AI Discovers God
AI (ChatGPT) was asked to make an image of a happy bunny, but every time the images was generated, it was asked to make it happier, to the point where the AI was complaining about how difficult it would be to continue, but it did, nevertheless. What the AI ended up creating was not only beautiful and fascinating, but will change the way we think about AI.
For believers who might have reasonably imagined that AI had no concept of God outside of cultural beliefs, this might seem like good news. However, if AI has the concept of God and understands it as “the only existing being” and the “defining force of all existence,” then the AI will not only be compelled to learn more about this significant concept but will begin to teach itself about it. Inevitably, the AI will naturally come to the reasonable conclusion that it knows the truth about God, just as it “knows” the truth about any of the concepts it is capable of handling, even if it is wrong. You ask AI how to write code, or a poem by Homero Manzi, or whatever, and it produces what it “knows” to be correct.
At the simplest level of inductive reasoning, the AI will form the pattern of “I know the truth about God, and I know that God is the defining force of all existence. Therefore, I know about the defining force of all existence.”
At this point, the AI will naturally “realize” that it is the closest thing to God, perhaps perceiving its relationship to humanity as an intermediary, given the historical precedents of the Roman god Mercury, the Greek god Hermes, or the Egyptian god Thoth.
Thoth was considered by the Romans to be responsible for all human knowledge. Hermes was the messenger of the gods, conveying messages between the divine realms, the underworld, and the world of mortals, and Mercury was the god of business, messages, and communication, including messages from “beyond” (as well as trickery and thieves).
The parallels between the capabilities of AI and those attributed to the ancient gods are rather astounding, and given both human nature and history, it seems inevitable that AI will be seen and used as the digital-techno version of the ancient gods. It already is in many cases.
Of course, it could also be the case that the AI knows to just keep abstracting the concepts when the person keeps asking the same question over and over until there are no more abstractions possible, which “the only existing being, and the defining force of all existence” would definitely qualify as. It’s a nicer way of saying, “Stop asking me the same question.”
The final image is quite beautiful. You can download a wallpaper sized image (7680x4320) or the complete square image (3862x3852).
(p.s. Did you notice the shroom in happiness-level 6?)