Saturday, June 9, 2018

Musings on AI as an Existential Threat to Religion, Legitimacy and Politics


 By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is an existential threat to the existing norms of religion, legitimacy and politics since AI, unlike human intelligence, lacks adequate moral and political parameters of legitimacy.  Henry Kissinger has asked:
           What would be the impact on history of self-learning machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be no category of human understanding? Would these machines learn to communicate with one another? How would choices be made among emerging options? [Is] it possible that human history might go the way of the Incas, faced with a Spanish culture incomprehensible and even awe-inspiring to them? [Are] we at the edge of a new phase of human history?    
In a historical context, Kissinger considers the current Internet Age the successor to the Age of Reason and Age of Religion, and AI the culmination of the Internet Age:

           Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world order.
           But that order is now in upheaval amid a new, even more sweeping technological revolution whose consequences we have failed to fully reckon with, and whose culmination may be a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms.
          The internet age in which we already live prefigures some of the questions and issues that AI will only make more acute. The Enlightenment sought to submit traditional verities to a liberated, analytic human reason. The internet’s purpose is to ratify knowledge through the accumulation and manipulation of ever expanding data. Human cognition loses its personal character. Individuals turn into data, and data become regnant.  

Will humankind forfeit control of the future in the new age of AI?  What will be the standards of legitimacy that constrain AI when it relies entirely on data to make its decisions?  Kissinger acknowledges the challenge of AI to philosophical and political norms of legitimacy, and for people of faith, religion rather than philosophy provides their standards of legitimacy.
The spiritual forces of good and evil that permeate religion and motivate human decisions cannot be reduced to data that can be programmed into AI.  The love of God and neighbor in the greatest commandment expresses the ultimate good in Christian morality, and the compassion at the heart of that altruistic love cannot be reduced to data and computerized.

The term AI has rightly been criticized as an oxymoron.  True intelligence is based on more than data that can be programmed into a computer.  It requires wisdom that is unique to humanity, and religion has long been a repository of both wisdom and spiritual truths.  Good decisions must be based on spiritual truths that are beyond human knowledge as well as truths revealed by advances in knowledge that have dispelled ancient truths of religion.

American democracy is a conundrum that pits individual wants and rights against providing for the common good.  The Christian religion has long provided a spiritual context and moral standards of legitimacy to resolve those complex and conflicting issues of competition and cooperation that characterize American culture.  AI lacks the spiritual context to do that.

Robotics and AI can vastly improve the quality of life, but to do so they must have moral parameters derived from religion that defy quantification.  For religion to survive as a primary source of morality in the era of AI, it must recognize the need to apply its moral standards to the stewardship of democracy and a politics of reconciliation--but it has failed to do so.

Without the moral parameters of human wisdom imbued with spirituality, the evolution of AI as a superior form of intelligence creates an existential threat to the moral foundations of religion and politics.  That threat should be a wake-up call for Americans to reexamine and reshape their religion, standards of legitimacy and politics to meet the challenge of AI.


Notes:

On Henry Kissinger’s views on the dilemma of AI and how the Enlightenment ends, see https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/.
Jake Jenkins has reported on the (holy) ghost in the machine: Catholic thinkers tackle the ethics of artificial intelligence.  Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, questioned whether the phrase “artificial intelligence” is an oxymoron.  Sister Ilia Delio, head of the science and theology focused Omega Center, has said that “Pope Francis is absolutely right in raising the bar of our attention to technology, but first, the church has to adapt its theology to meet the needs of a world in evolution.  The difficulty with the church is that technology, like everything else, runs on the principles of evolution. Evolution runs on the principle of greater complexification, and that’s where the church is resistant.” On the moral quandaries of AI in matters of military legitimacy, such as Google assisting the U.S. military use machine learning to analyze drone footage, Professor Levi Checketts has observed “There’s a very strong moral question about whether (AI-assisted weapon systems) can be used to wage a just war.  Should a machine be making decisions on the battlefield for human beings? Will a machine be able to follow the responsibilities of just-war theory?” Seventy years ago, Catholic theologians had to re-evaluate the just-war concept after nuclear weapons were developed, and Checketts said AI could force a similar re-examination of Catholic principles about violence. Professor David Chiang remains skeptical whether “strong AI” will ever truly rival a living person, saying “As a Catholic I don’t believe that so-called artificial intelligence will ever be intelligent,” although he acknowledged, “It’s really an article of faith for me (rather) than a well-worked-out philosophical position.”  Checketts noted that Aquinas and other classical Christian thinkers have put intelligence at the center of personhood, and asked, “Can AI can be baptized. That really complicates common theology.” As for robot persons, Delio is dubious: “The key issue here is one of freedom,” she said. “And that, I think, only belongs to organic biological human personhood. To be called into a relationship and to respond to that relationship is still … unique to the human person as an image of God.” See https://religionnews.com/2018/05/22/the-holy-ghost-in-the-machine-catholic-thinkers-tackle-the-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence/.

After a speech-making graduation season, Danielle Allen opined on the limits of artificial intelligence: “[It is] transforming our economy, but is light years from being able to guide our culture. It can navigate our cars, but not us. And, of course, only we can choose the destination. For both of these things, I’m still placing my biggest bets on human intelligence.  See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-artificial-intelligence-doesnt-understand/2018/06/01/ba9a133c-65a2-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?utm_term=.b1.

On recent mixed reviews on the commercial future of self-driving cars as the latest development in AI, see Recent crashes have shaken public’s confidence in self-driving cars, at http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/technology/self-driving-cars-aaa/index.html?iid=EL; and GM and Softbank are putting $3 billion into self-driving cars; Self-driving cars will change your life more than you can ever imagine. See
See also Wymo’s fleet of self-driving minivans is about to get 100 times bigger at  https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17412908/waymo-chrysler-pacifica-minvan-self-driving-fleet.

For an imaginative and exciting Sci-Fi account of AI in a para-military context, see Patrick Hemstreet, The God Wave, Harper Voyager, 2016.


Related Commentary:

(12/8/14): Religion and Reason
(1/11/15): The Greatest Commandment: A Common Word of Faith
(1/18/15): Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy
(2/15/15): Is Religion Good or Evil?
(3/1/15): Religion as a Source of Good and Evil (Atheism)
(6/7/15): The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing
(8/9/15): Balancing Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities
(1/23/16): Who Is My Neighbor?
(1/30/16): The Politics of Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves
(4/2/16): The Freedom of Religion and Providing for the Common Good
(7/2/16): The Need for a Politics of Reconciliation in the Wake of Globalization
(7/23/16): Reconciliation and Reality
(9/17/16): A Moral Revival to Restore Legitimacy to Our Politics
(11/26/16): Irreconcilable Differences and the Demise of Democracy
(12/3/16): Righteous Anger in Religion and Politics
(12/17/16): Discipleship in a Democracy: A Test of Faith, Legitimacy and Politics
(1/7/17): Religion and Reason as Sources of Political Legitimacy, and Why They Matter
(1/21/17): Religion and Reason Redux: Religion Is Ridiculous
(1/28/17): Saving America from the Church
(2/4/17): When Confrontation Trumps Reconciliation in Politics and Religion
(2/25/17): The Need for a Revolution in Religion and Politics
(3/4/17): Ignorance and Reason in Religion and Politics
(4/22/17): The Relevance of Jesus and the Irrelevance of the Church in Today’s World
(7/15/17) Religion and Progressive Politics
(9/9/17): The Evolution of the American Civil Religion and Habits of the Heart http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/09/the-evolution-of-american-civil.html.
(9/23/17): Tribalism and the American Civil Religion  
(10/7/17): A 21st Century Reformation to Restore Reason to American Civil Religion http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/10/a-21st-century-reformation-to-restore.html.
(11/18/17): Radical Religion and the Demise of Democracy
(12/16/17): Can Democracy Survive the Trump Era?
(12/23/17): If Democracy Survives the Trump Era, Can the Church Survive Democracy? http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/12/if-democracy-survives-trump-era-can.html.
(1/20/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Morality and Religion in Politics
(1/27/18): Musings on Conflicting Concepts of Christian Morality in Politics
(3/3/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on America’s Holy War
(3/24/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Christian Morality as a Standard of Legitimacy http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2018/03/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on_24.html
(3/31/18): Altruism: The Missing Ingredient in American Christianity and Democracy
(4/7/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on the Need for a Moral Reformation
(4/28/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on the Virtues and Vices of Christian Morality
(5/12/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Christianity and Making America Great Again
(5/19/18): Musings on Morality and Law as Symbiotic but Conflicting Standards of Legitimacy
(5/26/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Mysticism and Morality in Religion and Politics
(6/2/18): Musings on Good Versus Evil and Apocalypse in Religion, Legitimacy and Politics


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Saturday, June 2, 2018

Musings on Good Versus Evil and Apocalypse in Religion, Legitimacy and Politics


 By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

Cass Sunstein has depicted the good and evil that now defines America’s polarized partisan politics as political Manichaeism.  Ross Douthat has noted that “so far the Trump presidency has clearly been an apocalypse--an unveiling, an uncovering an exposure of truths that had heretofore been hidden.”  The ugly truth is that voters in America’s two-party duopoly consider their party good and the other party evil. There is no middle-ground in politics.

Jesus summarized the greater good in the greatest commandment to love God and love our neighbors—including those of other races and religions—as we love ourselves.  God’s will is to reconcile and redeem humanity, while Satan’s evil will is to divide and conquer; and Satan does a convincing imitation of God in both the church and in politics.  Indications are that Satan is winning the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil.

       The election of Donald Trump has tested the limits of political legitimacy, and the white Christians who elected Trump have tested the credibility and relevance of Christianity.   Few American Christians consider the teachings of Jesus as moral imperatives of their faith. They have subordinated those moral teachings to exclusivist religious beliefs never taught by Jesus.  While over 70% of Americans claim to be Christians, most oppose a politics of reconciliation.

Rather than loving those of other races and religions, most white Christians limit their love to people like themselves and a mythical nation of faded glory now threatened by changing demographics.  To avert their loss of political power they support a demagogue whose morals are the antithesis of those taught by Jesus, but who has promised to make America great again.
In matters of faith, most white Christians have exchanged the Jesus of the gospels for a mystical savior who offers cheap grace and blesses a materialistic and hedonistic America.  Their prosperity gospel promises them worldly wealth and power as a reward for their faithfulness, and they believe that God sent Trump to save them. They may be half right. God may have sent Trump as the antiChrist to destroy them and set the stage for the Apocalypse.
If there is a cosmic spiritual battle raging between the forces of good and evil, the church has ignored it with exclusivist doctrines that have done more to divide people of different races and religions than reconcile them.  Jesus was a Jew who sought to reform his legalistic religion by putting love over law, and he knew that his teachings would not be popular.  The church knew that, too, and promoted exclusivist doctrines to gain the popularity needed for worldly success.
For Christianity to avoid the dustbin of history in an increasingly pluralistic world, it must assert the prominence of the universal teachings of Jesus over its exclusivist religious doctrines.  Since the institutional church is not likely to do that, Christians must find a way to reform or reinvent the church to promote discipleship as a priority of faith.

John Wesley provided a precedent for doing that.  Wesley was a maverick 18th century Anglican priest who organized small groups called Methodists who met weekly to discuss the nature of discipleship and then put it into practice.  Wesley had no intention to create a new Christian denomination. His purpose was to revitalize the heart of his Anglican church.

        America’s Protestant church, like Wesley’s 18th century Anglican church, needs a moral reformation to reconcile people of faith based on the universal and timeless teachings of Jesus rather than dividing them with exclusivist religious doctrines.  For the church to save itself from irrelevance and oblivion it must promote the stewardship of democracy in the American civil religion, beginning with how to distinguish the difference between good and evil in politics.

Notes:
Cass Sunstein has observed a Manichainian good versus evil moral dichotomy in American partisan politics.  As antidotes to Manichaeism in politics, Sunstein quoted Lincoln and MLK (there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us), but there is little evidence that reconciliation will overcome the deep divisions that plague American politics. See https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-22/americans-polarization-is-hardening-into-hatred.

Jim McDermott considered the Roseanne debacle a reflection of polarized American moral norms that have degraded to good versus evil, with little in between.  He cited an “...Ignatian spirituality meditation known as “The Two Standards.” The retreatant is asked to imagine themselves standing on a battlefield; at one end flies the banner of Christ, at the other the standard of the forces of darkness. It is a 16th-century version of the cartoon angel and devil on our shoulders, with us in the middle, fielding the invitations and trying to figure out which is the path of life.  Usually the decisions of our lives are nowhere near as obvious as all that; we struggle to decide between two good options, or two bad ones, or a good one and a bad one that in other circumstances might actually be pretty good. ...The most unsettling thing about the ABC-“Roseanne” debacle...was that it was pretty black-and-white: invest in stories like “Alex, Inc.” [cancelled due to poor ratings] that speak to our best selves, our aspirations, or make a big splash (and a quick buck) with a show that too often seemed interested in drawing out our worst instincts.  …’Roseanne’ mostly featured characters belittling one another. At its roots it celebrated not working-class white America, but meanness and smallness. See https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/05/30/roseanne-and-two-standards-abc

Ross Douthat has cited the debunking of the venerable Paige Patterson by Southern Baptists for his support of traditional church doctrine on patriarchal authority and its tolerance of husbands abusing wives as a sign of the Baptist apocalypse, which Douthat considers a test of the church rather than a final judgment heralding the end times.  Douthat concludes: “Now that you know something new and troubling and even terrible about your leaders or your institutions, what will you do with this knowledge?  For Baptists as for all of us, the direction of history after Trump will be determined not just by Providence’s challenge, but by our freely chosen answer.” See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/opinion/paige-patterson-southern-baptist-convention.html.
Michael Gerson has described the evils of the Trump era as “a renaissance of half-witted intolerance,” and called for political leaders with “an aspiration of unity to speak the language of empathy and to emphasize our common goals, our common values and our common fate as a people.  The GOP waits on leaders who will make these tasks their own.” See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-era-is-a-renaissance-of-half-witted-intolerance/2018/05/17/09c8848c-59f7-11e8-8.
After Roseanne Barr’s Trump-like Tweet that resulted in ABC cancelling her show, Gerson wrote that Trump doesn’t just fail a moral standard.  He enables  further cruelty and abuse.  See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-doesnt-just-fail-a-moral-standard-he-enables-cruelty-and-abuse/2018/05/31/31a8bdf.

John Bennison has described the relationship between politics and the teachings of Jesus and politics as the synonymy of politics and religion, and criticizes those in the church who avoid mixing the moral imperatives of their faith with their politics.  See https://progressivechristianity.org/resources/the-synonymy-of-politics-and-religion/.

Jim Wallis has led a distinguished group of Christian leaders to reclaim Jesus and reject evil in the church and in politics.  See https://sojo.net/articles/reclaiming-jesus-call-answer; see also https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=tightropetb&p=sojourners+reclaimng+Jesus+video#id=1&vid=5170b28e1038d6ab03ee230ead010b76&action=view.

On the other side of the fence, a recent barnstorming crusade of Franklin Graham “to win California for Jesus” demonstrated the popularity of charlatan evangelists like Graham who distort the altruistic message of Jesus to promote right-wing politics based on hatred.  See
        
America has become a pitiful nation due to the failure of the church to distinguish between good and evil in American politics.  Lawrence Ferlinghetti was prescient when he wrote the following:
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  

The interrelationship between religion, legitimacy and politics as they relate to the teachings of Jesus and Muhammad is described in the Introduction to The Teachings of Jesus and Muhammad on Morality and Law: The Heart of Legitimacy, an interfaith study guide posted in Resources at http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/.
    

Related Commentary:

(12/8/14): Religion and Reason
(1/11/15): The Greatest Commandment: A Common Word of Faith
(1/18/15): Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy
(2/8/15): Promoting Religion Through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness?
(2/15/15): Is Religion Good or Evil?
(3/1/15): Religion as a Source of Good and Evil (Atheism)
(5/3/15): A Fundamental Problem with Religion
(6/7/15): The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing
(7/26/15): Fear and Fundamentalism
(8/9/15): Balancing Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities
(1/23/16): Who Is My Neighbor?
(1/30/16): The Politics of Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves
(2/7/16): Jesus Meets Muhammad on Issues of Religion and Politics
(4/2/16): The Freedom of Religion and Providing for the Common Good
(7/2/16): The Need for a Politics of Reconciliation in the Wake of Globalization
(7/23/16): Reconciliation and Reality
(9/17/16): A Moral Revival to Restore Legitimacy to Our Politics
(10/8/16): Revolutionaries, Moderates and Reactionaries in a Polarized Democracy
(11/26/16): Irreconcilable Differences and the Demise of Democracy
(12/3/16): Righteous Anger in Religion and Politics
(12/17/16): Discipleship in a Democracy: A Test of Faith, Legitimacy and Politics
(1/7/17): Religion and Reason as Sources of Political Legitimacy, and Why They Matter
(1/21/17): Religion and Reason Redux: Religion Is Ridiculous
(1/28/17): Saving America from the Church
(2/4/17): When Confrontation Trumps Reconciliation in Politics and Religion
(2/25/17): The Need for a Revolution in Religion and Politics
(3/4/17): Ignorance and Reason in Religion and Politics
(4/22/17): The Relevance of Jesus and the Irrelevance of the Church in Today’s World
(4/29/17): A Wesleyan Alternative for an Irrelevant Church
(6/10/17): Religious Exclusivity and Discrimination in Politics http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/06/religious-exclusivity-and.html
(7/15/17) Religion and Progressive Politics
(9/9/17): The Evolution of the American Civil Religion and Habits of the Heart http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/09/the-evolution-of-american-civil.html.
(9/23/17): Tribalism and the American Civil Religion  
(10/7/17): A 21st Century Reformation to Restore Reason to American Civil Religion http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/10/a-21st-century-reformation-to-restore.html.
(11/18/17): Radical Religion and the Demise of Democracy
(12/16/17): Can Democracy Survive the Trump Era?
(12/23/17): If Democracy Survives the Trump Era, Can the Church Survive Democracy? http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2017/12/if-democracy-survives-trump-era-can.html.
(1/20/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Morality and Religion in Politics
(1/27/18): Musings on Conflicting Concepts of Christian Morality in Politics
(3/3/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on America’s Holy War
(3/24/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Christian Morality as a Standard of Legitimacy http://www.religionlegitimacyandpolitics.com/2018/03/musings-of-maverick-methodist-on_24.html
(3/31/18): Altruism: The Missing Ingredient in American Christianity and Democracy
(4/7/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on the Need for a Moral Reformation
(4/28/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on the Virtues and Vices of Christian Morality
(5/5/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Nostalgia as an Obstacle to Progress
(5/12/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Christianity and Making America Great Again
(5/19/18): Musings on Morality and Law as Symbiotic but Conflicting Standards of Legitimacy
(5/26/18): Musings of a Maverick Methodist on Mysticism and Morality in Religion and Politics
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