#574

The Next AIAI Oh Moment

I Wanna Be Like Mike

A popular commercial promoting a sports drink encouraged people to drink it if they wanted to be like a basketball legend Michael Jordan as if drinking the same drink could make them play like him. It couldn’t but the idea of being a little better just by imitation was appealing. It’s not a new notion nor is it a new overall concept. Wanting to be like your idol is as old as time itself and maybe older. You see God’s ultimate adversary wanted to replace Him as we see in this portion of the Bible:

“How you have fallen from heaven, O shining one, son of the morning! You have been cut down to the earth, you who have made the nations weak! 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will go up to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God. And I will sit on the mount of meeting in the far north. 14 I will go much higher than the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High.’ (Isa 14:12-14, NLV)

Many see these verses describing the aspirations of Lucifer or Satan rebelling against his creator thinking he could take God’s place. We call these the five “I wills” and they epitomize the same pride that always brings down man as he tries to play God. The accuser of the brethren lost that attempt but between then and his ultimate doom in the lake of fire he is doing his level best to still be as god-like as he can as he imitates everything God does and will do. What is his latest plan? Think technology.

Immortality In Our Grasp

So many have aspired to live forever. Famous books mention it both in fiction and non-fiction. We even had an explorer come to America to find the fountain of youth as we read in an article from history.com

Encouraged by the Spanish crown to discover more lands, Ponce de León allegedly decided to follow rumors he had heard from local natives about an island called Bimini, home to a magical spring or fountain whose waters would rejuvenate those who drank from it.

In search of this “fountain of youth,” as well as more lands and gold, he set sail from Puerto Rico in March 1513. The following month, the expedition landed on the coast of what is now Florida, near the site of modern-day St. Augustine.

There are some who think that the story of his search for the mythical fountain was an attempt to discredit his legacy but the story lives on as if it was true. Modern day explorers are still trying to extend out human existence in some very creative ways perhaps because God placed eternity in our hearts, a yearning to live forever in eternity with Him. Bible students already know that process and yet those who want to make immortality a reality without God’s help continue to find ways to keep our earthly bodies working by replacing parts with synthetic ones or even mechanical one. But what if you could transfer your mind to a mechanical or robotic one? That is the goal of some who actually see it happening with the rise of computing power and of course, artificial intelligence or AI. How close are we to actually doing it, though?

Living Memories

According to an article from forbes.com becoming immortal is getting closer and closer to happening:

For as long as we’ve been around, human beings have fought against the inevitability of death. This struggle has given rise to religions that have dominated human culture for millennia and has been central to philosophies that have shaped our civilizations.

But might it be the case that a scientific solution to immortality is finally in sight? In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved to the stage where it looks set to revolutionize every aspect of our lives. It may just be possible that it's going to change the way that we think about – and perhaps even experience – death, too.

Science fiction has given us several examples of situations – mostly horrific - where human minds can be uploaded to machines, effectively allowing us to outlast our mortal, fallible bodies.

But recent research and developments have shown that this technology might be closer than we think. Even more presently, others are attempting to preserve elements of our personality and minds so that, at least in some capacity, we can remain a part of the lives of those we leave behind.

The article goes on to give us examples of how a woman was able to have one last conversation with her deceased daughter by creating a realistic version of that young person as if she were “alive” for a small amount of time. A company in South Korea pulled it off as we read further from the same article:

Back in 2020, a Korean documentary crew worked with VR producers to allow a grieving mother to “reunite” with her dead daughter. It was a process that divided opinion, with many considering it ghoulish. However, the mother herself reported that the experience helped her through her grieving process and that she had no regrets about going through with it.

This encounter was scripted, and although the graphics were super-realistic, the opportunity for Jang Ji-Sung to interact with the deceased seven-year-old was limited.

Just a few years later, however, another company (also South Korean) has demonstrated technology using AI that will potentially allow anyone to converse and interact with the dead as if they were in the same room (or at least, as if they were on a video call with them).

Although this isn’t really letting a person live on after they die, it lets us see where things are going. However there could be another route to living forever.

Digital Timelessness

The Forbes article gives another way to extend our “lives”:

If he was still around, would Einstein be able to build on the advances in our knowledge of physics that have been made since he died to solve some of the problems that today’s scientists are still struggling with? Would Washington or Gandhi have been able to broker a peace deal that would put an end to conflicts (in) the world raging around the world today? What kind of movies would Shakespeare be writing if he had not yet shuffled off this mortal coil?

Such thinking is speculation is just that:

There's no way of knowing, of course, because the potential of those people to do good in the world ended at the same time as the electrical activity stopped in their brains.

It’s not like it can’t be done, at least in terms of storing the information:

But some have proposed that if we capture enough data during someone’s life, it might be possible to keep them around indefinitely after their physical brain has gone. This may not be as difficult as it sounds – Microsoft researchers Gordon Bell and Jim Grey have estimated that logging every conversation that a human has over their entire lifespan would only require around one terabyte of storage.

Such a digital person could actually keep learning:

Running a “digital twin” of a deceased person would allow us to continue to benefit from their wisdom as long as it’s necessary. As we’ve been shown possible with machine learning, there’s no reason that the "person" would have to stop absorbing more knowledge and improving their understanding of the world.

And then there is the idea to just create these twins now:

Of course, the obvious extension of this line of thinking is, why wait for them to die? If we can replicate someone after death, then we can replicate them while they are still alive. We could have 10 or 100 Einsteins, all working on solving different physics problems, or an individual Shakespeare for every person on Earth, dedicated to creating personalized stories and plays to keep them entertained. Running a business and don't have enough time to spend at home with your family? No problem, set your digital twin to work, keeping your empire running while you concentrate on what’s really important.

Extremely smart people are working on this right now:

Some of these ideas are encapsulated in the concept of digital eternity, an MIT research project that aims to explore the technological and philosophical requirements of creating digital twins that would effectively let us live forever.

Creepy right? Well, let’s take this a step further.

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

If we take this concept of a digital twin down the rabbit hole it creates, if we have a copy of ourselves doing our work, why do we need the current you? And if the digital you can do it better than the real you can basically be fired or replaced and the world would consider it an improvement. Imagine if people like the digital you better than the real you at say family gatherings? Now you can see the quandary of evolving technology and the danger it poses. If we want to go even further down that rabbit hole we can give some thought to a point when AI is better than humans and decides we aren’t needed anymore. Such a circumstance is what people are calling the a technological singularity and an article from ibm.com explains it this way:

The technological singularity is a theoretical scenario where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, culminating in profound and unpredictable changes to human civilization. In theory, this phenomenon is driven by the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) that surpasses human cognitive capabilities and can autonomously enhance itself. The term "singularity" in this context draws from mathematical concepts indicating a point where existing models break down and continuity in understanding is lost. This describes an era where machines not only match but substantially exceed human intelligence, starting a cycle of self-perpetuating technological evolution.

I have visions of Skynet in my brain now. And there are some who think this is a really real possibility:

"With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon," Musk said last week at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's 2014 Centennial Symposium. "You know all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's like... yeah, he's sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn't work out."

This has become a recurring theme in Musk's public comments, and each time he warns of the AI bogeyman it seems even more dire.

In June, Musk raised the specter of the " Terminator" franchise, saying that he invests in companies working on artificial intelligence just to be able to keep an eye on the technology. In August, he reiterated his concerns in a tweet, writing that AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes." Just a few weeks ago, Musk half-joked on a different stage that a future AI system tasked with eliminating spam might decide that the best way to accomplish this task is to eliminate humans.

Will God let us get to that point or will He intervene just like He did with the Tower of Babel?

A Case Of Competing Resurrections

Getting back to the whole digital twin concept it got me thinking that Satan could be trying to have his own version of the resurrection from mortal to immortality described in the Bible:

For sure, I am telling you a secret. We will not all die, but we will all be changed. 52 In a very short time, no longer than it takes for the eye to close and open, the Christians who have died will be raised. It will happen when the last horn sounds. The dead will be raised never to die again. Then the rest of us who are alive will be changed. 53 Our human bodies made from dust must be changed into a body that cannot be destroyed. Our human bodies that can die must be changed into bodies that will never die. (1 Cor 15:51-53, NLV)

Could it be that the Devil is using technology to offer man his own version of this process? I think he is. But just as God offers us eternal life as individuals continuing our existence, Satan offers mankind a continued existence on earth that would be controlled by others and be manipulated by them to do their bidding. It is a fake resurrection, a vastly inferior version of what our Creator offers us and it also doesn’t require that we live any better than we do now. In fact, we could just continue to be as ungodly as we want with little to no consequences. Living like this world is the only one we’ll see or experience is exactly what Satan wants us to believe and if he can fool us into just becoming a digital or mechanical version of ourselves to extend our existence, he will do so. Don’t fall for it. This world is not our home, we’re just a passin’ through. There’s a new world coming and that is our real hope.