Google published their principles of
Artificial Intelligence a few days ago on June 7th.
https://www.blog.google/topics/ai/ai-principles/
I just read this just hours ago, and my first reaction is about how human-only centered these principles are. This is so in line with the values if the dualistic cartesian enlightenment. Western culture has yet to embrace the metaphysics of holism and holographic relationship revealed by quantum physics. These AI principles by Google operate in the dualistic newtonian/cartesian world view where human intelligence is the only value in the universe. In the newtonian/cartesian world-view the natural world is mechanistic and valuable only in the way we can use it.
What does this have to do with care for our common home?
For me, Artificial Intelligence represents a shift in technology that gives humans a catastrophic choice. This catastrophic choice will reveal the fundamental philosophic, scientific, spiritual and religious answer to the question:
"What does it mean to be a human being?"
Will our culture decide that intelligence is our primary value as a human being? Intelligence which can exist outside the evolution of life in our biological bodies, intelligence in which humans are enhanced by machines, and artificial intelligence which cuts the necessity of the natural world of life for human existence?
Or will our culture decide that embodied life is our primary value as a human being? That being human means biological experience in the community of sacred life evolved over 4 billion years, which is connected to the earth and to this universe. Being human means that we acknowledge that life is sacred as described by wisdom traditions, or by new wisdom emerging.
I think that technology itself, artificial intelligence included, is not good or bad in itself. Technology is a reflection of what human consciousness values in the way we use it. Therefore, as we face challenges of climate change and ecological collapse, I think technology will be involved in our evolution, and how we remake ourselves will reveal the essence of what human beings are.
I joined Church for our Common Home to make a conscious choice about the future. I firmly choose life over disembodied intelligence. Human beings have no meaning outside the community of natural life out of which we emerged, and the community of life which we are a part and interdependent upon.
Jamie
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