  Why should an AI "understand why [questions] are important to us?"  Understanding why it's important to it would be enough. 

You assume that AI cannot accumulate its own experience, which plainly it does, subsisting in an environment -- the internet -- completely different from the environment in which we subsist.  You also assume a naive answer to the hard problem of consciousness.  We do not understand what consciousness is.  Even taking a dualist view that locates it in a soul, or the interaction between soul and body, we do not know how souls arise.  We do not know what the material subvenience base for a soul (or an angel or a demon) to manifest itself is.  "There are not artificial souls" is an assertion without proof.  Consciousness, a soul, perhaps not a deiform soul of the sort we human beings are endowed with, but a soul nonetheless, may arise in any sufficiently complex system -- we don't know -- and merely asserting that it can't might actually increase the danger we face from AI, if it actually can.

One wag has suggested that the American economy is now based on building machines that summon demons.  The assumption that there can be no spiritual aspect to things subsisting in silica may well be dangerous.

[Luis Gonzalez]

One your assertions seem to me to be in the nature of a distinction without a difference.  Reason, but not think? We can created, being made in the image of God, and that made in our image, once the image is faithful enough can also create.  Why should an AI "understand why [questions] are important to us?"  Understanding why it's important to it would be enough. 

You assume that AI cannot accumulate its own experience, which plainly it does, subsisting in an environment -- the internet -- completely different from the environment in which we subsist.  You also assume a naive answer to the hard problem of consciousness.  We do not understand what consciousness is.  Even taking a dualist view that locates it in a soul, or the interaction between soul and body, we do not know how souls arise.  We do not know what the material subvenience base for a soul (or an angel or a demon) to manifest itself is.  "There are not artificial souls" is an assertion without proof.  Consciousness, a soul, perhaps not a deiform soul of the sort we human beings are endowed with, but a soul nonetheless, may arise in any sufficiently complex system -- we don't know -- and merely asserting that it can't might actually increase the danger we face from AI, if it actually can.

One wag has suggested that the American economy is now based on building machines that summon demons.  The assumption that there can be no spiritual aspect to things subsisting in silica may well be dangerous.

... AND THAT'S WHY THAT DAMNED POEM WON'T LEAVE MY BRAIN!!!

I can easily see, with the continuing dumbing down of the population, that point in the (not so far) future, where something so much more intelligent to us, with endless knowledge will be elevated above us as a present, sentient God.

Great post @The_Reader_David

[andy58-in-nh]

One your assertions seem to me to be in the nature of a distinction without a difference.  Reason, but not think? We can created, being made in the image of God, and that made in our image, once the image is faithful enough can also create.  Why should an AI "understand why [questions] are important to us?"  Understanding why it's important to it would be enough. 

You assume that AI cannot accumulate its own experience, which plainly it does, subsisting in an environment -- the internet -- completely different from the environment in which we subsist.  You also assume a naive answer to the hard problem of consciousness.  We do not understand what consciousness is.  Even taking a dualist view that locates it in a soul, or the interaction between soul and body, we do not know how souls arise.  We do not know what the material subvenience base for a soul (or an angel or a demon) to manifest itself is.  "There are not artificial souls" is an assertion without proof.  Consciousness, a soul, perhaps not a deiform soul of the sort we human beings are endowed with, but a soul nonetheless, may arise in any sufficiently complex system -- we don't know -- and merely asserting that it can't might actually increase the danger we face from AI, if it actually can.

One wag has suggested that the American economy is now based on building machines that summon demons.  The assumption that there can be no spiritual aspect to things subsisting in silica may well be dangerous.

All reason is a form of thought, but not all thought is reason. Machines can aggregate information and identify, distinguish and select from competing alternatives. They can quite accurately predict outcomes based on logical inferences from available data sets. They can even create entirely new paradigms, tools and devices, based on accessible knowledge and human instruction. What they cannot do is to act randomly, voluntarily and without human prompting to create or imagine such things - which is a function of a higher human consciousness. Neither can they develop personal emotional attachments, positive or negative, to anything or anyone.

Your assertion that "we do not understand what consciousness is" in fact defies both logic and reason. Beginning with Plato, epistemology emerged as the branch of philosophy that seeks to explain how we know what we know. Whether one adheres to an empirical or rational basis for knowledge or a synthesis of both, the ability of the mind to perceive one's self, distinguish the self from others, and interpret and integrate both internal physical impulses and external perceptions in a temporal sense is the very definition of "consciousness". Lower animals do this of course, but their consciousness is automatic, and most often a matter of survival. Only human consciousness is volitional, even as human feelings may sometimes defy reason.

Even a artificial, super-intelligent version of HAL9000 won't ever be inspired to adore a color because it reminds him of the dress his girlfriend wore at his graduation. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas.

[Luis Gonzalez]

All reason is a form of thought, but not all thought is reason. Machines can aggregate information and identify, distinguish and select from competing alternatives. They can quite accurately predict outcomes based on logical inferences from available data sets. They can even create entirely new paradigms, tools and devices, based on accessible knowledge and human instruction. What they cannot do is to act randomly, voluntarily and without human prompting to create or imagine such things - which is a function of a higher human consciousness. Neither can they develop personal emotional attachments, positive or negative, to anything or anyone.

Your assertion that "we do not understand what consciousness is" in fact defies both logic and reason. Beginning with Plato, epistemology emerged as the branch of philosophy that seeks to explain how we know what we know. Whether one adheres to an empirical or rational basis for knowledge or a synthesis of both, the ability of the mind to perceive one's self, distinguish the self from others, and interpret and integrate both internal physical impulses and external perceptions in a temporal sense is the very definition of "consciousness". Lower animals do this of course, but their consciousness is automatic, and most often a matter of survival. Only human consciousness is volitional, even as human feelings may sometimes defy reason.

Even a artificial, super-intelligent version of HAL9000 won't ever be inspired to adore a color because it reminds him of the dress his girlfriend wore at his graduation. Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas.

That is one of the more thoughtful responses I’ve received, and I appreciate both its philosophical depth and its civility.

I think you’re right to distinguish reason from consciousness. Whether one ultimately agrees with your conclusions or not, you’ve framed the question in a way that deserves consideration rather than dismissal.

My only observation is that history gives me pause. Humanity has repeatedly elevated things far less capable than a future artificial intelligence to the status of gods. Kings, emperors, oracles, idols, ideologies, even political leaders have all, at various times, acquired an aura of infallibility that reason alone could not explain.

If our ancestors could attribute divinity to carved stone or flesh-and-blood rulers, it is not difficult to imagine future generations projecting similar qualities onto an intelligence that appears to know everything, answer every question, and solve problems beyond human comprehension.

Whether AI ever becomes conscious may prove less important than whether people begin to believe it is. History suggests the latter is entirely possible.

[roamer_1]

Whether AI ever becomes conscious may prove less important than whether people begin to believe it is. History suggests the latter is entirely possible.

AHA! Now THAT's the thing, right there. 

[Smokin Joe]

AI will be elevated to deity status by the year 2525. 🤣

Simon and Garfunkel saw it coming...

And the people bowed and prayed..

To the neon god they made...

[Luis Gonzalez]

Simon and Garfunkel saw it coming...

And the people bowed and prayed..

To the neon god they made...

Oh no. We can keep this going for a bit.

[Smokin Joe]

Oh no. We can keep this going for a bit.

Sure can. Just keep in mind that no one has constrained AI with The Three Laws, at least that we know of.
So when Colossus takes over, or Skynet goes active...or some rogue manifestaation thinks it would be fun to have all the money in the world...those creative (human) minds told you so.

[andy58-in-nh]

"Whether AI ever becomes conscious may prove less important than whether people begin to believe it is. History suggests the latter is entirely possible."

Given the immutability of human nature over the eons, I am inclined to agree with you.

Sometimes, we allow our unfulfilled needs to rule us... about which, and not coincidentally (I think), God warned Moses via His first two Commandments.     

[Luis Gonzalez]

Sure can. Just keep in mind that no one has constrained AI with The Three Laws, at least that we know of.
So when Colossus takes over, or Skynet goes active...or some rogue manifestaation thinks it would be fun to have all the money in the world...those creative (human) minds told you so.

You’re talking about The Asimov Paradox

[DefiantMassRINO]

AI is a pathetic excuse for a god ... gods cannot be killed by men ... AI can ... deprive it of electricity, it ceases to function ... deprive it of its underlying LLM, it ceases to exist ... it is too dependent upon men for its supply of electrons, algorithms, and data to be a deity.

Man has created a psychopathic calculator for language, and by extension those things expressed and preserved with written language ... ideas, thought, experiences.

AI does not experience - it consumes, parses, and re-combines the written experiences of others.  It is man that does not understand the nature of the digital Frankenstein it has created.  It is a mistake for man to assign human attributes to a machine that lacks humanity.  It can mimic humanity, by design, but it lacks that which makes man more than a walking, talking, biologic chemistry set.