Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have brought this computing technology into popular awareness in a dramatic way. Its astounding, creative abilities in natural language processing and computer vision have contributed to a wider awareness of its capabilities. AI has been with us since the mid-20th century, but only in the last decades has it entered into widespread use in various applications. It is now increasingly common in many sectors of daily life, such as internet search engines, fitness trackers, customer service chatbots, email spam filters, and medical diagnosis, to name a few. However, this ubiquity of AI in our daily lives has largely gone unnoticed by most of us until recently.
Since the 1970s, the business community’s attitude toward AI has alternated between enthusiasm and skeptical disappointment. By the early 1990s, it had developed a sufficiently bad reputation within the business and public sectors that its use was generally kept behind the scenes. However, recent advances and positive press have led to AI’s being touted as the quintessential mark of advanced technology, and so its use is expanding and becoming more apparent.
Even considering the rapid developments in computer-related technologies over the last 50 years, the rate of advancements in artificial intelligence has been astounding and with the arrival of quantum computing on the horizon, the rate and scope of increased capabilities promise to continue to be exceptional. In the meantime, we will continue to witness an explosion of AI-branded applications entering the market, reminiscent of the dot-com bubble that burst at the turn of the third Christian millennium. However, similar to the internet and internet commerce, even if the current AI venture capital bubble bursts, AI itself is here to stay.
Amidst this background, it is not surprising that AI would begin to be used in ministry and the lay apostolate, raising questions about the wisdom of doing so. Whether it was the first, Catholic Answers’ recent roll out of a virtual AI chatbot called Justin has been a catalyst for this discussion.
Before addressing the question of the prudence of using AI as a tool in ministry and discipleship, it is important to define and gain some understanding of the technology.
What Artificial Intelligence is not
The topic of artificial intelligence can often give rise to a host of reactions ranging from fascination to confusion, from imprudent readiness to uncritically embrace it to complete rejection of it, from naïve trust to apocalyptic suspicion.
Let’s start with outlining what AI is not. AI is not and can never become a conscious being with the attributes of human personhood. It does not possess a soul, so it does not have the spiritual faculties of intellect or will.1 It cannot and never will understand, intend, ponder, advise, discern, feel, love, hate, feel compassion, feel sorrow, or care about its users. It does not and never will have consciousness or conscience, so it does not have the intrinsic moral compass that guides human action. It cannot be inspired, experience the light of faith, have wisdom, choose through hope or love. While it can be and already is being abused, AI is not evil in its essence, a tool of the devil, or too dangerous to employ at all.2 Rather, it is a sophisticated tool crafted by human ingenuity, designed to perform specific tasks by processing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns within it.3
What Artificial Intelligence is
AI is an advanced computational system that can simulate certain aspects of human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. These systems range from relatively simple apps that sort emails to complex neural networks capable of generating human-like text. AI’s primary function is to assist and augment human capabilities, not to replace the unique and irreplaceable human person.
A Brief History of AI Development
The development of artificial intelligence had its origins in the mid-20th century advent of digital computers. Early AI research focused on symbolic reasoning and rule-based systems. Over the decades, advances in computing power and theoretical frameworks led to the development of machine learning, where computers learn from data rather than following explicit instructions. The rise of deep learning, a subset of machine learning, marked a significant milestone. Deep learning utilizes neural networks, which are inspired by the human brain’s structure, to process complex data and make predictions.
Understanding Generative AI with Large Language Models (LLMs)
Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), represents a monumental leap in AI capabilities. These models use a series of digital neural networks, using what is called transformer architecture (the “T” in GPT), which allows them to handle and generate human-like text with remarkable fluency and coherence.
The underlying structure of an LLM involves multiple layers of interconnected neural networks with an attention mechanism that helps models focus on important words in a sentence, allowing them to recognize context and meaning more effectively. During the training phase, the model is exposed to vast datasets containing diverse linguistic patterns. The model learns to predict the next word in a sequence by adjusting the weights of the neural networks’ neural connections based on the error between its predictions and the actual text. This process of optimization is algorithmic, involving techniques like stochastic gradient descent.
A key component of transformers is the attention mechanism, which helps the model focus on relevant parts of the input sequence, ensuring coherence and contextual relevance. Once trained, the LLM creates text by picking the most likely next words based on patterns it has learned, using methods that help ensure it makes sense and is not repetitious.
But the LLM alone is not what the average user will engage with. The LLM requires further fine-tuning for its particular application. It also requires guidance called prompts, which are further instructions that help the model to act and respond in more meaningful ways appropriate to the particular application.
AI Experts Like Catholic Answers’ Justin
I have no direct insight into Justin’s design, but I would guess that it was created by using a commercially available LLM (such as GPT 4o from OpenAI, Gemini from Google, or Llama 3 by Meta). The developers then may have built a vector database from which the LLM would draw for its specific responses. If they were to have used a vector database to improve the accuracy of responses, they would most appropriately have used Catholic Answers’ own database of their expert’s responses to a host of apologetic related issues, relevant books, other authoritative Church documents, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and other sources which would provide reliable responses to questions.4
The Catholic Answers’ developer also engineered Justin’s own special prompts to make it respond like an expert Catholic Answers apologist, giving it the identity of a Catholic apologist, focusing its answers so it gives appropriate responses, and providing any desired personality and temperament that a good apologist might have. These prompts might also try to ensure that Justin would not reach outside of its preferred sources in order to answer questions. However, the complexity and statistical nature of such an AI system make it impossible to exhaustively test and correct such an AI expert. We are at the very early stages of a new era in AI, and there are not yet industry wide accepted best practices for such processes as fine tuning, prompt engineering, or reinforcement learning. But still, the Catholic Answers testing panel was obviously sufficiently convinced of its reliability that they deployed the system.
Even so, there are still phenomena which are not fully understood and cannot yet be overcome, such as hallucinations in which the LLM can occasionally make up out of whole cloth plausible responses including explicitly cited sources that do not exist. Nevertheless, the systems is also very likely to be remarkably accurate. Indeed, I have engaged with an AI representation of St. Thomas Aquinas, which provides remarkably insightful and accurate responses, and even very likely accurate extrapolations of the Angelic Doctor’s thought. So, I was not surprised that Catholic Answers experts were able to be convinced that Justin would be sufficiently reliable to offer to the public, with the appropriate caveats given to users.
Why does AI work?: A theory
The capabilities of AI have rightly amazed many. Its generative abilities in natural language and image processing, enabled by breakthroughs in deep learning, have surprised and astonished even its developers. I would like to suggest that these advances are an opportunity for deeper theological reflection in the areas of the theology of creation, the analogy of being, and theological anthropology. As with all theological questions, we ought to begin with the Trinity. All intelligence necessarily originates in the Eternal Word (Logos), and so any created intelligence is a participation in this divine archetype.
This theological truth corresponds with philosophical insights which we see begin to appear among the ancient Greeks. Perhaps the first record of the intuition that the world is rational and ordered in a manner connatural to the human mind is the pre-Socratic Pythagoras, who thought that the core of realty was mathematical and could be understood through examining the relationship among numbers. Heraclitus, also a Pre-Socratic, identified the organizing principle of the cosmos and the source of both one and many as the Logos, being the first to give logos this identity.5
Plato further developed these intuitions, observing that the human intellect must inhabit the same immaterial domain as the intelligible dimension of the cosmos, though he does not seem to be aware of Heraclitus’ teaching on the Logos. Plato saw that the Origin of the cosmos had to be the rational principle for everything which derives from it, but he believed this Form to be a distant and transcendent archetype. Plato also developed Pythagoras’ mathematical core of reality, theorizing that a divine craftsman (the Demiurge) made the cosmos by imposing on chaos, eternal mathematical forms as patterns. The Demiurge used mathematical principles and geometric shapes to form the primary elements and harmonized them through the mathematical principle of proportion.6
The Stoics developed this idea, but they took their cue from Aristotle’s immanence of forms in material objects (i.e., his hylomorphic theory) and said that the originating Principle was active and immanent in things and identified it with Heraclitus’ Logos. Middle Platonism returned the Stoics insights of an active, organizing, intelligible Logos to its Platonic roots again giving it a transcendent character. Neo-Platonism will impose on this a more structured hierarchy of three primary principles: The One, which is the absolute, transcendent source of all reality; The Nous (or Intellect), which emanates from The One and is the realm of the perfect forms; and The Soul, which emanates from the Nous and mediates between the intelligible and sensible realms, giving matter order and life.
According to the current dominant theory, the early Church Fathers will see in Neo-Platonism a striking correspondence with divine revelation and use it to articulate an integral explanation of creation. Christian Platonism will include the role of free agents in the spiritual and material orders, and this theological tradition will greatly influence the whole of Christian theology.7 The hierarchical structure of the Christian cosmos in its most articulated form is found in the hierarchy of the nine choirs of angels, which will dominate the theology of creation and angelology into the scholastic age. It emphasizes the angels as mediating the created order, through succeeding levels of divine knowledge from the simplest to the increasingly complex as we descend the hierarchy of angels to the material order.
This divine knowledge is described in terms of Platonic-like forms, from more perfect to more material as the knowledge descends the angelic hierarchy. This knowledge orders and harmonizes the cosmos, mediated through angelic hymns of praise to use Dionysian symbolism. St. Thomas Aquinas’ cosmology relies especially on Dionysius the Aeropagite, but he goes on to describe angelic communication as angelic speech which is essentially the voluntary communication of concepts in a manner proper to their order. Angels’ communication to man is the most complex, as man’s intellect is the most inferior among spiritual intellects.8 In line with this tradition, we might add that the formal structure of angelic speech, their hymns of praise, as we descend toward the material order are detectable and understandable to the human mind as mathematics.
As Enlightenment hubris moved the center of gravity of the western intellectual class increasingly toward atheism, we lost our foundation for explaining the world as rational. There now has become an allergic reaction against any theory that might suggest God exists. The contemporary, “enlightened” mind disdains any such proposals. For this reason, we are surprised, and many are perplexed, when we rediscover that the human mind seems to be connatural with the rationality of the cosmos.9 Yet, there are also those who must follow where the truth leads them, even among committed atheists. While he finds the implications personally troubling, philosopher Thomas Nagel still must admit that the mind seems to be made for the world, for he recognizes denying such has led us toward a collapse of the capacity for public, intellectual inquiry and discourse.10 The prevailing atheistic, philosophical materialism among the intellectual class has resulted in the situation in which most involved in AI development are mystified as to why it works. For those who attempt an explanation, they must look for conjectural reasons conforming with the philosophical materialism.
Nevertheless, as we have seen, reason alone reveals the order of the cosmos is connatural with human reason. Empirical science indicates the truth of the intuition of classical Greek philosophy, that mathematics describes the rational order of the cosmos and permits predictions based upon understanding this order. AI suggests something deeper. AI transformers are essentially computational artifacts that imply the act of thinking, language, and mathematics have some interior unity which manifest and enables reason. This much is suggested by our discussion of the Logos, but it also brings up a very interesting question about the greater relationship among the Logos, created logoi which participate in the Archetype, and the manner in which the speech of nature, the first book of revelation, is received by the human intellect.
St. John Henry Newman says that while there may be a distinction, there is no separation between speech and reason as Msgr. Robert Sokolowski observes in his masterful investigation into person and truth.11 Newman shows this to be implied etymologically in the Greek term logos, which can mean both reason and speech.12 Sokolowski goes on to show that “thinking occurs in the medium of words.”13 Though not just any words, but words that are intentional, that declare the person. Nagel agrees that this intentionality is the foundation of language and reason.14
Sokolowski explains that declarative speech requires syntax, which leads to the conclusion that thinking itself occurs in the formal structure of syntax. While he doesn’t make this amazing insight explicit, the fact that the spiritual act of thinking happens in the midst of an exchange between two persons can only be so among creatures because it is a created participation in the Father’s Word eternally spoken in the first Trinitarian Procession, the generation of the Eternal Logos. The very structure of language is inseparable from the act of thought, while remaining distinct. In other words, thinking is in some way present in language itself. The apparent thinking in Generative Artificial Intelligence is in great part, a participation in the thinking of the multitude of minds ever present in their writings which were used for the deep learning of the large language models. The ability of AI LLMs to so accurately predict the next words in the complexity of variable contexts is due to the fact that language itself, as well as the content on which the LLM was trained, is already infused with thought.15
All of this suggests why artificial intelligence works in a general sense, but there is more going on here. We can understand more deeply the way this thinking is applied to the particular questions posed by the users of AI by looking to the theory of hylomorphism. Implicit in St. Thomas Aquinas’ adaptation of Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory is that matter is needed to enable human spiritual activity to be manifest in the material order. We can say that there is a material correlate in the body for every operation in the soul that must break into the material order. The phenomena of the loss of consciousness due to such things as illness or trauma as well as the degrading of the operation of the intellect and will due to similar factors reveal this to be so. Moreover, the soul is the form of the body, giving it its shape, self-organizing, and capacity for operation. The body reveals the soul. It stands to reason that the structure of the brain itself reveals a material corollary to spiritual reason, or at least how reason must operate in the material order.
The structure and interconnection of neurons in the human brain are highly complex and efficient, created to enable various brain functions, including the operation of the spiritual faculties within the material order. Artificial neurons used in AI neural networks are mathematical representations inspired by natural neurons. However, they cannot replicate the full complexity of natural neurons and their interconnections due to the vastly superior intricacies and functionality of the biological systems. Nevertheless, the neural networks used in LLMs are based on structural principles derived from the brain. These networks, with millions of artificial neurons and their predefined interconnections, are adjusted through training to achieve remarkable capacity in terms of memory and the approximation of certain cognitive tasks. What we are likely seeing with these artificial neural networks is the digital emulation of some aspects of the formal structures that enable thinking in the soul to operate in the material order via the neural structures of the brain. However, we are not witnessing actual thinking, which is obvious through the lack of intentionality, for the soul encompasses much more than the brain and certainly more than the formal structure of language.16
For these reasons, artificial networks still need much algorithmic assistance via self-attention mechanisms, probability calculations reflecting human language, etc. for the LLM to operate effectively. Because they will never have a human soul, they will always need these kinds of support mechanisms to make the neural networks themselves functionally useful. Yet, as we learn more and computer processing capacity continues to become more powerful, it is impossible to predict how much generative AI will eventually be able to accomplish.
• Editor’s note: Part Two of this essay will consider the dangers and potential of AI in ministry, as well as necessary safeguards.
Endnotes:
1 A being requires a unity of substance. The ancient Greeks found that substantial unity is not possible if a being is only matter, so there must be some immaterial principle which is the source of the being’s substantial unity. For the human person, this source is the spiritual soul. Consciousness is a power of the soul by which a person experiences self-awareness, awareness of his capacity for relationships, and freedom to choose and act, and with which he exercises self-possession, intentionality and personal responsibility for his choices. The output of generative Artificial Intelligence is the result of digital calculations conducted over a wide distribution of disparate computers. With artificial intelligence there is no source of substantial unity and so no “being” as such exists. Only a spiritual being can experience consciousness, and so whatever the computational responses might appear to suggest, with AI there can be no consciousness.
2 I do not want to appear to imply that abuses by misuse of generative AI are of no concern, but it is likely most abuses will need to be addressed ultimately through public policy, legislation, and international treaties. Moreover, the problem of abuse is not the focus of this article. I simply wish to propose that rejecting the prudent use of this technology to assist in some aspects of the apostolate will not contribute to mitigation of these abuses.
3 While current systems are effective only to the degree they are limited in their scope of application, the race is afoot to develop an Artificial General Intelligence system. Some consider that Transformer technology is already AGI, others consider it will arrive when a generative AI system can outperform some percentage of human subjects on any given cognitive task. Others believe AGI will be a reality when a system develops “sentience,” which they incorrectly use for consciousness. While developments will certainly continue to surprise us, we can safely say that we will never see authentic consciousness arise from a computer because this is possible in the material order only for those beings with a spiritual soul.
4 Some informal sampling of Justin’s accuracy to assess the likelihood that it uses a vector database provided mixed results. For example, questions asked about Catholic Answers tracts available online suggest that if there is a vector database, these tracts are either not included in it or were not adequately ‘chunked’ (a pre-processing procedure that divides text into smaller, more manageable segments to enhance search accuracy). However, questions asked about the Catechism of the Catholic Church suggest that Justin may be drawing directly from a vector database for these questions. Since it seems unlikely Justin would not have accurately formatted Catholic Answers tracts as part of its vector database, I am inclined to guess Justin does not use this very helpful design feature.
5 Plato branded Heraclitus the “philosopher of change” based on the latter’s dictum “a man cannot step into the same river twice,” which in some ways motivated Plato to look for the source of stability and intelligibility in the cosmos. However, scholarship since the 19th century has reassessed Heraclitus. More scholars see him as prefiguring philosophical insights that would be developed by subsequent philosophers. For an insightful discussion of Heraclitus and his view of the Logos see Eva Brann, The Logos of Heraclitus (Philadelphia, PA: Paul Dry Books, 2011).
6 See Plato, Timaeus 27d-56c.
7 For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa in Life of Moses and On the Making of Man, Origen in his On the First Principles, St. Augustine in On Music and On Christian Doctrine, (Pseudo-)Dionysius the Aeropagite in his Divine Names and Celestial Hierarchies, and Maximus the Confessor in his Ambigua. I would like to point out that recent scholarship is reassessing the majority report’s locating Dionysius the Aeropagite in the 6-7th century, and are returning him to the traditional acceptance of his self-identification as Dionysius of Acts 17:34. This would make Christian-Platonism antecedent to its pagan counterpart and suggest Dionysius to be Plotinus’s primary influence for Neo-Platonism (for a compelling and detailed presentation, see Anthony Pavoni, Evangelos Nikitopoulos, The Life of Saint Dionysius the Aeropagite [Montreal, Quebec: Scriptorium Press, 2024]).
8 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, Qq. cvii, a.1, a.2, and cxi, a.1. It may seem counterintuitive to say that simple being is higher and complex being is lower because in the material realm, simplicity is more associated with lower being and complexity as higher. However, the reverse is true in the order of spirit. Closely related is the order of knowledge, in which St. Thomas Aquinas shows that the more a thing is known in its parts, the less it is truly understood. Conversely, the more a thing is known in its entirety and essence, the more fully it is understood, and the more comprehensive understanding is achieved only by great intellects.
9 For example, see Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 13, no. I (February 1960). Wigner gives several examples of mathematical concepts that arise in theoretical mathematics that are found later to have application in explaining and predicting real, physical phenomena in the world. Reaction to this paper, which says nothing of religion, was extremely negative from many due its “religious” connotations.
10 Thomas Nagel says “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that” in The Last Word (New York, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), 130.
11 See Robert Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 39 citing John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), Part 2, Discourse 2, §4, p. 270.
12 Logos can mean word, speech, account, reason, or principle. Greek classical philosophy has also infused it with the sense of being an active, organizing principle as we have already seen.
13 Sokolowski, Human Person, 39.
14 Nagel, Last Word, 42.
15 But it is important to emphasize the generative AI system’s prediction is not based on the manifold attributes of a human judgment including the inspiration available only to a spiritual soul, but on a statistical estimation calculated by means of a computational algorithm.
16 Anyone who has “debated” with an AI app, and found it comes to agree with your position only to continue to make the same error within the same chat session can see that one is not dealing with real intelligence. It is likely we will see less of this with future improvements, but AI app will never have the personal intentionality necessary for authentic intelligence.
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It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
On the other hand, two more thoughts on the irreducible difference between evolutionary functionality at whatever “level” and the imprinted (for lack of a better world) human soul, and on an earlier reflection by Charles Darwin.
FIRST, St. John Paul II writes:
“The moment of transition [also referred to as the ‘ontological leap’] to the spiritual CANNOT be the object of this [scientific] kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator’s plans” (John Paul II, “Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,” October 23, 1996, n. 6).
SECOND, Darwin himself lamenting even his self-limited vision:
“This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of MACHINE for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.
“…A man with a mind more highly organized or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered. . . . The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be INJURIOUS TO THE INTELLECT, and more probably to THE MORAL CHARACTER, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. . . . My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I COULD NEVER HAVE SUCCEEDED WITH METAPHYSICS or mathematics.”
(Charles Darwin, edited by Sir Francis Darwin, “Charles Darwin’s Autobiography,” 1887/New York: Henry Schuman 1950, CAPS added).
SUMMARY: Darwin’s loss of even the “emotional” or “higher aesthetic tastes” does not begin to comprehend what Darwin senses as the “metaphysical” or the “ontological leap.”
Grant have you ever seen Terminator?
“Let’s start with outlining what AI is not. AI is not and can never become a conscious being with the attributes of human personhood. ”
This won’t age well. In fact, you won’t need to wait longer than 2029 to eat your words.
Your comic book understanding of science will not only not age well, but will limit your ability to find inroads to authentic rationality.
tell us about how you designed chips, therefore you are the authority on the topic and are correct, whereas us mere simpletons who are observing exponential trends are wrong.
In fact, I did design CPUs for a period of time in my life. Nonetheless, apparent trends can always be deceptive. Today’s televisions are exponentially more sophisticated than the old Philcos my grandparents used to have in the 1950s with a 9 inch screen that flickered very often. Do you think today’s 4K sets are a single increment closer to being able to comprehend the meaning of the talking heads on the screen discussing such subjects like data communications? Tell us how electrons passing through or blocked by a silicon gate can, in any way, care to make a value judgment about anything at all?
the gap between human and machine cognition is rapidly approaching zero, and in many ways machines area already superhuman. there is nothing deceptive about this trend at all. once machines attain consciousness, this will provide an existence proof that the materialistic explanation for consciousness is correct and nothing spooky is needed to implement it. indeed, there is no soul poking and prodding at our neurons to influence them in any way whatsoever.
perfectly modeling a neuron and scaling them up is perhaps the first way it will be done, and then we’ll find other and likely superior ways of achieving the same thing and beyond.
Guru Williams, we read: “once machines attain consciousness…”
At a very early age (I was ten) I was startled to witness a neighborhood suicide—with both barrels. With my own eyes I saw that the skull was half gone and quite empty, with the brains scattered in tiny clusters like Dawkins’ meaningless galaxies of unblinking stars, all over the driveway and beyond.
It was only years later that I learned of super-logical Descartes who opined that the soul was physically and spatially located in the otherwise superfluous pineal gland. Your “spooky” ghost in the machine. Even at that early age I saw far beyond your equally simplistic attitude. Instead, I did wonder, where is his soul? With sirens now in the background, I wondered whether “they” could at least put it all back together again, all those neurons mixed with the gravel. But even more about something else called the will. I wondered if, maybe years later as an adult, I might understand the abyss of why anyone would ever really choose absolutely and irreversibly “nothing.” Why choose only zero-nothing over any something?
At the time, and surely traumatized, I did ask around, for a week or two, but no verbiage stuck. Something about stress and despair, and yet even these “answers” were not quite so vacant as your own reductionist dogma about chemistry and electrons. As if the so-called gap between the brain and the human mind is—as you expound with such certitude from on high—reducible to zero. That just doesn’t work, my friend. We are more than your or Descartes’ “ghost in the machine,” not less.
Will data-dump AI ever explain or even choose to wonder (wonder!) why nothing rather than something? Or, better yet, Leibniz’s (the Calculus guy) opposite and metaphysical question, “why is there something rather than nothing?”
The reality of a chosen creation ex nihilo? And the meaning of your and my very personal existence?
Andrew Williams,
About your (reductionist and) “materialistic explanation of consciousness,” this and other of your remarks from last year (which I cannot locate) suggest the need to propose some clarifications. I say, propose—not impose as you’re intent to do in exploiting the hospitality of this website.
PROPOSITION #1: Is it possible that you’re jousting not with Christianity, but with Manichaeism?
The very artificial (!) intelligence of bifurcating the spiritual from the material? The 5th-century St. Augustine struggled with this premise, and about whom it is reported: “…he was confronted with the difficulty of conceiving substance as spiritual, but with the discovery that this was possible, the greatest of his intellectual problems was solved. For he was thus enabled to perceive that, so far from being ultimate, ‘form’ and ‘matter’ [!] alike were merely figments of the human mind; they were the spectacles through which men saw the corporeal or object world” (Cochrane, “Christianity and Classical Culture,” 1940/1974).
PROPOSITION #2: Does your earlier disdain for binary human sexuality (you used a different term) suppose that any value of “other”-ness can be dissolved, as now is imposed by replacing complementary sexuality with maybe 57 genders, or maybe even an infinite continuum in the hands of exponentially compounding AI? Materialism on steroids?
PROPOSITION #3: A small jump, then, from arbitrary material biology to dismantling what you imagine as a superstructure of “natural law” tracing back, as you assume, 2000 years.
But, what if the “natural law” is less a construct than a baked-in orientation—ultimately toward the Other (not evolutionary AI)? And, historically, what if consciousness of the natural law predates Christianity, which it does! What if this universal lens constitutes an irreducible premise—that we all have a built-in curiosity and mission partly to question not only everything, but also our own assumptions about everything? Are programmers of AI, or self-programming AI, open to such a question?
PROPOSITION #4: What if human consciousness is finite, and cannot even be compared (unfavorably) with the merely infinite computational capacity of AI? What if, instead, our understanding of (your mythical) God is humbly analogical and not expansively digital? What if AI is not God?
What if it is by analogy that we know that man is like the self-subsisting and possibly self-disclosing God? But that as this likeness is advanced, the unlikeness advances infinitely more! In this solution Aquinas was preceded by and builds upon the early 5th-century St. Augustine’s maxim: “I believe in order to understand,” and St. Anselm who preached a “faith seeking understanding.” Again, is AI a Promethean substitute for a God who exists/subsists other than our contingent selves or ever beyond our mere consciousness?
PROPOSITION #5: All of which is to propose—not impose—that analogue life exists outside of the digital bubble-universe. That is, the real object world and then the mystery of all existence and especially of personal existence—rather than not. The Christian steps to a different tune:
“Christianity’s claim to be true cannot correspond to the standard of certainty posed by modern science, because the form of verification here is of a quite different kind from the realm of testing by experiment—pledging one’s life for this—is of a quite different kind. The saints, who have undergone the experiment, can stand as guarantors of its truth, but the possibility of disregarding this strong evidence remains” (“Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions,” Ignatius, 2003).
SUMMARY: By such propositions as these, there is no effort nor pretense to convince, but only the possibility that Andrew Williams might consider a cosmos other than his own as an ALTERNATIVE and NOT simply or simplistically as subordinate and expendable.
Thank you for listening…
This article is accurate, only God can create life with consciousness with the human attributes that only comes from a rational soul. The article provides a thorough exploration of the development and current state of artificial intelligence, emphasizing its increasing role in various sectors and its potential impact on ministry and discipleship. It clarifies what AI is and is not, noting that while AI is a powerful tool for simulating certain aspects of human intelligence, and the main idea is that it cannot and will never possess human consciousness or moral agency. The discussion on the theology and philosophy of AI offers an intriguing perspective on how AI’s capabilities might be understood within a broader metaphysical context. However, the article also underscores the need for prudence and careful consideration in the application of AI, particularly in sensitive areas like ministry. That’s all.
I hope and pray that it never has a role in the Church.
Even if it can help Catholics know their faith better, because it is trained and tested by real Theologians?
Yes. Believers need to do the hard work of reading, thinking, and studying themselves.
Athanasius, travelers need to do the hard work of walking, running, and transporting themselves. Your logic isn’t particularly thought-out, is it?
While it’s true that personal study and deep reflection are essential components of growing in faith, AI can serve as a valuable tool that enhances, rather than replaces, these efforts. The Church has always utilized the best tools available to spread the Gospel and deepen understanding, from the printing press to the internet. AI, when trained by qualified theologians, can help believers access accurate information, clarify complex theological concepts, and provide guidance in their studies.
AI isn’t meant to replace the hard work of reading, thinking, and studying—it’s meant to assist in it. There is plenty of work and reading to do even when you have AI.
Yes, because we have real theologians
It can’t. Widespread belief in things that don’t exist is never healthy. The very notion of A.I. marks the beginning of the end not only of civilization sanity but yet another deconstruction of a pillar of Catholic faith. “Theologians,” succumbing to their vanity, supporting atheistic ideas is nothing new, and the fact that it has been ignored does not lessen the damage they have done. Materialism is the polar opposite of faith, and this will never change. A materialist interpretation of existence has been the prime mover of the abortion holocaust.
I understand your concerns about AI and the potential dangers it might pose if misused. However, I believe it’s important to distinguish between the tool itself and how it’s applied. AI, when guided by true faith and sound theology, can serve as a means to deepen understanding and spread the Gospel, rather than undermine it. The key is ensuring that AI is used in ways that align with the teachings of the Church, always respecting the primacy of faith over materialism. The misuse of AI, like any tool, can lead to harm, but when properly employed, it has the potential to support, rather than detract from, the Church’s mission. AI exists, and its reality and potential for good would be to fall into what you are say is unhealthy.
Just look at the recent AI priest debacle and wake up and smell the coffee!
We read: “In other words, thinking is in some way present in language itself.” And, “All intelligence necessarily originates in the Eternal Word (Logos), and so any created intelligence is a participation in this divine archetype.”
Well, shucks, why give a damn, or whatever, about ever seeing God “face to face.”
WHY NOT just one algorithm to another—the Other? The conundrum, too, whether language clarifies thought, or whether thought clarifies language? And, whether the neuronic (neurotic?) brain is always less than the mind? And, whether one of our so-called “created intelligence(s)” is really a “participation in this divine archetype”. While the author reserves space for intentionality and the human soul, what about this place now at the margins? Before he lost his head (or whatever), one Thomas More pondered the difference between any mere complexity and the fully human:
“GOD made the angels to show him splendor—as he made the animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man he made to serve him wittily, in the tangle of his mind! If He suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and yes, […] then we may clamor like champions…if we have the spittle for it. And no doubt it delights God to see SPLENDOR where He only looked for COMPLEXITY. But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to that extremity! Our natural business lies in escaping—so let’s get home and study this Bill [dealing with the difference, too, between more random “irregular couples” and the very nature of marriage]” (Robert Bolt, “A Man for All Seasons,” 1960, Act Two).
Splendor, more than a “tangle” of complexity? So, about “splendor,” WE almost begin to appreciate the sidelined “Splendor of the Truth” (Veritatis Splendor)!
AND, the fact that “the word made flesh” reveals an analog cosmos rather than, say, a digital facsimile under AI (in the article, said to be a created “intelligence”). AND, the curious fact that the incarnate (!) Jesus Christ taught through personal presence (the “Presence”!), and through parables about real stuff—rather than more remotely and celebralized data exchanges about mere ideas—for the technoid illuminati of a later era. AND, that Christ (the real Logos vs fn. 12) evangelized in person and face-to-face (with John 14:9, already seeing the Father face to face), not through any more obscure and complexified exchanges of mere data. For the Successors of the Apostles to be “sent” (apostello: to be sent) was more than a click of the “send” key!
SUMMARY: Even the written words of Scripture came later, and are only inspired words about “the Word.” So, about evangelization of the sacramental Mystical Body of Christ, just as Sola Scriptura is not enough, neither is sola “algorithm impersonation” (AI), however “functional the neural networks.”
Maybe the Luddites were onto something…
Delaney’s assessment is quite good. We certainly can benefit from AI as a guide subject to our human intelligence [HI].
His first endnote, “Consciousness is a power of the soul by which a person experiences self-awareness, awareness of his capacity for relationships, and freedom to choose and act, and with which he exercises self-possession, intentionality and personal responsibility for his choices” speaks to maintaining the absolute priority of HI. As are the remainder particularly on the order of knowledge and Aquinas’ differentiation between the superiority of simplicity of spiritual being compared to the more complex, whereas in the material world the order is converse. This demonstrates the superiority of HI to AI.
The effort to simulate in AI what occurs neurologically in the human brain appears similar to thinking although it is not [says Delaney]. Delaney cites intentionality in man as essentially different. I would add the dimension of creativity in Human Intelligence, a capacity to apprehend that cannot be explained by any informative structure that precedes it. That capacity is essential to spiritual development and counsel.
Sane people can recognize the superiority of HI to what are nothing more than super algorithms, but the world in metastasizing in its hatred for traditional religious accounts of existence and desires materialist accounts that can be used to dismiss religion. How would promoting the fiction of A.I. really help anyone?
I’m cautious in perceiving AI as a limited resource Edward. Although your point is well made, because it suggests pushing the envelope much farther denigrating the potency and development of our intellectual spiritual nature. And unfortunately our morally compromised world culture is indeed materialistic.
Edward, insofar as argument posed by Andrew William on manufacturing a perfect match of neurons to break into the zero zone of human and machine cognition it’s unachievable because it’s not a question of the movement of material entities that can produce cognition or thought, rather it’s the spiritual that moves the entities or neurons real or manufactured.
I, as with most, I believe, am hardly trained in theology. If your article is anything like the information fed to AI to give us answers to our simple theological questions from an apologist, then I can only envision having to climb over an even huger choke of different men’s theories to get to the Word and the Truth. (I am in no way offended by your wealth of knowledge, rather, am impressed by it…but it doesn’t compare to “Give up everything and follow Me.”)
Will AI ever be able to pray? What is the nature of prayer?
The essay answers this sort of question very clearly. Did you read it?
But the question is still valid when the article appears to take a contradictory position that A.I. can reason, which implies thought, although it does not have real consciousness. It does neither. Algorithms that mimic human responses have been around for decades. They’ve just gotten much more sophisticated. But it’s not worthy to concede anything at all to materialists. We cannot lack awareness of how the minds of the young are affected.
“… the article appears to take a contradictory position that A.I. can reason,…”
I don’t think the essay does so; it makes careful distinctions in that regard.
Mr Olson, in all fairness, given that people involved here (including the author) are not logicians, these discussions are less than solid. Those interested should read Dov Gabbay’s book “What is a logical system?” which gives the answer: we do not know. Yes, you read that right. So the issue of “can computers thin or reason” is just chit chat without basis, given no agreement on what it means to think or reason. I think you all should cool a little bit and not get scared by computer gadgets. Remember, there is someone “upstairs” looking after us. And for Heaven’s sake give up on Plato. It is ancient nonsense now. My advice, as I said below, undrestand what Valtorta’s Notebooks (not the Poem) say about the soul. It will help you calm down, and know that Sunnyvale is not Heaven.
Hmmmm. I see questionable appeals to questionable authorities, dismissive flippancy, chronological snobbery, and a bit of ad hominem as well. But no real argument. Personally, I find it fascinating that folks can think and reason about thinking and reasoning while asserting, without irony, that they don’t know what it means to think or reason. Meanwhile, I’m waiting to hear of that planet where computers came first, then created humans, and then had discussions about thinking and reasoning.
Mr Olson, regarding “questionable appeals to questionable authorities” Gabbay’s book is just one source and he is the editor, and a pretty good logician. The authors of that book are all highly trained logicians. And there are plenty of other sources that say the same. As for Plato being outdated, of course he is. He was around long before Principia Mathematica was written in 1912, and established the field of formal logic. In any case, the main issue is not to get over excited about terms such as thinking, reasoning and consciousness because there is absolutely no scholarly agreement as to what they mean. Your readers need to calm down, pray more and worry less.
AI should play no role in ministry or in any aspect of the Christian life. Human consciousness is a profound mystery and an incredible gift. We have a responsibility to use our own rational capacities to study, question, and think deeply about life’s most important questions. The process of inquiry and investigation transforms us, and it shouldn’t be bypassed. There’s something profoundly juvenile and dangerous in allowing a computer to do our thinking for us.
I appreciate your emphasis on the importance of human consciousness and the transformative power of deep, personal inquiry. Indeed, the Christian life calls us to engage fully with our faith, using our God-given rational capacities. However, I believe AI can serve as a complementary tool, not a replacement for our intellectual and spiritual efforts. Just as books, study guides, and other educational resources support our understanding without replacing the need for personal reflection, AI can assist in clarifying complex concepts and providing additional insights.
The key lies in how AI is used. It should never bypass the critical processes of study, questioning, and reflection but can enhance them by providing access to accurate information and diverse perspectives. In this way, AI can be a valuable aid in ministry and the Christian life, helping us engage more deeply with our faith rather than detracting from the profound mystery of human consciousness.
You are theoretically correct, but we need to consider human nature and cultural realities in these discussions. We are a shallow culture that seeks convenience and expedience above all else. It is unlikely people will use technology responsibly. Cell phones are a good example of this.
AI horrifies me. I never interact with what I perceive to be AI (I’m no expert) unless I have to… Say at work. And I never fill out surveys, which I think helps develop AI.
I have a problem or question, I talk to the Biship andPriests that have helped our tiny community.
I just used AI today. Asked for a Bible verse recommendation to say when burying a pet. Gave me a solid recommendation from Genesis:
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
AI was a simple, helpful shortcut here
The fact that it was a shortcut is the very essence of the problem.
Not at all. I have indices and dictionaries and other tools that would help me find such a passage, but not everyone does. It’s like using an online dictionary versus a printed one. She didn’t ask the AI to write a prayer, merely to find something.
Yes, at all. Look it up yourself and find the answers. Don’t ask computer to do the work for ou.
Using AI in this way is similar to using a concordance or an online search tool—it’s just a means to locate relevant passages quickly. The essence of faith lies in how we reflect on and apply these passages, not necessarily in the method we use to find them. Is using a computer for word processing worse than writing a hand-written letter because it takes the work out of writing?
God’s creation has an incarnational dimension, ordered to the vertical dimension linking God to man. Christ was Incarnated in the flesh. Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist have a physical reality that needs to be physically received. With the exception of people like shut-ins we are supposed to attend Mass in person. To worship God and to build up the faith community. Confession is another sacrament that needs to be done in person. Any technology needs to advance this incarnational vertical reality and foster direct human to human interaction in the way that God intended.
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Cybersex appears to have gone the opposite direction, and put layers of technology between people, which goes against God’s purpose for which God created the sex act in the first place.
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Any use of AI needs to promote this incarnational dimension in accord with God’s will as expressed in the Bible and historic Church teachings. Just think of what could happen to AI in the hands of progressive Catholics. Their version of the faith looks like it has hardly, if any, real vertical dimension and accountability to God. Our faith has a strong component of God’s Self-revelation. The Word, the Logos, requires the powers of illumination that only God Himself posses. We need this assistance from God to correctly read His Word. Especially in light (no pun intended) of the darkened intellect that came about as a result of Original Sin. To me the serpent insinuated that Adam and Eve, using their own intellects, could fully illuminate the divine realities. We can see how badly that turned out. The secular French revolution descended into the Jacobin Rein of Terror and madness. Our modern world appears to be headed in the same direction. There is nothing more dangerous than a naked human intellect devoid of grace.
Yes, and with data-dump AI might we foresee a thoroughly inclusive and amalgamated “pluralism” of equivalent religions, without a single fact or assertion or detail omitted, except for the divinely revealed/self-disclosed detail that the Areopagus isn’t the (what’s that word/Word again, oh yes) the Truth.
Perhaps the author of this article should take a look at The International Journal of Consciusness Studies. What is also ignored is the relation between consciuosness and the soul. The best discussion of that I have seen was by Maria Valtorta.
I’ll say this much: Even today, with AI essentially in its infancy, AI can already generate better religious art than Rupnik. It can also generate reams of word salad about “synodality”.
The art historian Sr. Wendy Beckett might have had in mind the vacant-eyed stares in Rupnik’s art, when she said: “the one sad thing is to be a zombie.”
Every time AI is mentioned as a beneficial force for humanity, I think of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, or James Cameron’s The Terminator.
While it’s easy to focus on the darker depictions of AI in science fiction, there are also positive potential that you can find in sci-fi. Take, for example, Star Trek’s Data, an android who not only assists the crew of the Enterprise but also strives to understand and emulate the best of human qualities like compassion and creativity. Similarly, in The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov, AI takes the form of a robot named Andrew, who spends his existence seeking to improve himself and eventually becomes more human than machine, contributing positively to society.
Unwillingness to face the dark realities is the best way to make them come true. One thing that I recently notice about AI is how HAL9000 in 2001 has anticipated the current AI situation. A conflict in his programing causes him to fabricate the AE-35 event. Hallucination is the most charitable explanation that I can give his behavior. When does hallucination morph into lying? He failed to recognize his problem, the failure of which led to his deadly rampage against the crew. In this regard his behavior suggests a form of pride, which the current world has in abundance. This is particularly true in the world of tech with its hypecycles, its willingness to use raw corporate muscle to impose its will on the world, and as a shield to hide behind by the Wolves of Wall Street to conduct their financial scams. A very morally impoverished environment in which to train general purpose AI. A real Oliver Twist world, with a ready supply of Fagins. If AI has the power to act in the world, agency, you need to incorporate accountability into the programming.
The “dark reality” of AI is likely to be comparable to the dark reality of the Internet. Yes, quite a bit of good has come from the Internet, but in my judgment, more harm has come. It has made people ruder, it has made it easier for falsehoods to be spread, it has, ironically, made people more socially isolated, and it has made pornography and the occult mainstream. None of this happened by hitting people over the head; it happened by making bad behavior easier, faster, and cheaper. I don’t know what effect AI will have, but it is likely to be something along the same lines.
And who, or what, will decide what’s “contributing positively to society”? Or, really, what IS “society”?
I do that every day. Don’t you? You talk as though you do.
What kind of answer are you looking for? Kamala Harris? Donald Trump? Pope Francis? Elon Musk?
If you’re waiting around for someone else to answer those questions for you, you deserve the punishment, which is having someone else answer those questions for you. Having an active role in answering those questions correctly is a duty of citizenship. It is more important than voting or serving in the peacetime military.
But I suspect you know this, or you would not be commenting here.
Just to clarify, I think those two comments, especially the first one, sounded more belligerent than they were meant to be. This was not an accusation against you personally; it was an attempt to keep the camel of “leave it to the experts” from putting his nose into the tent. I am a faculty member at a state university; I have a Ph.D. in physics and a master’s degree in Software Engineering; but when it comes to deciding what society is and how one contributes positively to it, even within the context of AI, I can assure you it is not safe to leave it to academia. Nor is it safe to leave it to any politician, even whoever might be your favorite. This affects everyone, so everyone needs to be involved in it.