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Digital Companionship and the Future of Relationships

As AI technologies become more human-like, will they ever be able to meet our need for companionship? Pets already play that role creating deep bonds with us that transcend verbal communication. Yet, intelligent technologies have the potential to engage us in complex interactions never thought possible beyond two humans. That is the promise of digital companionship. What does that mean for the future of human relationships? First, definitions are in order.

For the purposes of this piece, I will define digital companionship as an app (chatbot, digital assistant, or avatar) that develops a relationship with the user that goes beyond servicing basic needs. In other words, it is able to carry on a conversation as opposed to Siri and Alexa today that only provide answers when prompted. These are not glorified google searches but instead can conjure unique personalities and engage in small talk.

As you can imagine, these are too far from our present. The controversy around LaMDA illustrates this well. We are starting to wonder whether AI is sentient because they are getting that good. All it takes is for a company to commercialize this technology in a product offering that appeals to customers.

What is the need?

Trends in longevity improvement and a loneliness pandemic point to a future where digital companions are not nice-to-have luxuries but possibly essential for human social needs. Entrepreneurs the world over are salivating at the market opportunity this presents. After all, a product that can develop a relationship with its customers addresses humanity’s most basic needs. Many people would be willing to pay big $s for that

Image by Stefan Dr. Schulz from Pixabay

This process of relationship building is already underway through small changes in how we interact with technology. Consider for example the growing demand for moving from typing to voice-activated solutions. It is really annoying to have to type a new address when setting up directions in a vehicle. Also, consider how easier it would be to manipulate apps on your phone if voice-activation technology was mature. The future is not on digits but on voice. As AI assistants start talking back with more intelligence and personality, bonds with them will naturally emerge. Just watch your children play around with Alexa and you will see what I mean.

While voice will be key, there is still a growing need for text generation in the form of chatbots. Innovative companies are already experimenting with advanced chatbot applications that provide mental health support. This is still a far cry from therapy but a step in that direction. Unlike voice, a technology that is yet to perfect both comprehension and generation, text generation manifesting in apps like GPT-3 and others are showing impressive abilities to carry on intelligent conversations.

Current developments point to a near future where chatbots can carry meaningful conversations, emulating humanity’s most cherished relational skill: the ability to create and sustain dialogue. Dialoguing chatbots will easily become anthropomorphized regardless of whether they reach sentience.

Signs of Things to Come

Intuition robotics is already envisioning a future where the elderly will rely on digital companions. On their site, they feature the Elli-Q , their first-generation digital companion that consists of a tower (kind of like Alexa but with a moving head) and an e-reader. Hence the user can interact with the tool both through text or voice. It offers help with reminders, track vitals, provides news and weather update, and searches for professionals while also throwing a joke here and there.

Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay.

The last feature is the most interesting, suggesting the direction they are aiming for. It is clear they want this to be not just a digital assistant but a pleasant companion. In a fact, in a separate blog the company outlines the path toward full-blown digital companions that will not only provide information but become empathetic and personalized agents. In other words, they will behave more like a true human helper and companion.

While I am not convinced that the switch to digital companions is inevitable, their bold proposal here is worth pondering. A lot of times, the difference between tech adoption has little to do with the technology itself but with the ingenuity of an application. As intuition robotics focuses its energies on elder-care, they have a better chance to get it right. Whether Elder customers will be willing to shell out $250 upfront + the monthly $30-$40 fee remains to be seen.

Re-defining what Digital Companionship is

My search took an interesting turn. When typing “Digital Companions”, Ecosia‘s (my preferred search engine that plants trees for every search) top hit was not a company or an informative article. Instead, it pointed me to a government service in the UK. In that case, digital companions are willing teenagers that help the elderly connect with the Internet. They are actual humans helping other humans find their way through the ever-confusing digital world.

Photo by Alex Knight on Pexels.com

This site’s definition certainly deviates from my original idea of digital companionship. Yet, it made me pause to ponder: could digital companionship be less about AI and more about digitally-enabled ways to connect people to each other?

Before we undertake the arduous task of designing an AI product that can effectively help the elderly, shouldn’t we first define what it is? Should AI really replace human or simply augment them in this task? That is, can we imagine a feature where adventurous high schoolers can use AI tools to help the elderly find the services they need? I think it is this type of augmentation approach that is missing in the tech industry and also why we need to democratize technology skills so new options arise.

If the choice is between a cute intelligent robot or a job-giving empowered teenager – I would certainly opt for the latter.

4th AIT Podcast: AI at Work: A Tale of Two Workforces

AI and new technologies are growing by the day in workspaces. How can that change the future of work?

In the fourth episode of the AI Theology Podcast, Elias Kruger and Maggie Bender, member of our AIT Board, talk about the tale of two cities. The tale of two labor forces, one shaped by automation and efficiency and one empowered by augmentation and creativity. How are these changes affecting us? How can we look at this process through a theological lens?

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Here are some of the references we used for this episode

60% of Americans whose job can be done from home are now working from home most of time. In many cases by choice. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/02/16/covid-19-pandemic-continues-to-reshape-work-in-america/

The promise of 5G networks is already propelling innovators to design new modes of communication. From remote robotic surgery to ultra-responsive autonomous cars, the 5G network leans into a world of higher reliability and lower latency. In this episode, we talk to experts revolutionizing the way we transfer skills via the technology of touch. Podcast The future according to now on Apple Podcasts

Algo surveillance and measurement https://techmonitor.ai/leadership/workforce/algorithmic-bosses-changing-work

Call center – monitored calls https://partnershiponai.org/what-workers-say-about-workplace-ai/

The Future of Christianity: Echoes of a Coming Global Church

The previous blog dealt with macro-trends. They help frame the future by establishing parameters that undergird the external common factors that all humanity must face. Now it is time to zoom in a little closer to our topic. Our task is to paint futures of the intersection between AI and faith. In this blog, we are looking at the faith side of the equation and primarily focusing on the future of Christianity.

With that said, much of what is said here could apply to other religions and even non-religious beliefs. In fact, with the rise of the nones, the latter may very well become a viable option for millions. In fact, one could see the rise of secular movements around human rights and social justice as an offshoot of progressive Christianity, albeit with severed ties to religion. That is, in projecting a future of Christianity, we may be touching on the future of spirituality that has transcends religion.

Global Trends

I would like to recognize the Global Christian History community for some help on this section. They pointed me to a wealth of resources that help us understand the development of Global Christianity while also pointing to some possible futures. They are also a great group for those interested in learning more about Global Christianity.

First, it is important to attend to statistics on the topic. While there are disagreements on the degree and speed of change, it is clear that the center of Christianity is moving away from Europe and North America towards the global South – Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In an interesting twist, the lands once evangelized by the North are now the ones leading growth and missionary efforts.

Photo by Riley Sullivan on Unsplash

There is disagreement, however, around whether Christian growth will keep Muslim growth in check or whether the latter will overtake it to become the largest religious group in the world. A Pew Research 2015 report points to a Muslim majority future in 2015 while Gordon-Conwell Center of Global Christianity points to a 2050 where Christianity retains majority status. Regardless of who is right, Christianity’s relationship with Islam will continue to be a defining factor in Africa, South Asia (excluding India), and the Middle East. It will also play an important role in Europe which is slated to be 10-15% Muslim in the coming decades.

African and Asian Paths

The African continent will continue to be an engine for growth and vitality for Christianity. A growing population and nascent movements will ensure a continuous spread of religious practice and fervor throughout the continent will ensure that one in 3 Christians globally will be there in 2045. Even more interesting though is how African Christianity will look like. Current trends show a tilt towards indigenous movements which are giving Christian practice a true African flavor.

I also wonder about its impact in the West as migrant patterns continue to bring in millions of African Christians to Europe and North America. Immigrant churches will play a pivotal role in connecting the vibrant Christian south with a post-Christian Western societies. Furthermore, the African presence is already shaping the Anglican communion as the recent boycotts of Lambeth 2022 show.

The story in Asia is mixed with growing representation in countries like South Korea (Protestant) and the Philipines (Catholic). The biggest question mark is the future of Christianity in China. Will we see the continuation of a dual system of official and underground churches or will the government allow the latter to come out of the shadows? Either way, Christianity will continue to be an influential social force in this global power.

A Tale of Two Americas

The American continent(s) will likely follow diverging paths. North America’s decline in Christian religious identification is likely to continue if not even accelerate. There is some uncertainty here. Consider that in 2015, Pew Research predicted that 66% of people in the US would identify as Christians in 2050. A more recent 2021 PRRI estimate shows it at 69% in 2020! Certainly differences in methodology and margin of error. With that said, it is not unreasonable to assume that religious identification with Christianity is on an accelerated decline.

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

With that said, Christianity will continue to be a significant religious and political force in the United States for decades to come. However, the uncertainty is around whether the US will look more like Canada (55% Christian) or the American South (76% Christian). The deciding factor here will be more on the non-White minorities which by then will comprise the majority of the population.

As we look south of the Rio Grande, the factors are less about Christianity in general but the shift from Catholic to Protestant Christianity. In Brazil, for example, Protestants (Evangelicals) will likely surpass Catholics by the early 2030’s to become the largest religious group in the nation. That is a significant shift in the region that boasted a Catholic identity for nearly 500 years. It has significant political and social ramifications that we are yet to fully comprehend. For now, it suffices to say that evangelical support for Bolsonaro was decisive in the 2018 presidential election.

A Technology-Enabled Future

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

Above all, the rise of nones globally will be a defining factor for not just Christian identity but the nature of Christian worship (liturgy). A strong current against established religious organizations will give way to new expressions of the faith. The ubiquity of technology and its potent ability to establish connections independent of geography can foster innovation. That is, maybe the most interesting trends in Christianity will be less about numeric adherence and more about the transformation of faith practices. This movement represents a shift away from local congregations to a global spirituality that is shared in small groups mediated through telepresence technologies.

What will that look like? I recently attended a webinar that may spell a path for things to come. It was hosted by the New Wine Collective, an emerging group promising to re-think church. While more details are forthcoming, this looks like an app-enabled way of building face-to-face Christian community. This is not simply a “Facebook church” but more of a way to use technology to enable offline gatherings. Could we call this a personalized church model? Only time will tell. I am very curious to see where this goes.

One thing is certain, the future of Christianity will be more entangled with the development of emerging technologies in the decades to come. We have yet to conceive of metaverse-enabled liturgies. Could 5 G-enabled liturgies where a priest handles the sacrament remotely count as in-person mass? Don’t get me wrong – traditional church buildings will still exist for a long time. They will just be less essential for the life of faith.

Climate Change and Geopolitics: Macro-Drivers of the Future

In the last blog, we introduced scenario planning as an established academic and business practice for framing the future. The practice helps us break out of fixed thought patterns and step into a growth mentality that envisions multiple options for the future. The first step in this scenario planning journey is to pick the most important macro drivers that will define the parameters of the future. There are many options here such as economics, climate, geopolitics, technology, or social change. Before we get there, some preliminary thoughts on how we got here are in order.

Preparing to Imagine

At AI Theology we are in the business of imagining the future. In fact, in our recent meetings we established our mission statement as the following:

To forge a community of lifelong learners who will imagine theological AI futures that promote the flourishing of all life.
AI Theology mission statement

That is, we are above all a lifelong learning community. We look at the future with an open mind and stare at it as an organism rather than an individual. We believe we hear God better when we do it together. By expanding the table of conversation, including voices once shut out, we can finally hear the Spirit’s whisper from the margins.

Yet, we also have centered our task, our work to do, on imagination. What? You read that right, our number 1 job is child’s play – the skill we unlearn with adulthood. We believe that imagination is one way we can express the indwelling divine breath into form. As a form of embodied creativity, just like faith, imagination brings forth what was not there before.

Photo by J. Balla Photography on Unsplash

Scenario Planning as the Scaffold for Creativity

As you may suspect, our goal in pursuing scenario planning is not for the survival or thriving of an institution, instead, it is creative. We seek to imagine futures based on these scenarios we come up with. Furthermore, we seek to express them through relatable stories and through explanatory prose.

Our goal is not to create strategic plans but to elicit inspiration and action towards preferred collective futures. One of the biggest failures of technological development and theological thinking in our time is one of imagination. Straightjacketed by rigid religious dogma or agendas seeking perpetual profit, we produce more of the same even as needs and capabilities change. The failure of imagination is what leads us back into reclaiming a lost past rather than building a future anew. In this journey of transformation, we must first awaken to imagination.

Yet, this is not a free-flowing process devoid of structure and order. Discipline and creativity are not opposites but instead can work together to forge masterpieces. Hence, in the spirit of integration, we look to business practices, often tied to profit-making objectives, and turn them into a platform to build dreams about the future. In our case, we believe this will take shape in the form of fiction and non-fiction content about the future. We want to engage in scenario planning for painting realistic pictures of what the future could look like.

Setting the Foundations of a Future Canvas

If we are serious about imagining the future with the help of scenario planning, the first step is deciding on two main variables that will decide the parameters for our future. I would like to call them “macro-drivers” of the future. They are general enough to cut across multiple areas but also intelligible enough to be understood in simple terms. They don’t cover all areas of life but are big enough to set the terms upon which humanity builds their future.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

For example, while one may not have foreseen in the early 1900s, growing nationalism would set the terms for the rest of the century. In the previous century, industrialization and colonization were defining macro drivers. These are not events but more like themes. They capture the gestalt of an age.

If we look at our present and the near-term future (20 years from now), which macro-drivers are setting the terms for what is to come? You may have guessed it but after some deliberation, we are currently settling on climate change and geopolitics. While these are important now, we expect them to become all the more defining in the next two decades.

The Climate Wager

Human driving warming of the earth is undoubtedly the challenge of our times. This is a pressing issue now and is only expected to loom larger in our collective psyche. It is an interesting variable because it is not dependent on a few actors, like political leaders, but represents the compounded effect of our relationship with the more-than-human world. It depends on us but also on how nature reacts. Both sides are extremely hard to predict but we can at least make scenarios based on agreed-upon temperature markers.

You might have heard about the 1.5C challenge nations put forth as a threshold they would like the planet to stay in by 2100. What you may not know is that we are already at 1.1 and at a rate of 0.2 warming per decade, we would reach this temperature by the early 2040s. That is, the goal for 2100 may come 40-50 years earlier! Naturally, when thinking about scenarios on climate, one of them see the earth reaching 1.5 or even 1.7 in 20 years – the pessimistic scenario. On the other end, would be to trust that changes implemented now will accelerate to curb that to something more like 1.3C. The variation seems small but it makes all the difference.

Climate change represents a marker and metric of how well humanity works with the earth to sustain life. Given the multiple warnings from scientists and the challenges we are already experiencing, I believe climate must be part of every exercise considering the future. It is the container, the stage setting the conditions in which we will live (or not) our future lives.

Globalism vs Nationalism

Geopolitics is another macro-driver of the future. It represents the combined impact of national political decisions. One could say that geopolitics will be a by-product of climate impact. There is some truth to that, especially over the long term. However, in this case, the macro-driver really is how nations cooperate with each other to face planetary challenges. That is, will they seek to work together toward shared goals (globalism) or prefer to protect their own interests first (nationalism).

A recent example would be COVID-19. On that occasion, national responses leaned mostly toward globalism. There was unprecedented sharing of information, vaccines, and cooperation as a way to mitigate the worse of the pandemic. Even with the significant cost in human lives, globalism ensured worst scenarios did not occur. This is, however, not a guarantee for the next two decades.

The Economist published a seminal article, The New Political Divide in 2016 that expressed this choice well. It argued that the central political question would no longer be between left and right (capitalism vs socialism) but between open and closed societies. This was a remarkable statement considering that it preceded Trump’s electoral victory and the rise of nationalists in other countries such as Brazil and the Philippines. This debate is far from over and it would be a mistake to interpret Trump’s defeat in 2020 as a decline of nationalism in geopolitics. Political candidates may change but the allure of isolationism and parochial politics will continue

Conclusion

There are many others but we thought we would start with these two to set the canvas for the stories we are to create. As we mentioned before, the point here is not to “get the future right.” We are not just extending these trends to build one future. Instead, we are looking at them for a range. That is, what would it look like if we actually are able to slow global warming? What does it look like if it accelerates? How will a nationalistic world look? What happens if globalism reigns supreme? We believe the future will lie somewhere in between these ranges, yet preparing for its extremes is a good strategy.

While our focus is on the future AI and faith, we believe that climate change and geopolitics will be defining parameters. Think of it as a canvas, the prevailing background upon which the future of AI and faith will be painted. By doing so, we acknowledge that technology and religion do not happen in a vacuum but are as much drivers as recipients of their surroundings.

Painting Alternative Futures: Scenario Planning for AI and Faith

In the previous blog, I introduced the new project AIT is embarking on and we invited the reader to start thinking about the future by looking first at the past. We now turn to scenario planning as a way to prepare for the future of AI and Faith. For those curious about this, Future studies is an academic field that has developed solid business practices in the last 50 years. I even considered pursuing a degree in it in my early 30’s but that’s a story for another day. The main point here is to mine some of these practices to see what could be useful as we engage in a project to imagine alternative futures for AI and faith.

What is Scenario Planning?

A common foresight practice for large institutions to engage in is scenario planning. In the 1970’s Royal Dutch Shell corporation leadership wanted to engage in a robust process to prepare for an uncertain future. While the company already employed forecasting techniques for short-term planning, leaders felt the need for a different approach as they looked into the mid and long-term future. They turned to a practice developed a decade earlier by the Rand corporation to help them imagine new futures.

Instead of spending too much energy trying to predict the future, the leadership group sought to create plausible scenarios. That is, instead of simply extrapolating current trends, they wanted to paint pictures of possible futures at a conceptual level. Their point was not to “get it right” but to challenge executives to consider multiple alternatives.

In the early ’00s, I participated in one of these sessions with my employer. It was an exciting experience for a young professional and probably one of the reasons I got hooked on future thinking and what inspired me to consider scenario planning for AI and faith. On that occasion, the group chose 2 main variables that would define our scenarios. Then, plotting in a graph, we would create 4 scenarios that would alternate high and low for each of the variables. Each quadrant would have a catchy name that described the combination of the two variables for each scenario as illustrated in the picture below:

In essence, scenarios are nothing more than narratives about the future. They are not striving for accuracy but must be compelling, plausible, and memorable. This way, they can play an important role in painting a picture of the future that the decision-maker can prepare for.

Why Focus on Multiple Futures?

Looking at the chart above can be overwhelming and it begs the question: why build multiple futures? Wouldn’t that create more confusion over what to do next? That’s a fair question to anyone encountering this practice. Yet, there is a strong reason for doing so. Futurist Amy Webb explains it this way:

It’s about flexibility. Most people and organizations are very inflexible in how they think about the future. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine yourself in the future, and there are neurological reasons for that. Our brains are designed to deal with immediate problems, not future ones. That plus the pace of technology improvement is becoming so fast that we’re increasingly focused on the now. Collectively, we are learning to be “nowists,” not futurists.

Here’s the problem with a “nowist” mentality: when faced with uncertainty, we become inflexible. We revert to historical patterns, we stick to a predetermined plan, or we simply refuse to adopt a new mental model.
Amy Webb – interview for the World Economic Forum

Thinking through alternative options forces us out of our short-term mentality. It also breaks us out of pre-conceived ideas based on the past about how the future may unfold. In short, scenario planning undercuts the tendency to predict the future putting the focus instead on the range of possibilities.

Who should engage in this practice?

By now, it should be clear why large organizations are already embedding this practice into their planning cycle. Yet, is that limited to large institutions? Should smaller entities or individuals consider this practice? I would contend the answer is a resounding yes. In a world of increasing uncertainty, there is a growing incentive for democratizing scenario planning.

Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash

Certainly, in the field of AI and faith, there is a pressing need for considering alternative futures. It would not be prudent to assume AI adoption or even the make-up of the faithful will remain constant. Communities of faith are still reeling from the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 crisis. AI development and adoption continue to march on at neck-breaking speed. Just between these two factors, the possibilities are quite numerous not even considering the uncertainties around climate change and geopolitics.

In a fast-changing world, we need to reject the dichotomy of resorting to old thinking patterns or accepting change in passive resignation. There is a third way which is preparing for possibilities with courage, caution, and hope. That is why AI theology is engaging in scenario planning discussions to paint alternative futures. This is how we can best serve church, industry, and academia.

Stay tuned!

Let’s Talk About the Future of AI and Faith

AI Theology is embarking on an exciting new project about the future. In the next months, we’ll be exploring how faith and AI will interact decades from now. Through research, dialogue, speculation, and prayerful reflection, we hope to paint plausible pictures of what may be ahead of us. More to come on that.

You might wonder why even engage in such pursuit.

Here is one reason:

“Those who think about the future can shape it while those who do not only react to it” (Insta post)

Now that I got your attention, let me flesh this out a bit further. In the last few months, I have been discussing what AIT was about with the advisory board. We wanted to take time to re-group and re-think priorities. Like any endeavor, we have limited time and resources. Hence, choosing what to focus on is crucial if we are to have any chance of being effective.

What we realized is that any discussion about emerging technologies is inevitably a dialogue about the future. While AI technologies present daunting challenges for our time, this is little compared to where it is taking us as a society. By playing out current possibilities in decades to come, we can offer a clearer picture of the dangers and opportunities of AI so we can instigate action in the present. In a digital environment where attention is measured in milliseconds, it is time we recover the long view.

Looking into the Past for Clues

If you think this is a daunting task, you are not alone. Often, we can barely plan what to eat for dinner. Imagine looking 20 years out! At first, it seems overwhelming if not a pointless exercise. Yet, stay with me for a bit.

A good starting point, albeit imperfect, is projecting your memory back. Do you remember what life was 20 years ago? Some of you weren’t even born or were too young to remember. Others may feel a rush of nostalgia for a time long gone.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

I, for one, (age alert ahead) remember very well where I was and what I was doing in 2002. It was a pivotal year when I graduated from college, got married, and started working for the same bank I still work for today (2 mergers later). What a year! One that would define the course of my life for decades to come.

As I reflect back on my younger self, I wonder what would surprise that 22-year-old if he could join me in 2042. Which technology would wow him the most and which one would horrify him? Certainly, he would be excited to learn that video calls on a handheld device were now possible. For somebody who dated 4 years long-distance that would have been a game changer! While cel phones already existed then, they were as dumb as they go, barely allowing you to make phone calls.

This is not just a trip down memory land but a way to calibrate our thoughts to the perception of change over time. That is, considering how our younger self would experience our present not only helps us understand what has changed but most importantly, how fast things have changed. The rate of change is key if we are to think about the future. Getting a sense of the rate of change is probably the best takeaway from this exercise in order to engage with the actual future projection we originally intended to do.

Peering into the future

Older version of me created by the Face app

Who is the wise older man in the right? Well, this is AI’s prediction of what I will look like in the future. Not bad, huh? I am not sure I can pull the beard off since the best I can do today are scattered patches of hair throughout my face. With that said, I am impressed with how realistic the picture looked.

If AI can draw such a compelling future of my looks how about if I ask it to tell me more about the world in 2042? Well, that’s what I did. Using Open AI GPT-3 language model, I typed in the prompt: “What will the world look like in 2042?”

Here is its response:

In 2042, the world will be a very different place. Technology will have advanced significantly, and humanity will have made great strides in solving many of the problems that plague us today. Poverty, hunger, and disease will be largely eradicated, and global warming will be under control. People will be living longer, healthier lives, and we will have colonized other planets. The internet will be even more omnipresent than it is today, and we will be able to communicate with each other instantaneously no matter where we are in the world. We will have flying cars, and robots will be a part of everyday life. The world will be a much more peaceful and prosperous place, and it will be an exciting time to be alive.

Ok, AI – dream on! That was both too general and too optimistic for my taste. No doubt, AI has a long way to go before it can give us a comprehensive picture of the future.

How about you?

What would your 20-years-younger-self notice about today? What would surprise him or her?

When you project yourself forward 20 years, considering the rate of change of the last 20 and keeping it mostly constant, what do you see?

What world do you visit?

Drop your answers in the “send us a message” section on the right or in our FB community

We would love to hear from you.

AIT Podcast Episode 3: Demystifying Christian Transhumanism

Have you ever wondered what Christian Transhumanism is? In the third episode of the AI Theology Podcast, Elias Kruger interviews Micah Redding, our AIT Board member on his personal experience with Christian Transhumanism. He is the founder of the Christian Transhumanist Association (CTA). They talked about the origins and future of the movement. Micah also shared how Transhumanism informs and shapes his Christian practice.

Listen to us on:

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God is NOT like Algorithms: Negating AI’s Absolute Power

In my previous blog, I discussed the totalitarianism and determinism already created by today’s AI, concluding my argument with a distinction between a positive and a negative theology of AI. I also made, without any elaboration, an appeal for the latter. The terminology of this distinction may lead to some confusion. The name “artificial intelligence” is usually applied to computer-based, state-of-the-art algorithms that display behavior or skills of which it has formerly been thought only human beings are capable. Notwithstanding, an AI algorithm, and especially the whole array of AI algorithms that are active online, may exhibit behavior or create an environment whose qualities go beyond the level or capacity of the human mind and, even more than that, appear to be “God-like” or are treated so.

Here enters theological reflection with two of its forms: positive and negative theology, of which the second is less common and more sophisticated than the first. Positive theology describes and discusses God by means of names and positive statements like – to give a few simple examples – “God is spirit”, “God is Lord”, “God is love”, and so on. But, according to negative theology, it is equally true that, by reason of God’s radical otherness and difference from anything in the created world, God can only be spoken of through negative statements: “God is not” or “is unlike” a “spirit” or a “lord” or “love”. Accordingly, these two distinct ways of approaching God can translate into the two following statements: “God is AI” or “God is not AI.”

Taken from unsplash.com

Defining a Positive Theology of AI

Scandalous as it may seem, a positive theology of AI is hardly avoidable, and its subject should be less the miraculous accomplishments of future AI and all the hopes attached to it than the everyday online spectacles of the present. True, the worship of today’s AI scarcely pours out into a profession of its divinity in the manner of the Apostle Thomas when confronted with the risen Christ (“My Lord and my God!” John 20:28), but spending with it the most beatific hours of the day including the first and last waking moments (before going to pee in the morning and after doing so in the evening) certainly qualifies as a life of prayer.

In a sense, the worship of AI does more than prayer to the Christian God could ever do in this life as AI provides light and nurture in seamless services tailored to every user’s interests, quirks, and wishes. Indeed, it casts a spell of bedazzlement on you in powerful alliance with the glamour, sleekness, and even sexiness of design. So it comes to pass that you end up in a city whose sky is created by AI, or, rather, whose sky is AI itself – a sky where your highest aspirations turn to. Could this city and sky possibly be those prophesied by John the Seer in the Apocalypse? “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it…” (Revelations 21:23).

Image by anncapictures from Pixabay

Valiant Resistance or Fruitless Nostalgia?

But, let’s suppose, there arises an urge in you to resist the city and sky of AI, recognizing that they are not God’s city and God’s sky, that AI is not God, and God is unlike AI – in other words, you negate AI as God. Of course, this is more than an act of logic and goes beyond the scope of a theoretical decision. The moment you realize you have treated AI as God, and you have been wrong, you change your attitude and orientation, and start searching for God elsewhere, outside the realm of AI.

You repent.

This metanoia of sorts leads you to trade your smartphone for nature, opting to live under the real sky. There, you experience real love and friendship outside social media platforms. You may even discard Google Maps and seek to get lost in real cities and find your bearings with the help of old paper maps.

Such actions, however, are not the best negative theology of AI. Do they not exhibit a nostalgia for the past, growing wistful about the sky, the love, the city, and the God of old? Is God nostalgic? Would God set up God’s tent outside the city of AI into which the whole of creation is moving? Have you, searching for God outside the realm of AI, not engaged in an unserious, even dull form of negation?

There must be another way.

In fact, the divine realm empowered by AI carries in itself its own theological negation, moments when its bedazzlement loosens its grip and its divine face undergoes an eclipse – moments that are empty, dull, boring, meaningless, or even full of frustration or anxiety. Such moments are specific to this realm and not just the usual downside of human life. It was, if you are willing to realize, the proliferation of such moments that have made you repudiate the divinity of AI and go searching outside its realm, and not just a sudden thought that occurred to you.

Image by strikers from Pixabay

A Balanced Negative Theology of AI

As a matter of fact, it was not only you; such moments in the midst of all the bedazzlement, now and then, happen to all devotees. Does the ubiquitousness of such moments mean that all citizens of the city of AI participate in its theological self-negation, and, therefore, living in it necessarily includes the act of negating it? In a sense, yes but this is just a ubiquitous and unintended, almost automatic negation, and not the right one. As a rule, the citizens of the city live in the moment and for the moment; they naively live its bedazzlement to the full and suffer its moments of meaninglessness to the full. In doing so, however, they are unfree.

Instead, you are better off living in the city of AI accompanied by a moderate and reserved, yet constant negation. In this balanced and overall experience, you always keep the harrowing moments of emptiness and meaninglessness in mind with a view to them no longer quite coming to harrow you and, above all, with a view to AI’s bedazzlement no longer gaining the upper hand.

As a consequence of your moderate and sustained negation of AI as God (a negative theology of AI), you create a certain distance between you and AI which is nevertheless also a space of curiosity and playfulness. Precisely because you negate it in a theological sense, you can curiously turn towards AI, witness the details of its behavior and also enjoy its responsiveness to your actions. And it is precisely in this dynamic and undecided area of free play with AI, opened up by your negation, that God, defined as to what God is not (not AI) and undefined as to what God is, can be offered a space to enter.

Gábor L. Ambrus holds a post-doctoral research position in the Theology and Contemporary Culture Research Group at The Charles University, Prague. He is also a part-time research fellow at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome. He is currently working on a book on theology, social media, and information technology. His research primarily aims at a dialogue between the Judaeo-Christian tradition and contemporary techno-scientific civilization.

Egalitarian Human Futures in the Wake of AI, Part II

In this article, I’m going to use the idea of image-bearing and social synecdoche to help us discuss the relationship between AI, theology and egalitarian governance. The first article here provides background for this discussion.

In the Ancient Near East, to say that someone was the image of a god was to say that they had a governance function, as priest or king. At the core of the priestly function is mediation between divine and human realms, as a part who represents the whole group. The priest manifests social synecdoche before the divine. In a Christian context, we also understand a priest as a mediator between the group and the divine Word or Logos, the ordering principle that brings rational coherence to Creation.

In this network of ideas, we can hold together the experiences of scientific learning and true communication, along with the experience of human agency in governance. After all, scientists stand-in for all of us as mediators of the Word spoken in Creation, within their area of specialization. They bring back to the group what they have been shown: realities that they don’t invent, but which their reconciling work helps us all access. Similarly, political representatives stand-in for the group as their representative agent, embodying its decision-making capacity. Both scientific and governing roles properly involve experiences of meditation through social synecdoche. Both roles involve a priestly element.

Now let’s focus our attention on the experience of mediation. What does it feel like when you represent a group, bridging the gap between us and a powerful reality beyond us? Along with inevitable frustrations, we might also experience the joy of discovery, the delight of shared understanding, and the satisfaction of reaching an agreement that is good for us all. The instrumental goods that come from this kind of mediation are substantial. But beyond this, the shared experience itself is of profound value. Priestly image-bearing isn’t just about what is achieved externally through representative mediation. It necessarily involves the human experience of that process.

Expanding human priesthood

To say that humans bear the image of God is to say that we all have a special vocation to foster experiences of mediation, within various domains at various scales. If humans really are image-bears of God, that means the experience of bringing a greater wholeness into being is an irreducible aspect of what we are for. Whether it is in our garden, our home, our workplace, or in some larger domain of responsibility, this is the miracle that we all are.

Imagine science or politics proceeding without authentic experiences of mediation. Maybe we can build a zombie world where research and agreement seem to be happening, but where the AI agents conducting this work have no experience, and so no appreciation of the syntheses achieved. Or we might have an authoritarian politics in which people are threatened (or blindly herded by algorithms) into group conformity, but they are out of conformity with any kind of larger reality. Both scenarios, I hope, sound profoundly and transparently dystopian. Against these possibilities, I would encourage us to envision a society (even an AI-human society) that focuses on fostering the universal priestly function of humanity. It would be a spiritually egalitarian and deeply discursive society.

Franciscan spirituality and egalitarianism

In appealing to spiritual egalitarianism, we can advocate for the kind of elevating egalitarianism I have described above. However, egalitarianism can easily collapse into a universal denigration, rather than elevation, of image-bearers. Although laudably egalitarian, this other approach can reproduce patterns of domination and abuse, when a liberatory elevation is more important than ever. At the core of this issue are different ways of appropriating Franciscan spirituality.

By Christian Buehner taken from unsplash.com

Consider: Pope Francis styled himself after Brother Francis of Assisi. Far more than a whim, this is a powerful and enduring signal of his egalitarian vision for the church. But there is a radical tension here. The Pope has long been styled as the Pontifex Maximus, an office inherited from Roman high priests and then Emperor-priests. During the life of Jesus, this office was held by Emperor Tiberius. A common meaning associated with “pontifex” (both then and now) is “bridge builder.” The term reflects the mediating role of the priest.

The irony of a Pope taking the name Francis is extremely sharp: Saint Francis of Assisi rather pointedly never became an official priest. He remained Brother Francis, never Father Francis. What does it really mean for the Pontifex Maximus, the Father of Fathers and the Head of the College of Cardinals, to style himself after Brother Francis? It might be a gesture toward general elevation. But it also might indicate a denigrating abdication of responsibility. What, exactly, is happening in this moment of clerical anti-clericalism?

Anti-Clericalism and Lay Authoritarianism

Pope Francis genuinely reflects a Franciscan vocation in many ways. For example, he has recently made some important post-clerical accommodations in the church, allowing non-priests to lead Catholic orders. Fittingly, Franciscans like Daniel Horan, OFM, have celebrated this decision as an anti-clerical victory.

However, this particular form of egalitarianism can easily foster unaccountability and authoritarian populism. Consider: the primary opponent of Pope Francis for the hearts and minds of Catholics in the US today is the EWTN media network. Slate’s history of the network describes the development of this lay-led media empire as it has become the Catholic Fox News.

The Pope does not approve of EWTN. He has even referred to it as “the work of the devil,” as Slate documents. But can he exorcise EWTN? No. The network, founded by a Franciscan nun, is led by the laity. That makes it relatively unaccountable to anyone but its funders. Institutionally, the Catholic Church doesn’t have a comparable media network, so it can’t interact discursively at relevant social scale. The Pope is left to inveigh ineffectively against its aggressive authoritarian populism, because it mediates the Pope to US Catholics.

So lay leadership is already being tried. EWTN’s broadcasters are the lay media priests that Pope Francis is not. It hasn’t yielded the discursively democratic fruit we might hope it would.

We can easily imagine AI leadership that simply amplifies these problems. What if EWTN next pursues the attention-harvesting of the Youtube algorithm, but on steroids? It could govern us by creating even more intense propaganda rabbit holes. Humans would be even further divorced from their shared vocation as true mediators, because of the absence of truth criteria that connect the project to a broader Creational and social whole. Instead, they would become objects in an increasingly sophisticated epistemic capture system.

Universal image-bearing as a powerful alternative vision

What can we do? To start, we should clarify what is of first importance in this brave new world. A primary goal of society at all scales must be to honor the universal priestly vocation of humans, as image-bearers. We need to embrace our callings to represent bodies at different times and in different contexts. That includes our own physical bodies, as well as layered networks of group agents at all social scales. Representation matters. This is true in media, but it pertains even more to the many groups we belong to.

By Michal Mation taken from Unsplash.com

The egalitarianism of Pope Francis is to be commended, but it is flawed. We don’t need to remove priests from governance. Instead, we need to help all people discern and accountably live out their priestly roles, as mediators and representatives. It isn’t that we should let brothers govern Fathers, but that we must see all the ways that we already govern each other as sibling priests, as experiencing mediators.

Fortunately, we have a precedent for this in Christian tradition. Catholic and otherwise, we all view Jesus as our high priest. But even He didn’t call Himself Father. Rather, he fulfills his priestly function as our equal, as our sibling, and as the Son. Matthew 23:9 specifically articulates this egalitarian vision of priesthood when Jesus warns, in an especially dire passage of Scripture:

“And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.”

Here at the dawn of AI governance, we urgently need to hear and heed our brother and high priest.

Daniel Heck is a Pastor at Central Vineyard Church in Columbus, OH. His work focuses on immigrant and refugee support, spiritual direction, and training people of all ages how to follow the teachings of Jesus. He is the author of According to Folly, founder of Tattered Books, and writes regularly on Medium: https://medium.com/@danheck

Egalitarian Human Futures in the wake of AI: Social Synecdoche

In this series of two posts, I’ll equip you with a simple but distinctive set of concepts that can help us think and talk about spiritual egalitarianism. This kind of conceptualization is urgently important in a time when the development of AI systems can increasingly take on leadership and management functions in society. This post will articulate a concept of social synecdoche and why it is especially relevant now, in thinking about human-AI societies. The next post will apply it to a question of church governance today, in an illustrative way.

Our thoughts here will center on a socially and sociologically important concept called synecdoche. Here are two examples of it at work:

When a Pope acts, in some meaningful sense, the Church acts.

When a President acts, in some meaningful sense, the nation acts.

Both sentences illustrate social synecdoche at work: it is the representation of a social whole by a single person who is a part of it. The indefinitely expansive use of this mode of group identity is what will define the term ‘axial consciousness’ in my usage. I use the terms “axial age” and “axial consciousness” to define a substantial shift in human history, that is marked by the emergence of the slave machines that we call civilization. By focusing attention on a figure who could, at least in principle, unify a human group of any size in themselves, ancient civilizations created increasingly expansive governments, eventually including a variety of warring empires.

My usage of the term “axial” provides an alternative way of framing these big history discussions about AI and ancient human history. It invites comparison (and contrast) with Ilia Delio’s more standard usage of axial language in Re-enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion.

Insofar as we are psychologically, socially, and somatically embedded in large social bodies today, it is substantially through the sympathetic “social magic” of synecdoche. Both then and now, we have access to this axial mode of consciousness whenever we identify with a representative of an organized group agent, and thereby identify with it. At the same time, we are also able to slip out of this mode and become increasingly atomized in our experience of the world.

A Visceral Connection with the Whole

For example, when we feel that leaders or a group have betrayed us so deeply that we are no longer a part of it (that it has left us), we experience a kind of atomized consciousness that is the opposite of axial consciousness. This process is often experienced as a painful loss of identity, a confusion about who we are, precisely because we substantially find our identities in this kind of group through representation.

This capacity is rooted in a deep analogy between a personal body and a social body, and this analogy is not only conceptual but also physiological: when our nation is attacked, we feel attacked, and when something happens to our leader, we spontaneously identify with them as a part of the group they represent. Social synecdoche is therefore part of the way we reify social bodies. Reifying a social body is what we do when we make a country or Church into a thing, through group psychology processes that are consciously experienced as synecdoche: the representation of the whole by a part.

Synecdoche and Representative Governments

This notion of social synecdoche can help us notice new things and reframe familiar discussions in interesting ways. For example, how does social synecdoche relate to present debates about representative democracy vs autocracy? Representative government refines and extends this type synecdoche, articulating it at more intermediate scales in terms of space (districts, representing smaller areas), time (limited terms, representing a people for an explicit time) and types of authority (separations of powers, representing us in our different social functions).

This can create a more flexible social body, in certain contexts, because identification is distributed in ways that give the social body more points of articulation and therefore degrees of freedom and potential for accountability. For all of this articulation, representative government remains axial, just more fully articulated. If it weren’t axial in this sense, representative government wouldn’t reach social scale in the first place.

So sociologically and socially, we are still very much in the axial age, even in highly articulated representative governments. In a real sense, representative government is an intensification of and deepening articulation of axial consciousness; it responds to the authoritarianism of a single representative by dramatically multiplying representation.

Synecdoche and the Axial Age

Ever since social synecdoche facilitated the first expanding slave machines, there has been a sometimes intense tug-of-war between atomized consciousness and axial consciousness. This effort to escape axial social bodies through individuation has always been a feature of the axial experience, often because axial group agents are routinely capricious and cruel and unjust. For example, our first known legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu, bears witness to the ways in which a legal representative of the axial social body incentivized the recuperation of slaves who desperately tried to individuate:

If a slave escapes from the city limits, and someone returns him, the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him.

For all of the privation involved in privateness, some people throughout the axial period have also attempted various forms of internal immigration (into the spirit or mind) as a means of escape. Some, but certainly not all, axial spirituality can be understood in these terms. The Hebrew prophetic tradition, for example, does not engage generally in internal escapism, but instead seeks to hold axial social bodies to account, especially by holding their representatives accountable.

Photo by Frederico Beccari from unsplash.com

Social Synedocque in the Age of AI

Our long history as axial beings suggests that we will probably stay like this, even as we build the technology that will enable us to make AI Presidents and Kings. It seems possible that we will have AI systems that can be better than humans at fulfilling the office of President before we have AI systems that are better than us at plumbing or firefighting. In part this is because the bar for good political leadership is especially low, and in part it reflects the relative ease of automating a wide range of creative, social and analytical work through advanced text generation systems. If this sounds absurd, I’d recommend getting caught up on the developments with GPT-3 and similar systems. You can go to openai.com and try it out if you like.

How hard would it be for an AI system to more faithfully or reliably represent your nation or church or city or ward than the current ones? Suppose it can listen and synthesize information well, identify solutions that can satisfy various stakeholders, and build trust by behaving in a reliable, honest and trustworthy way. And suppose it never runs the risk of sexually molesting someone in your group. By almost any instrumental measure, meaning an external and non-experience-focused measure of its ability to achieve a goal, I think that we may well have systems that do better than a person within a generation. We might also envision a human President who runs on a platform of just approving the decisions of some AI system, or a President who does this secretly.

In such a context, as with any other case where AI systems outperform humans, human agents will come to seem like needless interlopers who only make things worse; it will seem that AI has ascended to its rightful throne.

A Call to Egalitarianism

But this precisely raises the central point I’d like to make:

In that world, humans become interlopers only insofar as our goals are merely instrumental. That is to say, this is the rightful place of AI only insofar as we conceive of leadership merely as a matter of receiving inputs (public feedback, polling data, intelligence briefings) and generating outputs (a political platform, strategy, public communications, and the resultant legitimation structure rooted in social trust and identification).

This scenario highlights the limits of instrumentality itself. Hence, instead of having merely instrumental goals for governance, I believe that we urgently need to treat all humans as image-bearers, as true ends in themselves, as Creation’s priests.

A range of scholarship has highlighted the basic connection between image-bearing and the governance functions of priests and kings in the religions of the Ancient Near East. Image-bearing is, then, very early language for social synecdoche. In an axial age context, which was and is our context, the notion that all of humanity bears God’s image remains a challenging and deeply egalitarian response to the problem of concentrated power that results from social synecdoche. That is what I’ll turn to in the next post.