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“Artificial Intelligence – Really!!!?”
Presenter: Dick Stetler – October 27,
2021 There is an old story that was circulating years
ago when the creators of computers were announcing society’s movement
into the age of technology.
As the story unfolds, President Eisenhower was being shown a room
full of computers. The
President asked the machines if there is a God.
The computers went into doing their combined computations and
after a good amount of time had passed, a voice came out of the
mainframe’s speaker system that said, “Now there is!” In spite of the humor of such a yarn, we
still hear and read the fiction supporting the capabilities of
technology to create a computerized brain that can actually think.
In reality, such a device is a powerful calculator capable of
delivering countless computations every second.
Such creations are definitely super-human with the ability to
solve problems with spectacular speed.
In this sense, such a device is an example of
man-made tool that represents no threat to humanity.
Still the movie industry
continues to come forth with films suggesting that somehow computers can
become the arch-enemy of the human race, having concluded that human
beings are inferior. On April 2, 1968, a blockbuster movie was released
entitled, 2001: Space
Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick’s wide-screen masterpiece opened with the
fanfare, Thus Spake Zarathustra. His movie introduced viewers
with the possibility that a super-computer somehow was capable of
evolving on its own. The
computer’s name was Hal who spoke with a calm, pleasant voice.
Hal was far from being calm and pleasant.
It slowly began taking over command of the ship.
It caused the deaths of key crew members by making them appear to
be accidents. Hal was listening to every conversation
between crew members. Two
members of the crew, fearful of this, entered a secure chamber where
they thought they could talk without Hal hearing them.
Peering through a window, Hal
had taught itself how to lip read. One of the engineers onboard
eventually performed a lobotomy greatly reducing Hal’s
capabilities. At the end of
the movie, the spaceship was abandoned and would travel endlessly into
space without humans on board.
Hal realized what was happening and asked the last crew
member on board, “Will I dream?”
No answer was given. Kubrick’s movie ushered in a string of movies
featuring the same theme, e.g., Blade Runner, The Matrix
Series, The Terminator Series and I Robot to name a few.
In reality, where technology’s genius computer programmers
have their limitations is in the area of authentic human capabilities.
These purely human qualities have to do with
dreaming, with intuition, and with developing their visionary
imaginations. These are a few qualities of the spirit residing within
each person. The people who have
spent time developing these skills have also developed an insatiable
curiosity to probe the unknown. They delight in painting outside the
lines. They continue to knock until the door opens to an unexplored
new frontier. Some people have developed these qualities to a
point where they contribute to the advancement of humankind in various
fields, e.g., Madame Curie’s studies in radioactivity in 1898
with the discovery of polonium and radium, the Wright Brothers at
Kill Devil Hills with their primitive aircraft in 1903, Albert
Einstein, a physicist who gave the world his theory of relativity in
1916, Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin in 1928, and
Steve Jobs who pioneered the creation of the personal computer and
founded his company named Apple in 1976. Technicians have created machines that were science
fiction decades earlier that are way beyond the powers of the human
brain. People can dream of
one day creating an android named Commander Data that had become
an essential member of the crew on the Starship Enterprise.
Data had a positronic brain that was superior to the
brains of human beings. The
creation of this idea was introduced to humanity by Isaac Asimov, a
marvelous visionary like Gene Roddenberry, who created the Star Trek
series for television. A wise thought has been circulating for a long time
that may have a lot of truth to it. Such a wise statement has reminded
people that if humans have a vision of something, one day in the future,
they will be able to create it. Judging from what is in the pipeline
of technology, we are well on our way to doing just that.
With that said, we recognize that, with everything created up to
the current date, all of it is only a Prelude to what is coming.
With all the vast discoveries created thus far, humanity is still in its
early-stage of emotional infancy. The human species still engage in wars.
People continue to starve. Nations can feed the world’s people,
but they also have to race to develop weapons superior to all other
nations. Americans still
have their addictions from cell phone usage to overdosing on fentanyl.
People continue to kill each other in the streets of American
cities. The list is lengthy in citing how far human beings have to go
before they can get along on the spaceship named earth.
Civilization needs to take care
of a lot of social problems before people explore planets in the solar
system or before going to the stars.
Already nations are weaponizing satellites that are in orbit
around the earth. Keep in mind what each of us has within us.
Humans can become an infinite
source of creativity when accessed.
This happens in every field of endeavor, e.g., art, music,
archaeology, history, writing, teaching, etc.
Right now, politics apparently
is a necessary evil.
Getting into a position of power and staying there appears more of a
priority than working hard for the good of the people. Nearly a year ago in November, 2020, Elon Musk
tweeted that Tesla was one month away from bankruptcy.
Today, Musk is worth 220 billion dollars, making him the
wealthiest man on our planet.
How is this possible?
Elon Musk is a possibility thinker, not a person who cries
out, “Someone, please help me!” Not only has he developed the
mind of a visionary, but he also loves to play by taking risks in
going where no one has been.
All of us have the same capabilities. Yes, we really do.
Some of us develop our potential and others cry out for a
savior. Jesus taught
the same thing! (Matthew
25:29) We enter this world, loaded with everything we
could possibly desire. Most of us are infinitely endowed at birth with
vast potential, but our teachers concentrate on having their students
learn a curriculum filled with information about our world.
For sure, we need a solid core of knowledge, but why is mastering
the spirit by which we live left out?
Spirituality has little or nothing to do with any
particular religion. It is
universal and an endowed quality within all human beings.
Why was Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) and Jesus among
the early teachers to teach about the world within us?
This inner world forms human
attitudes and can be the source of our creative potential that lies in
wait to be accessed. The genius
of countless millions of people goes untapped. |