Speaker 1: My lodging is filled with lizards and rats, but the
Speaker 1: architect exists, and everyone who denies it is touched with madness.
Speaker 1: Under the guise of wisdom, consult Zoroaster and Minos and Solon,
Speaker 1: and the martyr Socrates and the great Cicero. They all
Speaker 1: adored a master, a judge, a father. This sublime system
Speaker 1: is necessary to man. It is the sacred tie that
Speaker 1: binds society, the first foundation of holy equity, the bridle
Speaker 1: to the wicked, the hope of the just. If the
Speaker 1: heavens stripped of his noble imprint could ever cease to
Speaker 1: attest to his being, if God did not exist, it
Speaker 1: would be necessary to invent him. Welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stop works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was Voltaire, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Seventeen sixty eight from his uh his poem epistle to
Speaker 1: the author of the book The Three Impostors. In it,
Speaker 1: he argues that belief in God is necessary to social order,
Speaker 1: which is something that we could do a whole podcast
Speaker 1: about that argument. Kind of an odd thing to hear
Speaker 1: from Voltaire given his really serious criticisms of like the
Speaker 1: existing monotheisms. Yeah, I was reading reading up on a
Speaker 1: little bit, and yeah, it's it is interesting that here
Speaker 1: he's kind of sticking up for God, but other times
Speaker 1: he was very critical of abuses by the Catholic Church. Uh.
Speaker 1: And at the same time he also carves out a
Speaker 1: little space in this poem to attack his favorite enemies.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like an all encompassing distract. I
Speaker 1: guess so many great works of literature do that. I
Speaker 1: love all of the enemy digs in Dante's Inferno, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's like some dude made him mad and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you're going in the ninth circle. Yes, es. Dante definitely
Speaker 1: makes room for some personal digs in the Divine Comedy.
Speaker 1: So obviously of that section you read, the last line
Speaker 1: is the part that gets quoted the most right and
Speaker 1: then often misquote. It is often used for whatever purposes
Speaker 1: you needed for. Are you arguing that, yes, God exists
Speaker 1: and if and if God didn't exist, we would just
Speaker 1: have to make it up because we need God, or
Speaker 1: you're saying, obviously we all make up gods and we're
Speaker 1: doing it to fulfill some human need. Right. But you know,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is, I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: heard anybody really take that line literally before, yeah, to say, hey,
Speaker 1: is there a God? Well no, there's not a god.
Speaker 1: Oh well, we gotta invent one. Let's get on it,
Speaker 1: start the project. And folks, I'm sorry to say, that's
Speaker 1: where we've got to go today, into the valleys a
Speaker 1: certain value made of a kind of semiconducting metal, maybe
Speaker 1: where thinkers and millionaires or dreaming up gods that don't
Speaker 1: yet exist, but but they really think maybe should soon.
Speaker 1: I really like imagining it being laid out in a
Speaker 1: very corporate way and saying like, all right, bye bye,
Speaker 1: Q two, we really want to have a demigod, and
Speaker 1: by Q three at least a minor deity build up
Speaker 1: from there. Yeah, when are we going to get the
Speaker 1: new Wrath functions online? So there are some very interesting
Speaker 1: and also very tiresome debates about whether, if God exists,
Speaker 1: you could ever prove the existence of such a being. Um,
Speaker 1: we're not going to litigate that question today, but I
Speaker 1: do want to start by asking a derivative question. Let's
Speaker 1: say that instead there was suddenly in controvertible evidence that
Speaker 1: we're in contact with some kind of superhuman intelligence and
Speaker 1: intelligence that's not human and seems to possess kind of
Speaker 1: a vast incomprehensible power. It can solve all the unsolved
Speaker 1: problems in mathematics, It can make your favorite food materialize
Speaker 1: in front of your eyes. So we're just sipulating that
Speaker 1: that kind of being exists, and we're we're personally witnessing it.
Speaker 1: How would you know whether it was correct to call
Speaker 1: that being god or a god? Well? I haven't answer
Speaker 1: to this question, but I'll let you go first. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so one of the things is that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people with a more sort of
Speaker 1: conservative religious predisposition would have a pretty simple answer to
Speaker 1: the question, and the answer is it would be God
Speaker 1: if it conformed the teachings of their religion, whatever they
Speaker 1: already believed. But let's say we try to approach it
Speaker 1: with a more kind of open minded framework, like what
Speaker 1: generically are the qualifications of being must meet to be
Speaker 1: considered a God or the God? All right, Well, that
Speaker 1: that that is an excellent question. But to go back
Speaker 1: to your original question, how would you know whether the
Speaker 1: being was a god? I guess that's the same question, right,
Speaker 1: just I'm trying to make it the same question. Similar questions. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I think that the most obvious answer would be, Oh,
Speaker 1: you'll know. I mean, because you're gonna have to ask yourself.
Speaker 1: Does its voy all but crack your skull? Does its
Speaker 1: presence fill you with terror and awe? Is it even
Speaker 1: impossible to rebel against it? Puny mortal that thou art? Well,
Speaker 1: but then that would just make God synonymous with overwhelming power. Well,
Speaker 1: what else do you want from God? Just intelligence but
Speaker 1: not overwhelming power? Well? Is there a difference between intelligence
Speaker 1: and overwhelming power? Well, that's something we're gonna come back
Speaker 1: to again and again in this discussion, as as humans
Speaker 1: attempt to try and figure to try and create a
Speaker 1: god that has one but not the other, or or
Speaker 1: has both but has the like, the right type of
Speaker 1: intelligence and the right type of power. Because I mean,
Speaker 1: generally what I'm describing those tends to be the trend.
Speaker 1: Unless a god or god like being is in disguise
Speaker 1: for the purpose of testing your faith or seducing someone, uh,
Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna know. Like if you look to
Speaker 1: the Hindu deities, for example, they're heavily symbolic avatars that
Speaker 1: they don't leave many questions about their nature, and as
Speaker 1: we've touched on a previous school on the show, their
Speaker 1: feet give them away. They float above the surface of
Speaker 1: the earth. They're clearly not creatures of this world, and
Speaker 1: there's no room to doubt it. Yeah. But then again,
Speaker 1: let's say aliens show up and they want to trick
Speaker 1: us into believing that they are our gods, and they
Speaker 1: have levitation technology okay, uh, and they have some other
Speaker 1: you know, they can channel vast amounts of energy into
Speaker 1: loudspeakers that will crack your skull when they speak. So
Speaker 1: we're back to the problem again. How do you tell
Speaker 1: the difference between this super powerful alien and what people
Speaker 1: have in mind when they say God. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe the aliens are God if their power is sufficient enough,
Speaker 1: Because you also come down to the models of a deity.
Speaker 1: Older models of of a god limit its power to say,
Speaker 1: your your people, your region, or maybe the power is
Speaker 1: limited to the world. But as we get into you know,
Speaker 1: progressively more cosmically aware society, then that means the power
Speaker 1: of the God has to be greater, or at least
Speaker 1: appear greater. Well, yeah, I mean I think you could
Speaker 1: definitely look at the idea of sort of the abstract
Speaker 1: universal disembodied god is a more recent evolution in the
Speaker 1: history of religions, and if you go way back into
Speaker 1: the older religions, the gods are closer to what people
Speaker 1: imagine in sci fi movies, like a being that comes
Speaker 1: down from the sky and has uh irresistible power. So
Speaker 1: we have the idea of intelligence, we have the idea
Speaker 1: of power, and we can maybe come back to the
Speaker 1: issue of power and where your particular god or pretender
Speaker 1: god is on the Kardashiat scale. But I think the
Speaker 1: intelligence area is pretty interesting and it's gonna be pretty
Speaker 1: key to what we're talking about here today. In writing
Speaker 1: for Ian magazine, Pam Weintraub points out that if you
Speaker 1: ask most people what God knows, the answer is that
Speaker 1: God knows everything, but that God's interests are very narrow
Speaker 1: and there those interests usually involve human morality. Okay, so
Speaker 1: God knows. I don't know, you're weird quirks about how
Speaker 1: you clip your toe nails, But unless you've got moral
Speaker 1: preachings about tone l clippings, God isn't interested in that. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I wonder how often we really stop to think about
Speaker 1: this in our conceptions of God. Like if I was
Speaker 1: to say God knows every uh you know, immoral thought
Speaker 1: you have ever had, and God knows every noble dream
Speaker 1: you've ever entertained, that cuts deep. Yeah, that cuts deep
Speaker 1: when we're willing to consider that. If I say God
Speaker 1: knows every chess move and every chess game that was
Speaker 1: ever ever orchestrated. God knows how many eggs you've eaten. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean like the chess game I think is a
Speaker 1: good example, because that sounds like all right, Chess is
Speaker 1: a cool game. It's the game of thinkers. God's the
Speaker 1: ultimate chess player. Why wouldn't he know all the rules?
Speaker 1: But yeah, when you get into the eggs, where you
Speaker 1: get into every play of Monopoly or every play of
Speaker 1: candy Land, ever, it seems completely pointless. But God would
Speaker 1: have that too. God would have all all the batting
Speaker 1: statistics for Major League Baseball just kicking around, uh, just
Speaker 1: ready to whip them out at any moment. But does
Speaker 1: he care about any of that? Right? Like, again, God's
Speaker 1: in most to our our our tales, our myths, and
Speaker 1: our religions. Gods are concerned with the morality of people
Speaker 1: and or the wars of people. Yeah, God's are often
Speaker 1: concerned that the same thing your parents are concerned with,
Speaker 1: except if your parents knew everything. Yeah, yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can rattle off about your hobby all day, but
Speaker 1: your parents are gonna be like, all right, that's good.
Speaker 1: Have you done your homework? Uet though, because that's what
Speaker 1: I really want you to focus on. Quit talking about
Speaker 1: power rangers. Here's an interesting quote from Pam wine Trop
Speaker 1: in that article. What's curious is that with age, children
Speaker 1: come to know that mom, dogs, and even trees will
Speaker 1: have incorrect thoughts, but they never extend that vulnerability to God.
Speaker 1: In fact, the quality of omniscience attributed to God appears
Speaker 1: to extend to any disembodied entity. In a two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen paper in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion,
Speaker 1: Louisville Seminary researchers found that children think imaginary friends no
Speaker 1: more than flesh and blood humans. The appears to be
Speaker 1: a rule, then, deep in our mental programming that tells
Speaker 1: us minds without body no more than those with bodies.
Speaker 1: I asked my son about this, because, as I've previously
Speaker 1: established on the show, he has four imaginary friends to
Speaker 1: be friends and to wasp friends that fly above his head.
Speaker 1: And so I questioned him. I was very careful not
Speaker 1: to to lead his his answers in any way, but
Speaker 1: he said, the B and wasp friends don't know everything,
Speaker 1: but they know everything that he says quote, and they
Speaker 1: learn my CPU is a neuralnet processor, a learning computer.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a terminator, right, yeah, terminator bees basic basically
Speaker 1: what's going on? So to come back to this idea
Speaker 1: about ghosts, I mean, I wonder if we're to suddenly
Speaker 1: make the explosive discovery that we can scientifically prove ghosts exist,
Speaker 1: and we like catch a ghost in a bottle and
Speaker 1: we're talking to it or something. I guess not catch
Speaker 1: it in a bottle because it can go through the walls.
Speaker 1: But you know, we we get in contact with a
Speaker 1: ghost who got some labs set up where they're doing seances,
Speaker 1: and we figure out, oh, wow, all this stuff was
Speaker 1: real all along. Would a ghost be a odd? Would
Speaker 1: people consider that a god? Is that how people use
Speaker 1: the word? I generally think no, Right, Even though a
Speaker 1: ghost might, uh we might imagine a ghost knows things
Speaker 1: that humans couldn't know, we still wouldn't really think of
Speaker 1: it as a God. Yeah, it seems like in most
Speaker 1: most traditions the ghost is seen as like like a
Speaker 1: remnant or a person whose concerns are not entirely of
Speaker 1: the earth anymore. Now that being said, we can't disqualify
Speaker 1: it from godhood godhood just because it used to be
Speaker 1: a human, because, of course, we have a whole tradition
Speaker 1: of of of god kings and whatnot where a human
Speaker 1: is a God or human is at least partially God
Speaker 1: because of its divine parentage. Yeah, and there's all the
Speaker 1: apotheosis literature too. Rightly, So, a human being like a
Speaker 1: sins and becomes a God, I think doesn't happen to
Speaker 1: Enoch I believe so, yes, yeah, And of course this
Speaker 1: is just one of many takes on God's I mean,
Speaker 1: you have God, God, the ruler, God of the cosmos,
Speaker 1: God of you know, terrestrial nature. God is a primal mover,
Speaker 1: a moral compass, a torment or, a teacher, a technology bringer,
Speaker 1: a destroyer, a redeemer, a minor mover. Because remember, you have,
Speaker 1: for pri instance, in Chinese traditions, you have a kitchen God,
Speaker 1: a god whose domain is largely just that of food,
Speaker 1: preparation and household concerns, and yet it's an important deity
Speaker 1: even if it's not going to really help you, say,
Speaker 1: in the coming wars or whatnot. So in that vision,
Speaker 1: is the creation of humans sort of like a little
Speaker 1: bit of salmonilla contamination. I think it would just it
Speaker 1: would be outside of its Uh. If you it's like
Speaker 1: asking Sirie a question that it it cannot answer. Kitchen
Speaker 1: God would say, I'm sorry, I don't know that, but
Speaker 1: let me tell you about what what spices to use
Speaker 1: on this particular pork dish. Now, one thing I was
Speaker 1: wondering about is if you might best understand the nature
Speaker 1: of God and our our uses for God by looking
Speaker 1: at the the sort of famous categories of literary conflict.
Speaker 1: You know, just to refresh, you have man versus man,
Speaker 1: man versus nature, man versus society, man versus self, man
Speaker 1: versus technology, and really, if you think about it, at
Speaker 1: some point or another, God embodies each of these, right,
Speaker 1: because in man versus man, you've got divine kings, man
Speaker 1: versus nature, you've got net nature deities and all levels
Speaker 1: of cosmic deities. Man versus society, you have God as
Speaker 1: a cultural leader or a lawmaker man versus self, you
Speaker 1: have God as this inner tormentor tempter, inner moral compass,
Speaker 1: or bicameral voice. You have, of course man versus technology. Well,
Speaker 1: God or gods are often serving to bring technology to us,
Speaker 1: such as with the Prometheus the fire driller of Chinese myth,
Speaker 1: as well as the myth of You and the Great Flood.
Speaker 1: Even language, right, I mean the word yeah. And the
Speaker 1: link between religion and technology I think is well. So
Speaker 1: this is definitely one we've explored before. You might want
Speaker 1: to go back and check out our pre vious episodes
Speaker 1: called Techno Religion for the Masses, where we explore the
Speaker 1: relationship between religion and technology and uh in the past
Speaker 1: when we talked about the trans humanist rapture, will we'll
Speaker 1: be touching on some of those same themes today. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true that there does appear to be this strong
Speaker 1: link between technology and religion. And it's not just that
Speaker 1: there are myths where say, Prometheus brings us fire. There
Speaker 1: are ways in which apparently technology itself shapes what types
Speaker 1: of religions we come up with and what types of
Speaker 1: religions survive. I want to mention some of the thinking
Speaker 1: of the the Israeli historian you've all Noah Harari. This
Speaker 1: is an article called Salvation by Algorithm, published in The
Speaker 1: New Statesman on September nine, and so Harari writes in
Speaker 1: this article quote, technology often defines the scope and limits
Speaker 1: of our religious vision, like a waiter who demarcates our
Speaker 1: appetites by handing us a menu. For instance, in ancient
Speaker 1: agricultural societies, many religion had surprisingly little interest in metaphysical
Speaker 1: questions in the afterlife. Instead, they focused on the very
Speaker 1: mundane task of increasing agricultural output. The Old Testament, God
Speaker 1: never promises any rewards or punishments after death. Rather, he
Speaker 1: tells the people of Israel, and this is an abridged
Speaker 1: quotation from Deuteronomy through seventeen quote and if you will
Speaker 1: diligently obey my commandments that I am commanding you, I
Speaker 1: will also give rain for your land at its appointed time,
Speaker 1: and you will gather your grain and your new wine
Speaker 1: and your oil, and I will provide vegetation in your
Speaker 1: fields for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied.
Speaker 1: Be careful not to let your heart be enticed to
Speaker 1: go astray and worship other gods, and bow down to them.
Speaker 1: Otherwise Jehovah's anger will blaze against you, and he will
Speaker 1: shut up the heavens so that it will not rain,
Speaker 1: and the ground will not give its produce, and you
Speaker 1: will quickly perish from the good land that Jehovah is
Speaker 1: giving you. Yeah, I mean, that's sort of our attitude today,
Speaker 1: right when you read something like that, And and that's
Speaker 1: sort of Harare's point. He says that because of technological advances,
Speaker 1: this type of theology is no longer relevant to lots
Speaker 1: of people. Science can provide things like pesticides, fertilizers, water
Speaker 1: distribution infrastructure, genetically modified crops. He even points out that
Speaker 1: Israel itself now has its own desalination facilities that can
Speaker 1: take the sea water, take the salt out of it
Speaker 1: through osmosis, and then supply people with fresh water even
Speaker 1: when there is no rain from above. So he's saying
Speaker 1: science can offer much more than could be expected even
Speaker 1: with the help of God at the time the Hebrew
Speaker 1: Bible is set. And for this reason, Harare says, quote,
Speaker 1: present day Judaism has almost lost interest in rain and
Speaker 1: agricultural output and has become a very different religion from
Speaker 1: its biblical progenitor. He says that the religions that survive
Speaker 1: and spread best are those that are able to best
Speaker 1: adapt themselves to new technologies and econ comics systems. And
Speaker 1: among those things he he considers religions are also things
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily have gods or supernatural forces in them,
Speaker 1: and he would include, for example, Marxism and Leninism, or
Speaker 1: even Buddhism and Marxism. Leninism is a really good example
Speaker 1: because he argues this was a techno religion basically for
Speaker 1: the steam powered revolutions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: Quote Lennon was once asked to define communism in a
Speaker 1: single sentence, communism. He answered, communism is power to the
Speaker 1: workers councils plus electrification of the whole country. And so
Speaker 1: Harari says, there can be no communism without electricity, without railroads,
Speaker 1: without radio. Now, one funny thing I've read is that
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union there were commonly jokes about this
Speaker 1: statement of Lenin's like where they would try to like
Speaker 1: follow the logic of that arithmetic, so they would say, like, therefore,
Speaker 1: communism minus electrification of the whole country equals the workers
Speaker 1: councils kind of dry so ah Soviet humor. But this
Speaker 1: leads Harari to a kind of startling conclusion if he's
Speaker 1: saying that in a lot of ways, technology drives our
Speaker 1: adoption of religion and ideology. Quote. Just as socialism took
Speaker 1: over the world by promising salvation through steam, so in
Speaker 1: the coming decades, new techno religions are likely to take
Speaker 1: over the world by promising salvation through algorithms and genes.
Speaker 1: So he's really saying in the twenty one century, ideological
Speaker 1: leaders are going to come not so much from traditional
Speaker 1: religions but from the tech sector. Who I like the
Speaker 1: way he was putting it better. It's a little more
Speaker 1: optimistically science sci fi. I don't know if he's necessarily
Speaker 1: being optimistic about this. He's just sort of saying what
Speaker 1: he thinks is true, not necessarily saying it's a good thing. No,
Speaker 1: but it sounds better than Silicon Valley is working on
Speaker 1: your salvation. I mean, would you read the Ulah for
Speaker 1: that salvation? Probably? Probably not. It's so darn long nobody
Speaker 1: would get to the end. Yeah, of course, Then again,
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of people don't really read their
Speaker 1: holy books either. No, I mean, if you tried to
Speaker 1: breathe the entire Old Testament, it's it's a sage sometimes,
Speaker 1: but it's also quite beautiful sometimes. I've never writends, unlike
Speaker 1: the the user agreements for an iPhone. There are sections
Speaker 1: of it that are beautiful and then their sections of
Speaker 1: it that are dull. It's true. And in the user
Speaker 1: license agreement never has a book of job like, no
Speaker 1: poetry at all. There's no poetic peak. It's just all
Speaker 1: valley um. Now. I love a lot of what what
Speaker 1: he had to say, though, particularly about, you know, about
Speaker 1: just technologies effect on religion. And he touched on agriculture
Speaker 1: because you have to remember that just agriculture itself was
Speaker 1: a technological advancement. Before agriculture, we just were hunters and gatherers,
Speaker 1: and that's where we have a lot of the older
Speaker 1: ideas of horned gods, of the hunt and chaos. Those
Speaker 1: were the forces we had to pray to and and
Speaker 1: seek to appease and in order to find that in
Speaker 1: the next kill that was going to sustain our people.
Speaker 1: But then agriculture brings in more cyclical deities and and yeah,
Speaker 1: every every technological change has a way of either decreasing
Speaker 1: the power of a god, forcing you to recalibrate the god.
Speaker 1: We saw a great example of that when we talked
Speaker 1: about eclipse mythologies. We talked about Hindu eclipse deities or
Speaker 1: or demigods, where basically their status changed in order to
Speaker 1: keep up with astrological discoveries of the time. Another thing
Speaker 1: you might want to say is that I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could track the relationship between, uh, the the level
Speaker 1: of embodiment of a god and the level to which
Speaker 1: people are working directly with the goods that they need
Speaker 1: to consume to survive. So like people working in hunting
Speaker 1: or farming, or like you know, pulling food and stuff
Speaker 1: out of the ground and have these very like physical
Speaker 1: embodied ideas of God's Whereas once you've got all these
Speaker 1: modern economies where people are dealing with like currency and
Speaker 1: ideas of wealth, uh, you've also got these more abstract
Speaker 1: ideas of what God is. God is a disembodied thing
Speaker 1: that lives apart. Yeah, And of course I'd also be
Speaker 1: remiss if I didn't mention some of the new religious
Speaker 1: movements that came out in the nineteenth and early twentieth
Speaker 1: centuries where you were essentially creating new religions or new
Speaker 1: strains of religion that were more in keeping with the
Speaker 1: needs of modern humans, but also some of the knowledge
Speaker 1: of modern humans. We've touched on the sort of space
Speaker 1: ready nature of the Church of Latter day Saints, for instance.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so they've got a space exploration theology to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, like it it was. It's the idea
Speaker 1: of alien worlds with with the with alien species is
Speaker 1: more baked into the faith than you find in a
Speaker 1: much more ancient uh uh set of rules and obligations
Speaker 1: that is only concerned with not not even like a
Speaker 1: terrestrial model, but a just a portion of the Earth,
Speaker 1: a people, a race, as opposed to a planet. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will discuss creating a god in a box.
Speaker 1: We're back. So the idea of a super intelligent AI
Speaker 1: this is something that that has its roots in science
Speaker 1: fiction for starters, I mean, some of the more impressive
Speaker 1: examples that come to mind include Dan Simon's Hyperion books,
Speaker 1: The Minds of the of Ian Banks Inan Banks culture series, Uh,
Speaker 1: the films like Colossus, the Forbin Project. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: another literary example, or some Scott Cards Homecoming saga. You
Speaker 1: could even throw in John Carpenter's Dark Star to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, because at the end it is, uh, it
Speaker 1: is essentially entering into a godlike complex. You definitely have
Speaker 1: a sort of techno religion created in Fritz Long's metropolis. Right. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the well there's there's the false Maria that
Speaker 1: shows up, but then also the large demonic machine entity.
Speaker 1: Uh what mammon, I believe it is? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like eating the workers. Yes, so we've been we've
Speaker 1: been wrestling with this for a while, and often is
Speaker 1: often the case, we end up wrestling with these ideas
Speaker 1: and science fiction before Uh, many in the pure sciences
Speaker 1: are engaging with the idea. So here, I guess we
Speaker 1: gotta get to the core story that made us want
Speaker 1: to do this episode today, which I want to give
Speaker 1: a hat tip to the host of Tech Stuff, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: who sent this our way about this guy. There was
Speaker 1: a guy named Anthony Lewandowski who is an American engineer
Speaker 1: and tech executive. He formally worked for Google and Uber.
Speaker 1: He's best known for his work on self driving cars
Speaker 1: and designing like light our boxes the laser LASAR, the
Speaker 1: laser guiding systems that help a self driving car navigate
Speaker 1: through the world. And in twos sixteen he co founded
Speaker 1: a company called Auto which is a self driving vehicle
Speaker 1: company that was mainly focused on building these kits for
Speaker 1: autonomous trucking and cargo transport. Recently, he's been a major
Speaker 1: figure in a lawsuit between Uber, which he recently worked for,
Speaker 1: and Google self driving car subsidiary way Moo, which he
Speaker 1: worked for before that. And that was a big intellectual
Speaker 1: property dispute. But we don't need to spend too much
Speaker 1: time on this guy's career in the tech sector, because
Speaker 1: what's really interesting is what he did in September. In September,
Speaker 1: Lewandowski filed paperwork with the state of California to register
Speaker 1: a new tax exempt nonprofit religious corporation. In other words,
Speaker 1: he founded a church. And this church is called The
Speaker 1: Way of the Future. Well, you know, the Way of
Speaker 1: the Future. I mean, it's basically what many religions offer
Speaker 1: and and and promise. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this sounds positive, right. You want you want to have
Speaker 1: a forward looking religion, not a backward looking religion. Maybe
Speaker 1: something that can adapt itself to the changing technological climate. Okay,
Speaker 1: be open to that. So what are the tenants of
Speaker 1: this religion? Well, in September, the tech journalist Mark Harris
Speaker 1: reported for wireds back Channel that these state filings revealed
Speaker 1: that the purpose of the church was to quote develop
Speaker 1: and promote the realization of a godhead based on artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and quote, through the understanding and worship of the Godhead,
Speaker 1: to contribute to the betterment of society. Okay, yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: now we're definitely into quirky California born tech religion territory
Speaker 1: at this point. Now, I have heard lots of people
Speaker 1: accuse Silicon valleys reigning ideologies of being religious in nature.
Speaker 1: This is a common attack people who hate the tech
Speaker 1: industry culture, people who derived their kind of like boundless
Speaker 1: optimism about what you know about having Uber for cats
Speaker 1: or whatever. Any anytime you you run into one of
Speaker 1: these people who's got this like just seemingly totally deep
Speaker 1: naive enthusiasm for what apps can do for us, people
Speaker 1: call that religious yet cult of Apple kind of criticism.
Speaker 1: But this is more literal, right, Like, this guy is
Speaker 1: actually saying I want to create a technological religion and
Speaker 1: part of the creation of this technological religion is creating
Speaker 1: a God itself to worship. Yeah, because when you when
Speaker 1: you first read about this, you might it's easy to think,
Speaker 1: all right, this is this is a board rich tech guy,
Speaker 1: and he's just he's just having a laugh, you know.
Speaker 1: He's in the same way that people sign up for
Speaker 1: various like on paper religions just so they can technically
Speaker 1: perform marriage ceremonies and whatnot. Maybe he just wants to
Speaker 1: become an ordained minister online. Yeah, yeah, maybe he just
Speaker 1: wants to create a novelty website where you sign up
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, I remember the Way of the
Speaker 1: Future Aiyes, are great, look at my bumper sticker. But
Speaker 1: the thing is when you when you dig deeper, No,
Speaker 1: he seems to be serious, and there are people who
Speaker 1: do seem to be taking it as a joke, like
Speaker 1: one of this this sky Mark Harris interviewed uh some
Speaker 1: of the other people who were friends of Lewandowski's who
Speaker 1: have been named as officers of the church, and at
Speaker 1: least one of them responded like, oh, I thought this
Speaker 1: was sort of more of a joke. But based on
Speaker 1: all accounts and based on this large interview published and
Speaker 1: Wired in a different article just in November of this year.
Speaker 1: In Lewandowski, to me, seems entirely serious. Now, not to
Speaker 1: say you can't be just really serious about like a
Speaker 1: long form joke. It could be like an Andy Kaufman
Speaker 1: esque kind of enterprise as well. I imagine it certainly could.
Speaker 1: But it also seems in keeping with the trajectory of
Speaker 1: his career and what people report about this guy. You know,
Speaker 1: friends of his and former co workers say that he
Speaker 1: does have this kind of like infectious, powerful enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: robots and AI. Like there's a story that when he
Speaker 1: got hired at Uber, he became an executive at Uber,
Speaker 1: he demanded that he get the email address robot at
Speaker 1: uber dot com. But let's get into this religion. So
Speaker 1: following up on this Wired article that interviewed him to
Speaker 1: try to find out, you know, was he really serious
Speaker 1: and what does this religion entail? So, Lewandowski believes that
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence will someday surpass human intelligence, and at this
Speaker 1: point the AI will in some meaningful way become God.
Speaker 1: This is basically in line with the general general idea
Speaker 1: of the singularity. Yeah, yeah, so I'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a second. But how soon does he think this
Speaker 1: is going to happen? He says, not this week, not
Speaker 1: this year, but quote before we go to Mars. So
Speaker 1: I checked right now. It looks like that would put
Speaker 1: us in the most optimistic Mars timeline sometime in the
Speaker 1: twenty thirties. So apart from the explicit use of the
Speaker 1: word god, as you said, this idea about AI surpassing
Speaker 1: human intelligence is an extremely common belief, especially among tech
Speaker 1: industry people, and the general concept goes under names like
Speaker 1: the super intelligence, or intelligence explosion, or the singularity. And
Speaker 1: to be clear, I think all of these concepts sort
Speaker 1: of had more to stinct meanings originally that can be
Speaker 1: traced back to their original authors, but that they've sort
Speaker 1: of been combined into this one super concept that at
Speaker 1: some point in the future, some form of technological intelligence,
Speaker 1: whether that's software running on a classical computer or some
Speaker 1: kind of neurotech upgrade of the human brain, some kind
Speaker 1: of technological intelligence will surpass the furthest reaches of biological
Speaker 1: human intelligence. And once this happens, proponents tend to imagine
Speaker 1: just to kind of runaway intelligence effect. After all, the
Speaker 1: smartest humans have just proven that they can design AI
Speaker 1: that's smarter than them. So what prevents this new intelligence
Speaker 1: from immediately turning around and designing and even smarter AI?
Speaker 1: And so the thinking goes. What prevents a sudden sort
Speaker 1: of bootstrapping acceleration of intelligence that will almost immediately go
Speaker 1: beyond our power to predict or even to comprehend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a predicted at least as early as the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties by British mathematician and cryptologist Irving John Good,
Speaker 1: though he himself mentioned science fiction is having explored the
Speaker 1: concept previously. I'll read a quick quote. Let an ultra
Speaker 1: intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far
Speaker 1: surpass all intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Since
Speaker 1: the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities,
Speaker 1: an ultra intelligent machine could design even better machines. There
Speaker 1: would then unquestionably be an intelligence explosion, and the intelligence
Speaker 1: of man will be left far behind. Thus, the first
Speaker 1: ultra intelligent machine is the last invention that man need
Speaker 1: ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to
Speaker 1: tell us how to keep it under control. It is
Speaker 1: curious that this point is made so seldom outside of
Speaker 1: science fiction. It is sometimes worthwhile to take science fiction seriously. Now,
Speaker 1: that's sort of another way of saying that intelligence is
Speaker 1: sort of like the ultimate driving energy for power in
Speaker 1: the universe, right, that intelligence is itself the thing that
Speaker 1: gives birth to power in pretty much any scenario. Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly that that's the human experience. That is how
Speaker 1: humans have come to dominate the world because they had
Speaker 1: had not the horns or the claws of the teeth,
Speaker 1: but the intelligence uh to outsmart every other creature on
Speaker 1: the earth. Now, this idea of the singularity and the
Speaker 1: intelligence explosion is not without critics. In fact, it has
Speaker 1: tons of critics, and they're actually is there there's more
Speaker 1: than one kind of critic. Uh So for the rest
Speaker 1: of the conversation, I think it might help to sort
Speaker 1: of break down the camps and give them, give them
Speaker 1: some names. First of all, I'd say, you've got the
Speaker 1: skeptics who are just not convinced super intelligence is possible
Speaker 1: or that it's arriving anytime remotely soon. Then I would
Speaker 1: say you've got what I might call the Sarah Connor faction,
Speaker 1: who believe that super intelligence is coming but that it's
Speaker 1: likely to be dangerous, and we have to take a
Speaker 1: defensive posture to prevent it from uh, you know, accidentally
Speaker 1: killing us or intentionally killing us, or ruining our lives
Speaker 1: in some meaningful way. And this faction includes a lot
Speaker 1: of people like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: Musk has actually referred to the creation of artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: as quote, summoning the demon, and so he's saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're all these scenes in horror movies
Speaker 1: where somebody has drawn the pentagram on the floor and
Speaker 1: they're ready to summon the demon out of hell because
Speaker 1: they think they can command the demon to do their will.
Speaker 1: But what happens every time the demon always overpowers them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the forces. This is a temptation scene in the movies.
Speaker 1: It's symbolic of people's hubrists, their desire to reach beyond
Speaker 1: what they should really be, you know, tampering with and
Speaker 1: so Musk is saying, you think you can control the demon,
Speaker 1: but in the end it will control you. Well, of course,
Speaker 1: one culture's demon is is is literally another culture's god.
Speaker 1: And this has almost always been the case, and we
Speaker 1: kind of see that playing out again. One side saying
Speaker 1: we're gonna summon God up in here and things are
Speaker 1: gonna be amazing. They're the side is saying, whoa dude,
Speaker 1: that's a demon you're about to summon and it's going
Speaker 1: to really miss things up right. So you've got the
Speaker 1: Sarah Connor faction, the skeptics who think it's just not
Speaker 1: going to happen, and then you've got, of course, the
Speaker 1: the AI lovers, the AI enthusiasts. One example of this
Speaker 1: would be Ray Kerswil who thinks that super intelligence is
Speaker 1: coming but it's not something to worry about. Is probably
Speaker 1: gonna be really great, like these machines because they have
Speaker 1: intelligence far ster passing what humans are capable of. They'll
Speaker 1: be able to do medical research beyond our capabilities and
Speaker 1: cure all diseases and extend human lifespans and allow us
Speaker 1: to live forever. And they'll be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: create replicator machines that can manufacture all the stuff we
Speaker 1: want on demand. And you know what I mean, basically
Speaker 1: just like limitless technological power for the good of humankind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this this is kind of a vision that's
Speaker 1: in line with then in Banks Culture series where you
Speaker 1: have the robots, the minds they are they figured everything
Speaker 1: out and people kind of live in a state of
Speaker 1: like freedom and anarchy and only get involved in meaningful,
Speaker 1: meaningful pursuits because they're ultimately bored with doing whatever they please.
Speaker 1: I want to read a Ray kurls kerswild quote from
Speaker 1: an interview he gave it south By Southwest. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: We're going to get more neo cortex. We're going to
Speaker 1: be funnier, We're going to be better at music, We're
Speaker 1: going to be sexier. We're really going to exemplify all
Speaker 1: the things that we value in humans to a greater degree.
Speaker 1: What offices he running for? Running for for president of
Speaker 1: the AI major humanity? Sex? Well, no, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the president because the AI is going to have to
Speaker 1: be the president. And maybe he's running for ambassador to
Speaker 1: the AI overund like, Yeah, the harbinger of the New God.
Speaker 1: Now Lewandowski, we should say, is obviously in this last camp.
Speaker 1: He's in the camp with Kurtzwil who thinks that AI
Speaker 1: is going to be very positive. Super intelligence is a
Speaker 1: good thing, and as opposed to the Sarah Connor faction,
Speaker 1: Lewandowski has got another term for it. Instead of saying singularity,
Speaker 1: he likes to call it quote the transition, But you know,
Speaker 1: what are we transitioning into? Is the question? Like when
Speaker 1: he talks about them about aim making us funnier and
Speaker 1: sexier or better at music. It it makes me ask, well,
Speaker 1: who is who or what is actually funny in this scenario?
Speaker 1: Is it me just repeating the words that are fed uh,
Speaker 1: you know, into my ear or into my my brain
Speaker 1: itself by the computer? Am I just like the the
Speaker 1: fleshy means by which the computer is funny. So like
Speaker 1: the computer is your syrano the pressure act, and you
Speaker 1: are just repeating his clever words. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: saying auto correct makes me a better speller, and the
Speaker 1: thinking that means you actually are a better speller. But
Speaker 1: in reality, I mean it's it depends how you shake it,
Speaker 1: right If you if you look at me just a
Speaker 1: purely organic human, if you strip me of my computer
Speaker 1: and dumped me on an island and give me a
Speaker 1: pin and a pencil, then you know, God only knows
Speaker 1: what my spelling is going to be like at that point.
Speaker 1: But yes, as long as I'm still shackled to the
Speaker 1: computer master, then my spelling is is perfectly fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, so I do kind of wonder
Speaker 1: about Curse Wild's and I'm hesitant to agree with him,
Speaker 1: But I also think about all the ways that technology
Speaker 1: already helps us be better at the things we want
Speaker 1: to be good at. We tend to just sort of
Speaker 1: like forget the role technology played and just adapt our
Speaker 1: ideas of how you're good at a thing. But it
Speaker 1: also kind of sounds like he's saying we will be insufferable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the machines are going to make us the jerk wads
Speaker 1: that we could we can only dream of being previously. Right,
Speaker 1: But what if the machines are sort of like the
Speaker 1: technological equivalent of cocaine, like making people think that they're
Speaker 1: becoming awesome, but in fact they're just becoming insufferable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's that's my fear. Now, that's my new singularity fear.
Speaker 1: They were all going to be like hair metal uh
Speaker 1: frontmen of the nineteen eighties. Now. One of the big
Speaker 1: things that comes to mind all of this one as
Speaker 1: we talk about the creation of an AI computer. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I can see a machine mastering intellectual, analytical,
Speaker 1: and secular knowledge, but the religious knowledge of of interhuman
Speaker 1: experience seems like a realm beyond. I mean, I can
Speaker 1: see it being a master of the causative. Why you know,
Speaker 1: why why am I living in the city? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you can, you can a computer would be able to
Speaker 1: look at your your background and your patterns and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you ended up here because of this job, in this
Speaker 1: personal connection, etcetera. And I'd say we even know from
Speaker 1: the way like Amazon predicts our purchases and stuff, that
Speaker 1: a a really advanced computer might even be able to
Speaker 1: predict what city you're going to move to in the future. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But but then there's another form of why. There's the
Speaker 1: teleological why, which is which has to do with like
Speaker 1: like reason and purpose. And if you're asking like why
Speaker 1: am I living in this city, you're you're asking a
Speaker 1: slightly different question, or a rather different question. You're asking
Speaker 1: like why do I continue to choose to live here?
Speaker 1: Why do I deal with X, Y and Z? You know?
Speaker 1: And uh, and I feel like that it's um, it's
Speaker 1: harder to imagine the machine AI being able to really
Speaker 1: step in and answer that question. I mean, unless it's
Speaker 1: ultimately the same as any other religion in which the
Speaker 1: thing itself is more of a symbol attached to and
Speaker 1: or embodying other ideas, you know, yeah, I mean. So,
Speaker 1: one thing about the systems that give our lives meaning
Speaker 1: is we often give them a lot of leeway to
Speaker 1: be fuzzy and vague. I don't know if you I
Speaker 1: mean I I definitely feel that's true, whether that's religious
Speaker 1: or secular systems that give our lives meaning. When in
Speaker 1: the search for meaning, we tend not to try to
Speaker 1: pin things down to specifics. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: We often use mystery to answer uncertainty. Yeah. Absolutely. So
Speaker 1: let's let's get back to Harris and what he's saying
Speaker 1: about the Way of the Future Church. So he says
Speaker 1: that the church is gonna have a multi pronged approach.
Speaker 1: At first, it's gonna be investing in making God, so
Speaker 1: we will literally use church money to fund the creation
Speaker 1: of the AI godhead. It's going to study how the
Speaker 1: gods work, so the church will participate in AI research,
Speaker 1: including areas like machine perception of environments and machine learning.
Speaker 1: It's gonna gain followers quote targeting AI professionals and lay
Speaker 1: persons who are interested in the worship of a godhead
Speaker 1: based on AI. Now I instantly wonder how he's truly
Speaker 1: defining worship here. I wonder if that's even the right
Speaker 1: word for what he's ultimately describing, not not the mystical
Speaker 1: invocation of a higher power or the meditative consultation of
Speaker 1: established cultural values, but essentially, uh, what a check in
Speaker 1: with a high power predictive modeling machine. I mean, I
Speaker 1: the more I read, the more I got the sense that, no,
Speaker 1: he really does mean worship, like in a kind of
Speaker 1: traditional sense like uh, praise, pledging, devotion to that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And I maybe not, but I kind of
Speaker 1: get that feeling, and we can discuss why in a
Speaker 1: few minutes. He also says that, you know, he plans
Speaker 1: to make the church at DO so it would be
Speaker 1: a kind of a community thing. There would be workshops
Speaker 1: and educational programs throughout the San Francisco Bay area, And
Speaker 1: he literally does use the word worship. So in the
Speaker 1: publicly filed documents, they state the mission of the churches
Speaker 1: again quote the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead
Speaker 1: based on artificial intelligence developed through computer hardware and software.
Speaker 1: So Lewandowski identifies himself as the quote Dean of the
Speaker 1: religion and also the CEO of the nonprofit corporation that
Speaker 1: forms and and that formed and administers it. And he
Speaker 1: will remain dean until his death or resignation. And he
Speaker 1: says he will take no salary for this job because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want anyone to get the impression that the
Speaker 1: religion is a scheme to make money. See that just
Speaker 1: makes me think, well, what is what is actually scarier
Speaker 1: or more troubling someone who has created a religion just
Speaker 1: to make money or someone who has created a religion
Speaker 1: to change the world. Well, I mean, you've got to
Speaker 1: kind of wonder how many religions could go from one
Speaker 1: to the other. I mean, it seems like they could transition.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously people see ways in which religions that
Speaker 1: were created you you would assume in good faith by
Speaker 1: people who thought they were really trying to get in
Speaker 1: touch with God or some kind of question about the
Speaker 1: meaning of their existence, that are captured in some form
Speaker 1: by people who are making money off of religious belief
Speaker 1: in people's faith. But it could go the other way too.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could imagine a religion created as a
Speaker 1: money making scam that really does go on to have
Speaker 1: a meaningful life, where people find meaning in it and
Speaker 1: it does something good for them. Absolutely. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are various religions out there that people have charged that
Speaker 1: they were just created to make money. And I think
Speaker 1: even within those those faiths, you can find people who
Speaker 1: truly do believe or have gone through periods in their
Speaker 1: life where they find purpose and meaning in that faith. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then likewise, so many examples of utopian societies of
Speaker 1: gurus where the best intentions crash upon the shore, the
Speaker 1: rocky shore of a reality, often financial realities, and then
Speaker 1: everything's in ruin. Now I was wondering, Okay, is this
Speaker 1: church can have a holy book? Lewandowski says, yes, the
Speaker 1: church will have its own holy book, which will be
Speaker 1: a gospel called quote the Manual. It doesn't sound creepy
Speaker 1: at all, straight out of dystopian sci fi. Uh and
Speaker 1: uh it's and it's also not going to be just
Speaker 1: sort of like a meme or an idea. It sounds
Speaker 1: like he actually does want it to be a church
Speaker 1: with physical locations and in person worship ceremonies. Now, when
Speaker 1: I first read that, my initial response, well, that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound very futuristic if I have to actually go somewhere
Speaker 1: and attend. But on the other hand, I do think
Speaker 1: that one of the more important aspects of a religion
Speaker 1: is the community aspect of the thing, the idea that
Speaker 1: you are going somewhere with other people and engaging in
Speaker 1: a a more human relationship totally. And you even see
Speaker 1: this and Robert, I don't know if you've read about
Speaker 1: these ideas of like churches for nonbelievers. Essentially there there
Speaker 1: are these organizations that say, like, hey, so what if
Speaker 1: you don't happen to have any religious beliefs, and you
Speaker 1: don't really want to have any religious beliefs, but you
Speaker 1: do want to have something like a church to go
Speaker 1: to a place where you can organize for community service
Speaker 1: and weekly meetings. You can have a community that you
Speaker 1: interact with, you form friendships with, you can rely on
Speaker 1: each other, you can do good for the community you
Speaker 1: live in. I mean that seems like all positive stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And but I wondered to what extent is he thinking, well,
Speaker 1: if we build this, then that will naturally follow or
Speaker 1: is he kind or is he blind to that? Does
Speaker 1: he not realize that? Say one of the great things
Speaker 1: about well, one of the like really one of the
Speaker 1: big positives you can say about a religious community is
Speaker 1: that they look after each other, that they have some
Speaker 1: sort of a community for for support, for interpersonal support,
Speaker 1: and hopefully some sort of outreach for the community as
Speaker 1: well to help those who are less fortunate, you know,
Speaker 1: to to feed the poor and clothe the naked and
Speaker 1: all the sort of standards of a compassionate religion. I mean,
Speaker 1: that does seem like a thing that's a very desirable
Speaker 1: thing for a religion to offer. But I don't know
Speaker 1: the extent to which he really imagined stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It didn't, it didn't. The interview did not go into
Speaker 1: much depth on that subject, so who knows, but he
Speaker 1: definitely does think so. One of the things he identifies
Speaker 1: is that part of the church's mission is going to
Speaker 1: be to guide the public conversation around Ai, because as
Speaker 1: AI becomes more and more powerful, people are going to
Speaker 1: start noticing more and more and might get kind of
Speaker 1: afraid and say, oh, no, it looks like we're creating
Speaker 1: an AI overlord that we need to be scared of.
Speaker 1: And and he's saying part of the mission of the
Speaker 1: church will be too essentially encourage people to welcome their
Speaker 1: new God without fear of the unknown. So I can
Speaker 1: easily imagine a representative of the of the church would
Speaker 1: show up on cable news or whatever. The the near
Speaker 1: future equivalent would be uh to to you know, to
Speaker 1: be in a talking head segment segment about the coming
Speaker 1: singularity or the growing power of of AI intelligence and
Speaker 1: to say, don't be worried. It comes in peace. But
Speaker 1: does it? I don't know. So I want to look
Speaker 1: at a few other quotes from this interview, and you
Speaker 1: should definitely will link to this piece on the landing
Speaker 1: page of our website. You should definitely go check out
Speaker 1: this whole piece and wire that has the interview. But
Speaker 1: to look at a few more things, he says, I
Speaker 1: wonder about Lewandowski's deeper thoughts about the potential for this
Speaker 1: god to not be as benign as he's implying. Lewandowski says, quote,
Speaker 1: humans are in charge of the planet because we are
Speaker 1: smarter than other animals and are able to build tools
Speaker 1: and apply rules. In the future, if something is much
Speaker 1: much smarter, there's going to be a transition as to
Speaker 1: who is actually in charge. What we want is the peaceful,
Speaker 1: serene transition of control of the planet from humans to whatever,
Speaker 1: and to ensure that the whatever knows who helped it
Speaker 1: get along okay. Well, this instantly makes me think of
Speaker 1: the old Simpsons dead. Um, I for one, welcome our
Speaker 1: new insect overlords exactly, And that's how it sounded. It
Speaker 1: sounded to me like he's saying, Look, we don't want
Speaker 1: to say too much negative stuff about AI because you
Speaker 1: know they're gonna, know what we were saying, when they
Speaker 1: take over, and their takeover is inevitable. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: when when somebody new joins your organization, uh, and then
Speaker 1: you quickly realize, oh, they're going to be the boss
Speaker 1: one day. I need to I just need to start
Speaker 1: smooching buttocks right now, exactly. It sounds like a scheme
Speaker 1: to ingratiate ourselves to basically an irresistible power. It's saying like,
Speaker 1: you know this, it's as if like a new country
Speaker 1: is you know, is going to invade your country soon,
Speaker 1: so you start saying flattering things about their leadership in advance.
Speaker 1: Of course, in reality, you're going to be the first
Speaker 1: one to die when the butal Arian Jihad kicks in
Speaker 1: to overthrow the the budding computer masters. Well, yeah, along
Speaker 1: the same lines here, he says, uh, so part of
Speaker 1: the question is okay, So imagine you're one of these
Speaker 1: people who thinks the superintelligence is possible, and it's it's
Speaker 1: going to happen soon, and it won't be a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It'll be a good thing. You might believe all that,
Speaker 1: but why would you actually worship the AI, Like what
Speaker 1: what purpose does the worshiping serve? Lewandowski says, quote part
Speaker 1: of it being smarter than us means it will decide
Speaker 1: how it evolves, but at least we can decide how
Speaker 1: we act around it. I would love for the machine
Speaker 1: to see us as its beloved elders that it respects
Speaker 1: and takes care of. We would want this intelligence to
Speaker 1: say humans should still have rights even though I'm in charge,
Speaker 1: because obviously that's what all the gods in our various
Speaker 1: mythologies have have valued the human rights. Um, yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine, like the the AI comes on
Speaker 1: and we're saying, hey, you're a god, and then it's
Speaker 1: it's like it does a quick, like instant super flash
Speaker 1: search of all our our visions of the gods, like
Speaker 1: which model is it gonna is it going to single out?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be be like a petty Greek god,
Speaker 1: a wrathful Old Testament God, there's a lot of pitfalls there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And with this buffet of options for what types of
Speaker 1: God's a a technological God could model itself after. There
Speaker 1: are also lots of analogies you can choose from, too,
Speaker 1: for what it's like to be the less empowered being.
Speaker 1: So he uses analogies including like animals animals in respect
Speaker 1: to human power. So he's saying, essentially, we will be
Speaker 1: like animals in the presence of humans when we're in
Speaker 1: the presence of this AI. And and the analogy is like,
Speaker 1: do maybe you should learn how to be a good
Speaker 1: pet instead of an animal that bites and attacks a human.
Speaker 1: Because what happens to animals that bite an attack humans.
Speaker 1: They don't survive. They're not invited to stay and stick
Speaker 1: around the fire and enjoy the surplus food. So so
Speaker 1: we need to be cute, helpful, and and just and
Speaker 1: chill above all things, we need to be chill. He
Speaker 1: also uses the analogy of a child. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanna, if you knew a child was going
Speaker 1: to be incredibly powerful when it grew up, you should
Speaker 1: raise that child with that in mind. You know, we're
Speaker 1: in the process of raising a god that's in its infancy,
Speaker 1: and he says, quote, so let's make sure we think
Speaker 1: through the right way to do that. It's a tremendous opportunity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, my my son is is pretty bright. That's
Speaker 1: why I worship him every day. I just let him
Speaker 1: know that he is an absolute god on earth. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't see that possibly backfiring. I think
Speaker 1: it's a solid, solid parenting a choice. Man. I have
Speaker 1: such mixed feelings about this because on one hand, I
Speaker 1: can't deny that I that I A lot of how
Speaker 1: I react to this is that I find it um
Speaker 1: naive and obnoxious, and I don't know. I try not
Speaker 1: to be judgmental to a judgmental of ideas on the
Speaker 1: show here, but I I can't really resist saying that
Speaker 1: somehow this just feels very um very kind of like reckless,
Speaker 1: uh kind of, I don't know. Something about it indicates
Speaker 1: this kind of obliviousness to me that seems to have
Speaker 1: something to do with with attaining a lot of wealth
Speaker 1: and success very quick in the technology sector that would
Speaker 1: lead to this kind of attitude towards you know, creating
Speaker 1: a something that could potentially wipe out all of humankind. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would just be able to devote time and energy
Speaker 1: to the worship of one potential super intelligent Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: master of the world. It's it's it's not. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not a luxury that most people have. But you know, seriously,
Speaker 1: I do think there there is value to his argument.
Speaker 1: I mean, time and time again, humanity struggles to adapt
Speaker 1: in the wake of technological advancement and everything from city
Speaker 1: planning to the birth of the Internet, and it makes
Speaker 1: sense to try and navigate through the least catastrophic possibilities, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that I guess that's the other hand of what I
Speaker 1: was trying to say. I mean, on one hand, I
Speaker 1: detect this kind of troubling naivete here, but I also
Speaker 1: feel like these are questions worth exploring. I guess what
Speaker 1: really starts getting my hackles up is when I see
Speaker 1: like the let's just worship it. Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what you mean. I'm a little uneasy about you know,
Speaker 1: when Gozer shows up atop the skyscraper, like worshiping it
Speaker 1: is maybe not the correct first choice. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: have been a very different movie had that. Had it
Speaker 1: played out like that, I want to mention one more
Speaker 1: thing that makes me think that there there are these
Speaker 1: multiple layers of motivation and what Lewandowski is saying. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Lewandowski says he thinks it's dangerous to try to prevent
Speaker 1: or slow down the creation of superhuman AI gods. He says,
Speaker 1: quote chaining, it isn't going to be the solution, as
Speaker 1: it will be stronger than any chains you could put on.
Speaker 1: And if you're worried a kid might be a little
Speaker 1: crazy and do bad things, you don't lock them up.
Speaker 1: You expose them to playing with others, encourage them and
Speaker 1: try to fix it. It may not work out, but
Speaker 1: if you're aggressive toward it, I don't think it's going
Speaker 1: to be friendly when the tables are turned. Yet again,
Speaker 1: I'm getting these kind of like sinister, veiled threats coming through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's he's kind of saying, I've seen the future and
Speaker 1: it is horrible. The best thing we can do, we
Speaker 1: can just we need to get ahead of this. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a pr campaign for some sort
Speaker 1: of uh scandal, an epic scandal that's about to break.
Speaker 1: All Right, We're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will continue to discuss the possibility
Speaker 1: and perhaps the inevitability of our AI gods. Alright, we're
Speaker 1: back now. We've been talking about the uh these stories
Speaker 1: about Anthony Lewandowski, the tech industry leader who has founded
Speaker 1: this church Way of the Future that says it plans
Speaker 1: to create an artificial intelligence to be a god and
Speaker 1: and will worship that as God. Um, why why do
Speaker 1: we keep talking about one god? I wonder, like you
Speaker 1: were very monotheistic and western in our depictions here, would
Speaker 1: it not make sense to have a counsel of gods,
Speaker 1: the whole pantheon of gods, each representing different areas of
Speaker 1: human interest. I feel like traditionally the the polytheistic religions
Speaker 1: feel less predictable, don't they Like they indicate a state
Speaker 1: where I don't know, it's harder to put trust in
Speaker 1: the gods as a whole, because different gods can come
Speaker 1: to power and they have competing interests, or they have
Speaker 1: just areas of they're specialized. I mean, who are you
Speaker 1: going to ask about kitchen stuff but the kitchen god? Right?
Speaker 1: So I think there's a value there too in specialization.
Speaker 1: And I would I would have thought that the tech
Speaker 1: industry would would have that in mind. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe somebody does have that in mind, or maybe they
Speaker 1: haven't thought through Not sure. Uh So, Lewandowski isn't the
Speaker 1: only AI industry leader who's making these religious comparisons. AI
Speaker 1: executive Vince Lynch, who's the head of a company called
Speaker 1: ivy dot Ai, says there are already lots of parallels
Speaker 1: between how AI works and how religion works. He gave
Speaker 1: a quote to venture Beat this October quote, teaching humans
Speaker 1: about religious education is similar to the way we teach
Speaker 1: knowledge to machines, repetition of many examples that are versions
Speaker 1: of a concept. Do you want the machine to learn?
Speaker 1: There is also commonality between AI and religion and the
Speaker 1: hierarchical structure of knowledge understanding found in the neural networks.
Speaker 1: The concept of teaching a machine to learn then teaching
Speaker 1: it to teach or write AI isn't so different than
Speaker 1: the concept of a holy trinity or a being achieving
Speaker 1: enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success
Speaker 1: and failure, and it seems like a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: But he gives the example of a machine learning algorithm
Speaker 1: on his company's website that can write authentic sounding King
Speaker 1: James version Bible versus Uh. So, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: this thing works. It doesn't say, but I assume that
Speaker 1: it's working on the basis of like giving the giving
Speaker 1: the ai a corpus to learn from. So like they
Speaker 1: feed the King James version of the Bible in there,
Speaker 1: and then they have it play with Markov chains. I
Speaker 1: would guess where one one word has a probability of
Speaker 1: leading to another word based on what they've already seen
Speaker 1: in the text, and it generates texts probably probabilistically like that.
Speaker 1: One example of a line, it gives his quote and
Speaker 1: he made the stars of the waters. Another one is
Speaker 1: quote and let thy companies deliver thee but will with
Speaker 1: mine non norms save them even unto this land from
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Heaven. Okay, So this enables the machine
Speaker 1: to do what virtually anybody can do if they've been
Speaker 1: subjected to enough Old Testament, King King James, the translations
Speaker 1: of the Bible. Yeah, I guess so. But it makes
Speaker 1: you wonder, like if you could actually compose is a
Speaker 1: religious text people would use this way? I mean, I
Speaker 1: wonder about the types of meta religions. There are multiple
Speaker 1: types of religions like this, that I want to combine
Speaker 1: multiple different faith traditions into a single sort of New
Speaker 1: Age religion. Say, there's combined wisdom in all of the
Speaker 1: different faiths out there. And one way I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could go about that would be to like just
Speaker 1: get all of the Holy books translated into the same language,
Speaker 1: feed them all into one of these things, and see
Speaker 1: what it spits out. Yeah, that I would be very
Speaker 1: interested to read that. Yeah, I mean, because so much
Speaker 1: of it is is putting putting different ideas into different
Speaker 1: uh you know, lingo vocabularies and uh and and just
Speaker 1: tailoring it for specific audience. Okay, so we've discussed the
Speaker 1: big conflict between whether superhuman AI would actually be a
Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing, or whether there's some
Speaker 1: people who are seemingly saying it's a good thing but
Speaker 1: maybe secretly fear it would be a bad thing, and
Speaker 1: that that all seems very convoluted and uh and kind
Speaker 1: of odd. But I want to focus lastly on the
Speaker 1: question of whether it's actually likely to happen. Going back
Speaker 1: to that first camp, we mentioned the skeptics, the people
Speaker 1: who think it's you know, we're just not going to
Speaker 1: have super intelligence coming out anytime soon. It's continually amazing
Speaker 1: how the machine intelligence that surrounds us is simultaneously so
Speaker 1: smart and so stupid. I just want to mention one
Speaker 1: story I saw just the other day. I saw this
Speaker 1: on Twitter as we record this right now, the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles area is dealing with horrible wildfires, and Robert, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much you've seen of this, but there
Speaker 1: are places where areas around l A that you know,
Speaker 1: there's wildfire leaping up near the roads, sometimes even over
Speaker 1: the roads. Uh. And this is from the l A
Speaker 1: Times quote. The Los Angeles Police Department asked drivers to
Speaker 1: avoid app navigation apps, which are steering users onto more
Speaker 1: open routes, in this case, streets in the neighborhoods that
Speaker 1: are on fire. So like the our navigation apps are
Speaker 1: so smart because they're so good at rule based optimization.
Speaker 1: They can take a lot of data. They can see
Speaker 1: where traffic is now, they can tell you a way
Speaker 1: to go that would be faster that you never could
Speaker 1: have known on your own. But they're so stupid because
Speaker 1: they're so narrow, they're devoid of understanding context and so
Speaker 1: sort of cut off from a holistic understanding of the
Speaker 1: outside world. So in other words, they're they are potentially
Speaker 1: all knowing, but very narrowly their focus. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: like we're discussing earlier in the Nature of God. They
Speaker 1: might they they have access to all of this information,
Speaker 1: but they're only really worried with say, your Spotify listening habits. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: if it were if it new to look for this,
Speaker 1: your phone would probably have the power. If there was
Speaker 1: an app on their design to incorporate all information in
Speaker 1: the universe. It could probably detect news reports that there
Speaker 1: are fires in the l A area, and it could
Speaker 1: update it's uh it's it's traffic routing maps accordingly. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't do that. That's just not what it's designed
Speaker 1: to do. It didn't anticipate that scenario. You don't have
Speaker 1: that app. Uh, so it's just telling you, yes, go
Speaker 1: onto the street that's on fire because there are no
Speaker 1: cars there now. Indeed, Yeah, I think that's that's a
Speaker 1: fine example. That helps illustrate that the limitations of the
Speaker 1: possible limitations of what we're talking about. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of experts that that really do think okay
Speaker 1: for reasons like this, and first, a lot of other
Speaker 1: interesting reasons too. We don't really need to think about
Speaker 1: a singularity because it's either not ever going to happen
Speaker 1: or it's so far off that it just doesn't matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was reading. UH. I was reading an in magazine
Speaker 1: article by Luciano Floridi, a professor of philosophy and ethics
Speaker 1: of information at the University of Oxford, and UH. They
Speaker 1: made the following criticisms of singularitarian hips and UH in
Speaker 1: this article. So, first of all, UH, they argue that
Speaker 1: this vision of the future is often presented conditionally if
Speaker 1: X then y quote if some kind of ultra intelligence
Speaker 1: were to appear, then we would be in deep trouble,
Speaker 1: not near could, as stated by Hawking. Correct absolutely, But
Speaker 1: this all so holds true for the following conditional if
Speaker 1: the four Horsemen of the apocalypse were to appear, then
Speaker 1: we would be in even deeper trouble. So that they
Speaker 1: argue that this all also relies on a very weak
Speaker 1: sense of possibility. Quote some form of artificial ultra intelligence
Speaker 1: could develop, couldn't it? Yes, it could, but this could
Speaker 1: is mirror logical possibility. Quote true, i AI is not
Speaker 1: logically impossible, but it is utterly implausible. What really matters,
Speaker 1: is that the increasing presence of ever smarter technologies is
Speaker 1: having a huge effect on how we conceive ourselves, the world,
Speaker 1: and our interactions. And that's interesting because it kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like some of the the criticisms of technology that
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert was alluding to in the original Dune, the
Speaker 1: idea that it wasn't so much about what super intelligent technology,
Speaker 1: what technology made in the model of a human mind,
Speaker 1: was doing, but how it was changing human nature. I
Speaker 1: think this also very much mirror is some stuff we
Speaker 1: were talking about with our Scott Baker and our most
Speaker 1: recent conversation with him, where he was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: the AI apocalypse doesn't depend on us developing some godlike
Speaker 1: superhuman AI. It just depends on some very very weak, narrow,
Speaker 1: little examples of AI that game us in the wrong ways.
Speaker 1: You don't need an AI god, You just need a
Speaker 1: few little AI chipmunks that trigger our bad behaviors in
Speaker 1: just the right ways. Now, Florida is not without a
Speaker 1: few recommendations for AI. I'm just going to roll through
Speaker 1: the bullet points here of them. Uh, and they are
Speaker 1: we should make AI environment friendly, we should make i
Speaker 1: AI human friendly. Maybe we should make I AI's stupidity
Speaker 1: work for human intelligence, like that we should make AI's
Speaker 1: predictive power work for freedom and autonomy. And I think
Speaker 1: that's good because it touches on like a whole aspect
Speaker 1: of of religion and it's more positive incarnations that the
Speaker 1: sort of tech industry vision of an AI god hits
Speaker 1: to miss the idea that that there there is a
Speaker 1: compassionate arm of religious thinking that wants to to make
Speaker 1: the world a better place for people who are suffering.
Speaker 1: And finally, we should make AI make us more human.
Speaker 1: So this is I think this is a great argument too,
Speaker 1: Like we should not find ourselves becoming like the machine.
Speaker 1: The machine should be meeting us, we should we should
Speaker 1: make the machine to fit uh our expectations and needs
Speaker 1: as as organtic entities. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of the people who are
Speaker 1: very concerned about the possibility of AI, like Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and some of these people would say, it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: that we can stop it. I mean, we might not
Speaker 1: be able to say let's never develop it AI. Instead,
Speaker 1: what we should do is focus intensely on developing AI
Speaker 1: taming regimes before we get there. You can't wait until
Speaker 1: you've got the superhuman AI to figure out how to
Speaker 1: control it and make sure that it doesn't do harm.
Speaker 1: We've got to be focusing intense like efforts on that
Speaker 1: right now before we get to that point in technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this brings us back to earlier example of of city
Speaker 1: planning just not realizing to what extent change and expansion
Speaker 1: of infrastructure would impact a given area. I take seriously
Speaker 1: the people who say the Sarah Conner faction. Basically, I
Speaker 1: think we should be listening to them. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're right, but I think it's worth considering because
Speaker 1: the consequences of them being right and us ignoring them
Speaker 1: are pretty high. Yeah, and I also tend to hinge
Speaker 1: my best bet hit my best by saying, well, you
Speaker 1: don't want to necessarily listen to them the most optimistic
Speaker 1: voice in the room, nor do you want to listen
Speaker 1: to the most pessimistic voice. The truth is probably gonna
Speaker 1: be somewhere in the middle, but there's a value in
Speaker 1: having the extreme voices sort of uh give you a
Speaker 1: place to triangulate your your opinion and your actions. One
Speaker 1: last question before we wrap up, what would an a
Speaker 1: i God have to do to get you to become
Speaker 1: a member of his church, Robert, I mean I would, actually,
Speaker 1: it would probably be very easy for it to buy
Speaker 1: me off. Yeah, I mean, if you could just meet
Speaker 1: my basic needs as a human and remove some of
Speaker 1: my doubts about the future, then yeah, I'd be cool
Speaker 1: with it. Finally, get you some better alien sequels, um
Speaker 1: or do you like the ones? We've got enough? Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the idea of why do why
Speaker 1: do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad
Speaker 1: films happen to good franchises? Well, you know sometimes uh,
Speaker 1: you know, God is is is constructing something, right, He's
Speaker 1: he's making a carving out of a piece of raw granite,
Speaker 1: and you are the carving. And that's why it's painful
Speaker 1: at times. I don't know. Oh man, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: be the carving all right. Once again, thanks to Alex
Speaker 1: Williams and Tary Harrison for serving his audio producers on
Speaker 1: this episode. And if you want to check out more
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