Is the concept of God a form of “belief technology” that mankind created to face the uncertainties of life and death? Is it undergoing a gradual replacement by AI technology?
Nietzsche didn't render God or religion obsolete, and I don't expect AI to succeed either, but it'll change more minds.
I'm a pantheist, so I wouldn't say that God is a belief technology or any sort of artifact, but I would describe religions this way.
>Prayer is wishful thinking?
It can also be meditative or contemplative, wakeful dreaming, imagining a future that I have some ability to shape. Then it's not asking God to change for me. It's asking God, or my model of God, how I can change God for myself.
>Religion and politics are siblings.
Yes. Monotheism is the genesis of the state.
.....
The "voice" (or stream of language) in your head is not your consciousness. It's something of which you are conscious. Other animals seem conscious but don't have the stream of language in their heads.
When you dream your brain generates a stream of images and sounds as well, but when you're awake, you're not aware of a generated (or predicted) stream of images and sound because you're conscious of the stream supplied by your eyes and ears.
You don't "hear" the "voice" in your head when you listen to someone else speak or when you're speaking either.
ChatGPT is like whatever in your neural network generates the "voice" in your head. It's not in any sense an artificial consciousness, and it's not intended to be. Whether an artificial consciousness is possible at all may be unknowable.
My belief is that “God is Conscousness” and is the “stuff” of all creation and reality. Since Consciousness exists beyond time, space and mass, all creation and reality also exists beyond time, space and mass - ie all ‘ reality’ is a co-creation of instances of consciousness within universal Consciousness. We “live Life” in a state of consciousness that generates artifacts that remain externally. Those ‘artifacts of consciousness’ (actions) are stitched together to manifest our ‘reality’ as we experience it. Billions of sentient being have produced trillions of articons that like pixels on a screen of conscience that we interest with every moment of our lives. This is what I believe to be the essence of Creation and Reality. It is a future book waiting to be written.
Consciousness is a mystery to me. Artificial Intelligence, as a technology and as a model of human intelligence, has fascinated me since I was a computer science major in the early eighties, but I have always distinguished "intelligence" from "consciousness" and left consciousness to the mystics. I'm not denigrating the mystics. I know from my subjective experience that consciousness exists, but it's a mystery beyond the scope of scientific empiricism.
GPT is not about consciousness at all. Maybe its machinery is already conscious. I doubt it, but how would I know? How would I measure it? How can I even know that you're conscious? Maybe solipsism is true. Maybe my consciousness is the only "real" one and all the rest of you are figments of my imagination or whatever Matrix is feeding me. I can't prove otherwise.
Your way of thinking is called panpsychism, and it explains consciousness as well as any other, seems to me. I prefer to let it be without trying to explain it, but I like your idea that the world, at least the world of artifacts, is an embroidery of all of our past actions. Artifacts are overrated, seems to me, but they do dominate my experience.
My beliefs as described briefly above have evolved from the 1970s when I read A Course In Miracles, practiced its series of guided daily meditations, and founded/led a study group. That experience accelerated my interest in consciousness. Subsequenty, I found https://theconsciousnesspodcast.com/about. It is a fascinating series of interviews between the host and consciousness researchers. Panpsychism is one of many domains of investigation that was represented in that series of 42 episodes.
Consciousness, as I understand and define it, is everything. Nothing - no idea, no thing, to feeling - can be excluded from it because they are all artifacts of consciousness which exist eternally in the “Mind of God” (AKA “Universal Consciousness”).
None of the 42 episodes of The Consciousness Podcast covered my ideas of “God, Creation and Reality” because they are my own conclusions. Some episodes came close, but were never the same. I plan to write an eBook on this topic in the next year or two after I complete my book on Cronyism.
Some people question how far humans can develop AI to the level that I propose in this essay.
To provide context, I believe that GPT-4 is in it's infancy both in terms of its inherent capabilities and in the ability of our skills/experience in using it productively. Both will evolve and expand in the years ahead.
Also, GPT-4 is only one producer of regenerative AI systems that employs LLM (large language models). GLEAN is another Silicon Valley startup that is carving out a less ambitious market for corporate applications designed to augment proprietary search capabilities of all eligible employees. This approach solves the very real possibility of increasing employee productivity by reducing the time spent searching for internal documents and images. I wish that I had this capability when I was an IT Recruiter who used a database of over 70,000 records of job candidates that contained their resumes, interview notes, and more! https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-ai-podcast/id1186480811?i=1000602318087
Finally, in a 2022 interview at an Education conference, Bill Gates claimed that tools like GPT will soon become capable of tutoring students on a variety of academic subjects as effectively as the best human tutors. This bodes well for the future of education in many areas, not just in Academic settings. This is also a great way to get new employees up to speed in subjects that are crucial to productivity.
These are just a few examples of ways that regenerative AI/ LLM technologies will likely be deployed in the near term. SuperIntelligent systems may be decades away, but not beyond the realm of possibility sooner given the amount of interest and money that is pouring into this tech,
Listen to this recent interview on The AI PODCAST to get a sense of the current growth in this domain.
I stand by my prediction that a growing number of citizens will eventually choose AI over prayer to seek answers to problems they encounter in their lives. The timeline for this shift and its pace is necessarily unpredictable as are most things related to human communities.
People already have the option of discussing their problems with other, highly intelligent, educated people, and many people stubbornly choose prayer instead. Until it becomes superhumanly intelligence, an artificial intelligence is just one more of these options, and it will never become supernaturally intelligent. Praying people believe that they're communicating with a supernatural intelligence, and even if they're deluding themselves, AI can't provide the same satisfaction any more than a conversation with Einstein could provide it.
But I agree that AI will replace a lot of talk therapy, including the sort that theologians now provide, as well as tutoring. One of earliest attempts at a chatbot, ELIZA, was just this sort of thing. Therapeutic psychology has been replacing its conventionally religious counterpart for at least a century, though it often seems as delusional as the "unscientific", religious sort.
I'll check out the podcast. Thanks. Someone in Tom Woods' supporting listener's group recommended this article, BTW.
Nietzsche didn't render God or religion obsolete, and I don't expect AI to succeed either, but it'll change more minds.
I'm a pantheist, so I wouldn't say that God is a belief technology or any sort of artifact, but I would describe religions this way.
>Prayer is wishful thinking?
It can also be meditative or contemplative, wakeful dreaming, imagining a future that I have some ability to shape. Then it's not asking God to change for me. It's asking God, or my model of God, how I can change God for myself.
>Religion and politics are siblings.
Yes. Monotheism is the genesis of the state.
.....
The "voice" (or stream of language) in your head is not your consciousness. It's something of which you are conscious. Other animals seem conscious but don't have the stream of language in their heads.
When you dream your brain generates a stream of images and sounds as well, but when you're awake, you're not aware of a generated (or predicted) stream of images and sound because you're conscious of the stream supplied by your eyes and ears.
You don't "hear" the "voice" in your head when you listen to someone else speak or when you're speaking either.
ChatGPT is like whatever in your neural network generates the "voice" in your head. It's not in any sense an artificial consciousness, and it's not intended to be. Whether an artificial consciousness is possible at all may be unknowable.
My belief is that “God is Conscousness” and is the “stuff” of all creation and reality. Since Consciousness exists beyond time, space and mass, all creation and reality also exists beyond time, space and mass - ie all ‘ reality’ is a co-creation of instances of consciousness within universal Consciousness. We “live Life” in a state of consciousness that generates artifacts that remain externally. Those ‘artifacts of consciousness’ (actions) are stitched together to manifest our ‘reality’ as we experience it. Billions of sentient being have produced trillions of articons that like pixels on a screen of conscience that we interest with every moment of our lives. This is what I believe to be the essence of Creation and Reality. It is a future book waiting to be written.
Consciousness is a mystery to me. Artificial Intelligence, as a technology and as a model of human intelligence, has fascinated me since I was a computer science major in the early eighties, but I have always distinguished "intelligence" from "consciousness" and left consciousness to the mystics. I'm not denigrating the mystics. I know from my subjective experience that consciousness exists, but it's a mystery beyond the scope of scientific empiricism.
GPT is not about consciousness at all. Maybe its machinery is already conscious. I doubt it, but how would I know? How would I measure it? How can I even know that you're conscious? Maybe solipsism is true. Maybe my consciousness is the only "real" one and all the rest of you are figments of my imagination or whatever Matrix is feeding me. I can't prove otherwise.
Your way of thinking is called panpsychism, and it explains consciousness as well as any other, seems to me. I prefer to let it be without trying to explain it, but I like your idea that the world, at least the world of artifacts, is an embroidery of all of our past actions. Artifacts are overrated, seems to me, but they do dominate my experience.
My beliefs as described briefly above have evolved from the 1970s when I read A Course In Miracles, practiced its series of guided daily meditations, and founded/led a study group. That experience accelerated my interest in consciousness. Subsequenty, I found https://theconsciousnesspodcast.com/about. It is a fascinating series of interviews between the host and consciousness researchers. Panpsychism is one of many domains of investigation that was represented in that series of 42 episodes.
Consciousness, as I understand and define it, is everything. Nothing - no idea, no thing, to feeling - can be excluded from it because they are all artifacts of consciousness which exist eternally in the “Mind of God” (AKA “Universal Consciousness”).
None of the 42 episodes of The Consciousness Podcast covered my ideas of “God, Creation and Reality” because they are my own conclusions. Some episodes came close, but were never the same. I plan to write an eBook on this topic in the next year or two after I complete my book on Cronyism.
Some people question how far humans can develop AI to the level that I propose in this essay.
To provide context, I believe that GPT-4 is in it's infancy both in terms of its inherent capabilities and in the ability of our skills/experience in using it productively. Both will evolve and expand in the years ahead.
Also, GPT-4 is only one producer of regenerative AI systems that employs LLM (large language models). GLEAN is another Silicon Valley startup that is carving out a less ambitious market for corporate applications designed to augment proprietary search capabilities of all eligible employees. This approach solves the very real possibility of increasing employee productivity by reducing the time spent searching for internal documents and images. I wish that I had this capability when I was an IT Recruiter who used a database of over 70,000 records of job candidates that contained their resumes, interview notes, and more! https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-ai-podcast/id1186480811?i=1000602318087
Finally, in a 2022 interview at an Education conference, Bill Gates claimed that tools like GPT will soon become capable of tutoring students on a variety of academic subjects as effectively as the best human tutors. This bodes well for the future of education in many areas, not just in Academic settings. This is also a great way to get new employees up to speed in subjects that are crucial to productivity.
These are just a few examples of ways that regenerative AI/ LLM technologies will likely be deployed in the near term. SuperIntelligent systems may be decades away, but not beyond the realm of possibility sooner given the amount of interest and money that is pouring into this tech,
Listen to this recent interview on The AI PODCAST to get a sense of the current growth in this domain.
I stand by my prediction that a growing number of citizens will eventually choose AI over prayer to seek answers to problems they encounter in their lives. The timeline for this shift and its pace is necessarily unpredictable as are most things related to human communities.
People already have the option of discussing their problems with other, highly intelligent, educated people, and many people stubbornly choose prayer instead. Until it becomes superhumanly intelligence, an artificial intelligence is just one more of these options, and it will never become supernaturally intelligent. Praying people believe that they're communicating with a supernatural intelligence, and even if they're deluding themselves, AI can't provide the same satisfaction any more than a conversation with Einstein could provide it.
But I agree that AI will replace a lot of talk therapy, including the sort that theologians now provide, as well as tutoring. One of earliest attempts at a chatbot, ELIZA, was just this sort of thing. Therapeutic psychology has been replacing its conventionally religious counterpart for at least a century, though it often seems as delusional as the "unscientific", religious sort.
I'll check out the podcast. Thanks. Someone in Tom Woods' supporting listener's group recommended this article, BTW.
...
Oh. That was you. :)