Dear friends, suddenly and simply because several noted corporate big-shots have expressed concern, the topic of AI, or artificial intelligence, is all the rage in the media and in discussions across the nation, if not the world. Certainly the topic is meaningful and important, though the initial firestorm of coverage has diminished in the last few weeks, following the normal wax-and-wane fickleness of the media landscape. But as some interesting thoughts have been expressed regarding this seemingly nascent arrival of AI on the scene, I think it imperative that some perspective be brought to the discussion from an Orthodox Christian point of view. Mind you, I don’t for one moment claim to represent the wholeness of that view, but as an Orthodox who spent 30 years in the computer industry as a programmer, systems analyst, and team manager, I think I might be able to offer some insights that provoke some sensible and non-hysterical discussions on the matter.

We might first ask the question about the moniker itself: “artificial intelligence.” It begs a couple of questions. Can there be intelligence genuinely outside of human activity? And does the adjective “artificial” render the entire term non-sensical? As Orthodox, we will dismiss the question of “real” intelligence as being confined only to the realm of the Godhead, as God is beyond all such constructs, and restrict the usage to that which human beings demonstrate, or, some might argue, fail to demonstrate, in everyday life.

We consider ourselves rational sheep, rational human beings, and as such this stems from an innate intelligence given to all of us. So the mere fact of our acting irrationally by no means contradicts the notion of intelligence, even as irrationality can be an example of the use of intelligence. It all revolves around choice, which as Christians we believe is dependent on the gift of free will. This is important as we assess the reality and promise, or misuse, of what we call artificial intelligence.

Can intelligence be genuinely ascribed to artificiality? Can it even exist outside of the human realm? This is the great hope of many in the AI community, though the dream and the idea of it has been shattered many times in its history. Starting back in 1945 with Alan Turing, the genius and horribly treated homosexual man who was instrumental in World War II—he was found guilty of the aforementioned crime in Britain and sentenced to chemical castration, killing himself in 1954—this notion of creating machines that could solve complex mathematical problems is at the root of all AI today. Called Turing machines, they are mathematical recipes seeking solutions. Eventually the idea progressed to proposing their usage in other areas outside of mathematics, called universal Turing Machines. And then the idea sprouted forth that maybe a specific Turing machine could answer questions posed by other Turing machines, and so on and so on. There are multitudinous philosophical questions that were raised, but the idea of machine learning and possible intelligence was cemented in the hearts and minds of those interested in the field.

By the 1950s, computers had become a reality. All information technology, AI included, is based on the reality of one simple term: the bit. A bit is an acronym for binary digit, the smallest unit of data that a computer can store, and its meaning is simple: it is electronically set to either a zero or a one, off or on. And when bits are collected into a group—eight, in this instance—we have a byte, a unit that is used to define a letter, number, or typographical symbol. Now it has become easier to communicate with the computer in language we are used to.

The important thing to realize is that all AI is based on this idea of one small unit of electronically stored of information: no concept of intrinsic rational thought here at all, and, in my view, intelligence. In fact, as the years progressed, the decision-making ability, if we can even call it that, of the computer was going to be based on only one thing: speed. Human beings have a finite but as yet unknown capacity for storing data in their brains. Scientists tell us that only a very small percentage of that capacity has been used, which is guesstimated at 2.5 million gigabytes. This is coupled with the processing speed of our brains, about 11 million of the previously mentioned bits-per-second, though our conscious minds process only about 40 to 50 bits of information per second, not a whole lot. The brain functions about about 200 Hertz, seven orders of magnitude slower than today’s modern microprocessors, meaning the brain is 10 million times slower than the computer.

As in so much these days, speed is king. It’s important to realize that each time we see some amazing demonstration of AI, speed is the ingredient that makes it work. This is easily demonstrated in the history of computers and AI itself, which has been a frustrating journey for those working in it, where we observe that differing periods of history have seen unequal development of hardware and the software that runs it. About 25 years ago, the advancement of software was hindered by the lack of impressive hardware to support it. When the hardware finally caught up, the two fields clicked, hence the advancement we are seeing today.

In my early years of programming, I worked on the famous IBM/360-/370 computer, a mainstay in corporations all over the world. This computer, a large machine that had more moving parts than any machine in the history of the world, had only 32,000 bytes of random-access memory, or what we would call 32k RAM storage available. Compare this to the 256 gigabytes of storage available on most premium cell phones today, and you can see the difference. For instance, the Cray-1 supercomputer from the 1970s, which was used at the National Weather Service, was significantly slower than the iPhone 10. In fact, the latter was 37,000 times faster. With such unlimited speed potential—and no doubt future generations will laugh at the limitation of the current slate of cell phones—the idea of the rapid ability of this sort of processing power to solve even more complex problems, and indeed make decisions regarding them, is boosting the current AI craze.

Recently, the idea has been given that we should pause the development of AI to ostensibly put some safeguards in place, but this is not a feasible idea. Other actors in the world stage will continue this development, and those living in the freer parts of the world cannot afford to fall behind. Yet the still not-understood capabilities will continue to mystify most people, including those involved in the field itself and especially the general public. One thing is certain: big changes in the life of the world are coming because of it, but a proper understanding of it is essential if only to assuage some of the doomsayers out there who fear the apocalyptic Hollywood notions of what AI really is.

It’s important to understand the real capabilities and uses of it without the hysteria that surrounds so much of it. And as Orthodox Christians, we need to understand what it will not ultimately be able to accomplish. We must remember that big changes have occurred in the world before because of technological changes, two being the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s and the computer revolution in the 1980s. Both of these had significant impact on the daily life associated with them, and both drew extreme social criticism in terms of the future of humanity at the time. There are, of course, other examples, the invention of the printing press being one of them, that also affected life greatly.

This is to be expected in a developing world. While it is important to not underestimate the social upheavals caused by them, we must also notice that world-ending events did not occur. As we navigate the pathways to an AI future, our estimates of the effects of this game-changing landscape must be one of sober assessment, not short-shrifting the challenges, yet avoiding the type of overblown eschatological hyperbole we have witnessed lately.

Those familiar with the Terminator movie franchise know that, according to the second movie, the AI-constructed Skynet becomes self-aware on August 29, 1997. In the movie The Matrix, artificial intelligence causes similar havoc in the world, with the machines eventually taking over and subjugating humanity. I, Robot exemplifies this when an unthinking corporation unleashes a robotic takeover because the machines find a way to reinterpret the Three Laws governing them. Most people don’t realize that these laws are real, formulated by Isaac Asimov, who enjoyed many plot devices based on them. They are not feasible in AI, because, for many reasons, they are impossible to implement. But this idea of what is called “singularity” has become popular, meaning that when computer intelligence exceeds that of humanity because of raw computing power, we are all in trouble.

But is the ability to think fast equated with intelligence? Probably not. Being faster is not necessarily being smarter. There are many other problems associated with AI implementation that hinder the idea of the “machines take control” scenario. Of course, this doesn’t mean that things might not go wrong. AI is powerful, and because it is a general-purpose technology and can be used according to our sometimes very wild imaginations, the fallen nature of mankind could get the upper hand in terms of application. These might be felt on a global scale.

We hear about economic consequences, like AI usurping unskilled labor all over the world, but could it also upend skilled labor? The possibility cannot be excluded. Some jobs, like those needing a lot of mental creativity, strong social skills, and detailed use of perception and manual dexterity, which humans are still very, very good at, and much better than machines, will be hard to replace by machines, but many people will find themselves redundant by the technology, even as they have been in the past. This is not apocalyptic in nature, but simply a fact of life, and human beings with adapt. Other important realms, like that of human rights and potential devastating impacts of flawed human software gone wrong need detailed and thorough investigation at every point along the way in its development.

But the most concerning aspect of AI in my mind is not the idea of what is called “strong AI,” meaning building computers that really do have understanding and consciousness the way people do, because arguments for this idea are as much philosophical as they are technical, but in the total philosophical disregard for the spiritual aspect of the human person. Professor of computer science and head of the Department of Computer Science at Oxford University, Dr. Michael Wooldridge, has been a center of the AI community for 25 years. Though he has made many wonderful and succinct evaluations and explanations of the potential and the pitfalls of AI, he has also made the statement that his response to the notion that there is something intrinsically special about human beings because they are animate objects, whereas computers are not, is that:

[humans] are nothing more than a bunch of atoms. People and their brains are physical entities obeying physical laws, even if we don’t yet quite know what those laws are. Humans are remarkable, wonderful, incredible things, but from the point of view of the universe and its laws are nothing special.

In migrating philosophical ideas into technology, there are so many issues that the task almost seems impossible, yet this will not stop those wanting to make strong AI a reality. But if one examines all the multifaceted strands of philosophical thought going all the way back to Plato—and this is exactly what one has to do, as even the very notion of consciousness is something no one can agree on—we see that for an idealized world of AI to exist, there must be some foundational constructs of belief in place. When this is coupled with the idea of the evolution of the species, which states categorically that the very consciousness of human beings is something that occurred gradually over millions of years, the scientism that establishes these claims is missing a very important aspect of the human person, one that is necessary for any realistic development of artificial intelligence. That specifically is the spiritual, God-given gift of something rational and genuinely intelligent, something that allows evaluation, choice, action, and even a re-evaluation from a moral aspect before deciding on a firm course of action.

The complexities involved in human life, where one person’s choices interact with a thousand different scenarios that can occur in a very short period of time, and the multifaceted experiences that are gained by any individual that leads up to these choices, are impossible for any future implementation of AI to fully realize. Mathematically and data-mined problem-solving in no way can possibly encompass the entire spectrum of human experience and emotion, because there is simply no way, no matter how fast the processing, that the Lord’s gift of divine breath and spiritual illumination can be repeated, much less equalled.

The dangers that AI development poses are indeed significant, but must be kept in proper perspective. Concentrating on the science fiction aspects of this development may be more fun, shocking, and thought-provoking, but in doing so we might miss the potential and pitfalls of what is coming realistically. And it is especially important that as Orthodox Christians we keep insisting that the attempted machine imitation of human beings be based on not only the physical characteristic of the human species alone but also on the spiritual, moral, and uniquely God-gifted breath of divine illumination that will always set us apart from a creature of our own making, the computer.

A computer cannot simply morph into a human being, but, if we are to prevent any sort of difficulties in implementation of things that regard choice and vital life-deciding decisions, we must have the human element, the spiritual element, involved in the process. As we cannot as the Creator why we were created, neither can the machine even ask us such a question, let alone contemplate its own existence. And may God bless each and every one of you.