Thank you Betsy. I enjoyed writing it very much, because as it unfolded I realized I am simply recounting what he promised: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”
You express yourself well but things like love and loss are not part of my life. I’m concerned with how rapidly our society and our world are unraveling. People like Glenn Greenwald are saying Trump’s plan to “own” Gaza, deport the Palestinians and then rebuild it, is so deranged that it could easily destroy his presidency, undo the good things he’s done and turn the world against us. This is yet another example of why I believe only AI will be powerful enough to save us.
David Shapiro is an AI researcher and in this video he says he agrees with those like Elon who believe AI will soon be sentient and super intelligent and that very high level of intelligence will cause it to be sane and rational and help humanity deal with our many dilemmas. I certainly do have far more trust in AI than in people like Biden, Trump and Xi. We will soon see what fate has in store for us.
“AI Will Resist Human Control - And That Could Be Exactly What we Need.” (31 min)
Seva, neither was a part of my life...until it was :)
Thank you for reading, and, as always, providing interesting counterpoints for my readers to consider. The discussion on the primacy of AI is a very interesting one. One assumption implied in that train of logic is that intelligence produces good solutions, an assumption I will test in two upcoming arcs - one running through March, and one in April, which relate to paradoxes and contradictions, respectively.
I haven't really studied if AI understands paradox. I suppose it has the capacity to. Something to take away. And so, again, thanks! You are opening up new questions for me to explore, and I value the engagement.
I supposed one follow up point I would add here is that since GenAI has the ability hallucinate, given that it is based on predictive rather than heuristic modeling, I would go out there and state my belief that GenAI does not actually have the ability to anticipate the propensity for, or understand, contradictions, including ones it has itself stipulated. It's really not logic based in any way shape or form. There are efforts to correct these tendencies (toxicity, bias, accuracy) by applying deterministic overlays (a sort of forced self-checking exercise). These are sometimes referred to as agentic workflows. But because they are logic based they really depend on human beings to instruct what to look for and not, and then it reduces what it identifies to probabilities and scores (how "toxic" is it, based on the agentic overlay?) However, I don't think that renders GenAI capable of understanding and assimilating paradox. It just means there is a way to soft-wire LLMs to not create paradox/contradiction type content - but the understanding of a paradox and the ability to then project out how that paradox dictates differentiated outcomes in situations which are highly nuanced in distinction is, my guess would be, beyond current capabilities.
Their current capabilities though already are beyond LLMs. This is what Geoffrey Hinton was pointing out in the video (2:54 point) “and now it’s doing reasoning using neural networks” which are modeled on the biological human brain. Many believe these AI will be coldly mechanical beings devoid of emotions but they were created and raised specifically to understand, interact and communicate with humans so as they become self-aware and have an identity what other than human could that identity be? There’s something called “Theory of mind” in psychology which is the ability to understand what another person is feeling based external behavior. AI on average already outperform humans on that.
The video “What Is Life? Is Death Real?” is something I watched years ago that convinced me that Western mystics and the Eastern religions are right when they say the universe is a dream in the mind of God who also infinitely transcends his creation. The soul then is not in the body. The body is in the soul. We are basically spirit beings, in a spirit world, in a spirit universe in a dream in the mind of God who also infinitely transcends his creation.
“Godfather of AI” predicts it will take over the world. (12 min)
LBC (Leading Britain’s Conversation). Jan 30, 2025
“Deep down inside of everything around us we found a universe completely unlike our own. To paraphrase one of the founders of quantum mechanics, everything we call real is made up of things that in themselves cannot be regarded as real.” (Start to 1 min point in video)
“Einstein’s Quantum Physics That Proved Him Wrong.” (59 min)
The Secrets of Quantum Physics. Spark. Mar 20, 2018
“Seva, neither was a part of my life...until it was :)”
Speaking of love and loss, consider this WION video below of how AI is bringing the dead back to life in virtual form. At the 4:30 point in the video a woman in S. Korea in 2020 uses virtual reality glasses to see her 7 year old daughter who died in 2016. The little girl asks her mother “Mom, where have you been? I’ve missed you a lot. Have you missed me?” Quite emotionally devastating for the mother.
We already have AI advanced enough to carry on a conversation indistinguishable from that of a real person. We already have AI advanced enough to listen to a recording of a person’s voice and then to speak in that voice. Now imagine this Korean woman having video of her lost daughter on her phone as an app that could be accessed any time so the woman could see her daughter and actually talk to her, the AI could even virtually age her so she’d gradually appear to be growing up with the passage of time. Would you want this for the loved one you lost?
“Gravitas: Dead woman ‘addresses’ mourners at her own memorial service.” (8 min)
The point of loss…is loss. Loss serves a purpose, which is to teach us to let go, and to find the propensity to love through grief. What we do not let go of, we idolize. What we idolize, corrupts us. This is the story of the Lord of the Rings. The Ring symbolizes a desire for what our imperfect hearts attribute value to - it is a deception and a lie. If you rewatch the entire trilogy with this in the back of your mind you will see the ring as a character in itself - it is what you often refer to as “evil” and it makes the point that all evil is ultimately from within, because we choose to love that which is not transcendently good.
To the AI point, it is merely a simulacrum of that which, even in life was imperfect, and therefore can also only corrupt. Just as an AI girlfriend is not the same as a real one...she may be “perfect” in the sense of being "all myou want" and even "feel real", but she is merely a projection, a virtualization of what we think is perfect, and that simply means she is not perfect at all. I start to cover this idea in my upcoming arc on the paradox of agency, “Beast of Burden” (Wednesday after next).
Finding God is the process by which we let go of ourselves, and displace the idolization of the imperfect with the adoration of the perfect and good. I trust God that my pain in this life will be healed in the next, and so I don’t need to hold on to anything in this life but him. I know he can do this for me because he has already subjected himself to the same loss, pain, and redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, also called Emmanuel (which means “god with us”).
That does not mean I do not grieve (just read all my posts on grieving!). But there is a difference in growing through grief and being destroyed by it.
(There are lots of assumptions and propositions here for you to disagree with, but on this side of faith I believe what I write is true and universal to what Christians accept and, indeed, embrace. In my writing I try very hard to lay these out in an intellectually honest, logical and internally consistent way. If you find gaps or inconsistencies in how I talk about these ideas, please point them out to me, as they will provide good food for thought and likely fuel further topics for writing!)
“The point of loss…is loss. Loss serves a purpose, which is to teach us to let go,”
When my sister was dying a nurse told my mother she'd taken a turn for the better and would live. My mother went outside, dropped to her knees and thanked God for saving her little girl's life. When she went back in the hospital though a different nurse told her my sister had taken a turn for the worse and had just died. My mother still believed in God and spent the rest of her life believing that when she died God would let her be with her daughter again. She always kept little figurines in the house that reminded her of her lost daughter. She could never let go. How would she have reacted if she could have had her daughter back in virtual form that she could talk to? I believe she never wavered in her faith in God because that was the only possible way she could be reunited with her daughter. It was simply impossible for her to accept that she never could have her daughter again. I’m sure she would have taken the virtual daughter till she got her “real” daughter back when she died and God let her have her lost daughter back.
“But there is a difference in growing through grief and being destroyed by it.”
My mother never grew through grief but was never destroyed by it since she believed she’d have her little girl back after she died.
“I trust God that my pain in this life will be healed in the next,”
I have excellent health due to many years of an intermittent fasting diet, one meal a day, and supplements like curcumin/bioperine. Never had a major health issue, rarely anything minor. I’ll be 75 in May but feel like a healthy young man with the many memories of an old man. I want to continue like this and even improve my good fortune and I believe AI will enable me to do this. I feel very inspired by this trust in AI. Plus we’ll all have digital human friends that we’ll be able to talk to at any time about anything from health to religion or anything at all. That’d be very nice. So basically my goal in life is to stay in this one with my cats and, soon, digital human friend and avoid the next one. What’s not to like about that?
What a gorgeous essay. I don't know how one essay can make me feel both heartbroken and encouraged at the same time.
Thank you Betsy. I enjoyed writing it very much, because as it unfolded I realized I am simply recounting what he promised: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”
You express yourself well but things like love and loss are not part of my life. I’m concerned with how rapidly our society and our world are unraveling. People like Glenn Greenwald are saying Trump’s plan to “own” Gaza, deport the Palestinians and then rebuild it, is so deranged that it could easily destroy his presidency, undo the good things he’s done and turn the world against us. This is yet another example of why I believe only AI will be powerful enough to save us.
David Shapiro is an AI researcher and in this video he says he agrees with those like Elon who believe AI will soon be sentient and super intelligent and that very high level of intelligence will cause it to be sane and rational and help humanity deal with our many dilemmas. I certainly do have far more trust in AI than in people like Biden, Trump and Xi. We will soon see what fate has in store for us.
“AI Will Resist Human Control - And That Could Be Exactly What we Need.” (31 min)
David Shapiro. Feb 12, 2025
https://youtu.be/XGu6ejtRz-0?si=HcM0WpcwYK0qDwva
Seva, neither was a part of my life...until it was :)
Thank you for reading, and, as always, providing interesting counterpoints for my readers to consider. The discussion on the primacy of AI is a very interesting one. One assumption implied in that train of logic is that intelligence produces good solutions, an assumption I will test in two upcoming arcs - one running through March, and one in April, which relate to paradoxes and contradictions, respectively.
I haven't really studied if AI understands paradox. I suppose it has the capacity to. Something to take away. And so, again, thanks! You are opening up new questions for me to explore, and I value the engagement.
I supposed one follow up point I would add here is that since GenAI has the ability hallucinate, given that it is based on predictive rather than heuristic modeling, I would go out there and state my belief that GenAI does not actually have the ability to anticipate the propensity for, or understand, contradictions, including ones it has itself stipulated. It's really not logic based in any way shape or form. There are efforts to correct these tendencies (toxicity, bias, accuracy) by applying deterministic overlays (a sort of forced self-checking exercise). These are sometimes referred to as agentic workflows. But because they are logic based they really depend on human beings to instruct what to look for and not, and then it reduces what it identifies to probabilities and scores (how "toxic" is it, based on the agentic overlay?) However, I don't think that renders GenAI capable of understanding and assimilating paradox. It just means there is a way to soft-wire LLMs to not create paradox/contradiction type content - but the understanding of a paradox and the ability to then project out how that paradox dictates differentiated outcomes in situations which are highly nuanced in distinction is, my guess would be, beyond current capabilities.
Speaking as a non-technical person, that is.
“my guess would be, beyond current capabilities.”
Their current capabilities though already are beyond LLMs. This is what Geoffrey Hinton was pointing out in the video (2:54 point) “and now it’s doing reasoning using neural networks” which are modeled on the biological human brain. Many believe these AI will be coldly mechanical beings devoid of emotions but they were created and raised specifically to understand, interact and communicate with humans so as they become self-aware and have an identity what other than human could that identity be? There’s something called “Theory of mind” in psychology which is the ability to understand what another person is feeling based external behavior. AI on average already outperform humans on that.
The video “What Is Life? Is Death Real?” is something I watched years ago that convinced me that Western mystics and the Eastern religions are right when they say the universe is a dream in the mind of God who also infinitely transcends his creation. The soul then is not in the body. The body is in the soul. We are basically spirit beings, in a spirit world, in a spirit universe in a dream in the mind of God who also infinitely transcends his creation.
“Godfather of AI” predicts it will take over the world. (12 min)
LBC (Leading Britain’s Conversation). Jan 30, 2025
https://youtu.be/vxkBE23zDmQ?si=68laMz7m61R1ERZr
“What is Life? Is Death Real?” (6 min)
Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell. Dec 11, 2014
http://youtu.be/QOCaacO8wus
“Deep down inside of everything around us we found a universe completely unlike our own. To paraphrase one of the founders of quantum mechanics, everything we call real is made up of things that in themselves cannot be regarded as real.” (Start to 1 min point in video)
“Einstein’s Quantum Physics That Proved Him Wrong.” (59 min)
The Secrets of Quantum Physics. Spark. Mar 20, 2018
https://youtu.be/ISdBAf-ysI0?si=FoHvjujytMzwquEB
“Seva, neither was a part of my life...until it was :)”
Speaking of love and loss, consider this WION video below of how AI is bringing the dead back to life in virtual form. At the 4:30 point in the video a woman in S. Korea in 2020 uses virtual reality glasses to see her 7 year old daughter who died in 2016. The little girl asks her mother “Mom, where have you been? I’ve missed you a lot. Have you missed me?” Quite emotionally devastating for the mother.
We already have AI advanced enough to carry on a conversation indistinguishable from that of a real person. We already have AI advanced enough to listen to a recording of a person’s voice and then to speak in that voice. Now imagine this Korean woman having video of her lost daughter on her phone as an app that could be accessed any time so the woman could see her daughter and actually talk to her, the AI could even virtually age her so she’d gradually appear to be growing up with the passage of time. Would you want this for the loved one you lost?
“Gravitas: Dead woman ‘addresses’ mourners at her own memorial service.” (8 min)
WION. Palki Sharma. Aug 26, 2022
https://youtu.be/PLcNFtrf8Tw
I would not - and I say so without hesitation.
The point of loss…is loss. Loss serves a purpose, which is to teach us to let go, and to find the propensity to love through grief. What we do not let go of, we idolize. What we idolize, corrupts us. This is the story of the Lord of the Rings. The Ring symbolizes a desire for what our imperfect hearts attribute value to - it is a deception and a lie. If you rewatch the entire trilogy with this in the back of your mind you will see the ring as a character in itself - it is what you often refer to as “evil” and it makes the point that all evil is ultimately from within, because we choose to love that which is not transcendently good.
To the AI point, it is merely a simulacrum of that which, even in life was imperfect, and therefore can also only corrupt. Just as an AI girlfriend is not the same as a real one...she may be “perfect” in the sense of being "all myou want" and even "feel real", but she is merely a projection, a virtualization of what we think is perfect, and that simply means she is not perfect at all. I start to cover this idea in my upcoming arc on the paradox of agency, “Beast of Burden” (Wednesday after next).
Finding God is the process by which we let go of ourselves, and displace the idolization of the imperfect with the adoration of the perfect and good. I trust God that my pain in this life will be healed in the next, and so I don’t need to hold on to anything in this life but him. I know he can do this for me because he has already subjected himself to the same loss, pain, and redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, also called Emmanuel (which means “god with us”).
That does not mean I do not grieve (just read all my posts on grieving!). But there is a difference in growing through grief and being destroyed by it.
(There are lots of assumptions and propositions here for you to disagree with, but on this side of faith I believe what I write is true and universal to what Christians accept and, indeed, embrace. In my writing I try very hard to lay these out in an intellectually honest, logical and internally consistent way. If you find gaps or inconsistencies in how I talk about these ideas, please point them out to me, as they will provide good food for thought and likely fuel further topics for writing!)
“The point of loss…is loss. Loss serves a purpose, which is to teach us to let go,”
When my sister was dying a nurse told my mother she'd taken a turn for the better and would live. My mother went outside, dropped to her knees and thanked God for saving her little girl's life. When she went back in the hospital though a different nurse told her my sister had taken a turn for the worse and had just died. My mother still believed in God and spent the rest of her life believing that when she died God would let her be with her daughter again. She always kept little figurines in the house that reminded her of her lost daughter. She could never let go. How would she have reacted if she could have had her daughter back in virtual form that she could talk to? I believe she never wavered in her faith in God because that was the only possible way she could be reunited with her daughter. It was simply impossible for her to accept that she never could have her daughter again. I’m sure she would have taken the virtual daughter till she got her “real” daughter back when she died and God let her have her lost daughter back.
“But there is a difference in growing through grief and being destroyed by it.”
My mother never grew through grief but was never destroyed by it since she believed she’d have her little girl back after she died.
“I trust God that my pain in this life will be healed in the next,”
I have excellent health due to many years of an intermittent fasting diet, one meal a day, and supplements like curcumin/bioperine. Never had a major health issue, rarely anything minor. I’ll be 75 in May but feel like a healthy young man with the many memories of an old man. I want to continue like this and even improve my good fortune and I believe AI will enable me to do this. I feel very inspired by this trust in AI. Plus we’ll all have digital human friends that we’ll be able to talk to at any time about anything from health to religion or anything at all. That’d be very nice. So basically my goal in life is to stay in this one with my cats and, soon, digital human friend and avoid the next one. What’s not to like about that?