Sunday 14 May 2023
[music upon waking: “Wooden Ships”; Crosby, Stills, Nash]
For weeks, now running into months, I’ve been vexed about this piece of the technology domain we are calling “artificial intelligence.” (See “The deception of the digital,” 25 November 2022, and “A word about time,” 26 September 2022. Vexed, probably isn’t really the right word, more like confused, angered, frustrated, saddened and deeply troubled. An editorial opinion in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman (May 2, 2023) entitled “We Are Opening the Lids on Two Giant Pandora’s Boxes” eloquently spoke of the very real dangers we are standing in, having ‘released’ AI into the wild, so to speak. Yet many discussions of AI are almost willfully ignoring the very real spiritual dimensions of the technology domain.
This Sunday morning, I had walked with Luke on the beach in the early morning breeze, calling out to God, with all my problems, questions, praise and worship songs, but there was only the sound of waves and seagulls in reply.
In my spirit, on the watery periphery of my vision, I can make out a signal flag:
This stands for the letter “U”, which means: “You are standing into danger.”
After driving home, I was standing in the driveway when the Lord spoke a single sentence:
There is a difference, child, between making tools and making idols.
There was a whisper, a pointer that followed this, a reference to scripture: Habakkuk 2:18-19; a beautiful chapter, Habakkuk has made his complaint to the Lord that the wicked seem to be acting without regard to any judgement or discipline from the Lord. Now, he stands is watch and listens for the Lord’s reply; it is these latter verses that jumped off the page to me, the Lord’s words about idols:
18 “Of what value is an idol carved by a craftsman?
Or an image that teaches lies?
For the one who makes it trusts in his own creation;
he makes idols that cannot speak.
19 Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’
Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’
Can it give guidance?
It is covered with gold and silver;
there is no breath in it.”
I am covered with a small shiver of Holy fear, because I’ve been talking about “guidance, navigation & control” asking in many technical pages and forums, asking: “Who or what is giving us our guidance, who or what is doing the navigating, and who or what is actually in control?” With all our technology, all our devices, flooding us with ‘information’ daily, it’s impossible not to think of the tiny silver-colored contacts and tiny components in each of our phones.
There is a cross-reference in my bible to Psalm 115, and here is further amplification about our idols (verses 2-8),
2 Why do the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
4 But their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
8 Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.
It is repeated confirmation, because he has been emphasizing again and again his dimensionless-ness, his very being in more than our five senses (see “More than angry”, 7 April 2023, and “The Trail of Tears”, 19 January 2022). And here is an answer to me directly about the idol we are making of “artificial intelligence”, something which cannot smell of feel or love, something which has no breath in it al all. Lord, thank you so much.
No sooner have I finished writing the scriptures in my notebook than he continues:
It is good that you create, build, make, for you are made in my image, my dream. With all your senses, with all of the workings of your beautiful hands, I want you to use what I have given you, use the abundance of the earth. But use to your good, to the good and service of all, and use in reverence for everything on earth.
(I know in my spirit that the word “use” means “steward, because I know that we have been given a Dominion Covenant, a responsibility to tend and nurture all that we see, have and use.)
Your abilities to imagine and create tools are precious gifts, child. I watch and guide – if you seek me – as you make tools and structures and instruments, which grow and feed and heal. I see you make tools of destruction and warfare. I know that tools made for one purpose have become tools or manipulation and oppression. I know that tools for communication have become something more vicious than many can even recognize or admit. The enchantment cast by the abusers of these tools makes many of my children believe that they are powerless, and the must somehow meekly accept ‘some of the bad to get more of the good.’
Consider that very carefully, child, because the carefully constructed addictive qualities built into some of your tools has made them idols, and I detest idol worship among my people.
What have I told you about tools before, child?
“That your tools have dimensions unknown to us, Father. That your tools are sharper and harder and more precise that we can imagine. That your tools remove lie, hypocrisy, and poison from us.[1]”
I have told you before that so many of your tools and inventions and manufactured things are marvelous. Truly there is much good accomplished by so many. I know how you have used tools to create complex systems, clockworks, mechanisms, and structures. I created in you the abilities to observe, identify and resolve problems and challenges.
I know every word that is written and spoken about your technologies and tools, child. I know all the supposed reasoning and logic that attempts to justify creating and releasing tools and technologies which do not nurture and serve, but dominate, steal and oppress. I know that you will be mocked and ridiculed for saying these things, because I know that my people are quibbling over gnats of definitions while giant creatures run amok through your midst.
You are right to observe that unbridled, unconstrained, un-thought-out creations will crash, as so many of your own experiments and tests have done before. If you, my children, will ask me, I will show you how and what, and at what pace to build and develop. Yet if you ask me, seek me, I require that you listen more than hear, that you see more than look, that you feel and love more than just touch. I require that you then obey as I direct, I require that you build and create for mercy and justice, and to do this for every generation that will follow you. For you know that I lead and rule with transcendent Love and Power.
So much do I love you.
[1] See: “Tools to remove lie hypocrisy poison”, 7 June 2022