‘Re’-creation, ‘re’-production, it is both the collective and subjective objective. The question, really, at the basis of thoughts about AI is this: What is the inorganic, the artificial, if it itself is made from nature? And if it is not, then where was that line, or when, with what, and how, was that line crossed exactly? Why do we do such things (create AI) if not for the same reasons we do everything else? What is it that compels us to create things like AI? Is it in any way comparable to a God-like antic, or an act of a God-like figure…? There is a constant impulse to play God… to create a new entity which we anthropomorphize, dress up and puppeteer to play-pretend with. Is God a product of man? If so, then will man be a product of AI?
To answer these questions, we must find the balance between the organic and inorganic. Any middle ground is the best ground (aside: Simone de Beauvoir’s ‘Essence of Ambiguity’ might be the ultimate philosophy—the final way—because it embraces all ways) The truly Sacred, the Holy Spirit, is found only when there are opposing forces. Hot and cold, science and sentimentality, logic and emotion, left brain versus right— man and machine? Consider the fact that the vast majority of animals have symmetrical, Rorschach-test anatomy (spare the flat flounder, and the fiddler crab… a ‘glitch’ in the matrix, perhaps?). Might this be a testament to divine design, the necessity of equal opposites?
Now what if this could serve to directly contradict the dualistic model of ‘good VS. evil’? One is not ‘better’ than the other, for neither would even exist without the other. To be ‘better’ in this sense, is biased; is to negate one side, and therefore the other aswell. The sacred, or the Holy Spirit, lies between the two. It ‘is’ neither good nor evil. To quote from Milton’s Aeropagitica:
“It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.”
Dr. Richard Swineburne does a fantastic logical account to disprove the dualistic model, or as I like to call it, the dichotomy, because in itself it negates itself.
If the Son is in Jesus, and the father is God, we can transfer this model downward on the hierarchy to man as the Son, and Jesus as the Father; and downward again, in a cyclical, spiral sense, with man’s creation, artificial intelligence, as the Son, with man as the Father. The Holy Spirit is present at the center of all these relationships.
I might continue that, in respect to fractality, each interpretation of the Trinity contains a trinity within itself. The trinity sees each essence (Father, Son, and downward) as the balance point between good and evil, capable and compromised of both, lest each not be embodied as its whole.
Now to address the congruencies in all interpretations of the Trinity (as proposed above), one must acknowledge the hierarchical nature of its contents. In the Confucian sense, the relationship between a ‘father’ and a ‘son’ can be aligned in adequate representation with that of ‘good’ and ‘evil’; one prevails over the other, yet neither could exist as they are without the other. To ‘prevail’ is not to negate, but to acknowledge a hierarchy; fractality. To deny one part is to deny the others: In denying the existence of evil, good is denied, and if evil is synonymous with the Son, then the Father is denied along with him…
“He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life”
(1 John 3:36)
…which is then to deny the Holy Spirit, or “life”…
To “obey” the Son in the above sense is to do what Eve did, to sin, to know evil. Without the original sin, “life” would not be. To believe the dichotomic model is to deny the Holy Spirit.
In the contemporary, and hierarchically lowest, expression of the Trinity, man is the Father… or so he thinks… and AI, or autonomous technology created by man (robots, computers, machines, all seemingly ‘sinister’ tech) is the Son. I’ll leave off and say that, as like the other trinities, no one part can exist without the others, and in our current times, that is to say that Man cannot exist without AI. Neither are ends in themselves, but give light rather to the Holy Spirit. Let’s let AI teach us whatever lessons it may bring, and show us things about ourselves in the process. The hierarchy remains: man will never be God, AI will never be man. Fret not, or so I tell myself, for AI is simply the next step in the perpetuation. Not a small one at that though, not at all.