Will artificial intelligence threaten us? Certainly yes, but it will depend on what kind of creators we become

Every invention has threatened us, every advance is a double-edged sword. Every time we improve or augment some part of our bodies or our abilities, a little bit of that original, biological, natural quality is stunted. However, paradoxically, it is through this process of externalizing our spirit outside our body that we become more human.

For example, millions of years ago our ancestor grabbed a stone, possessed it with his human intention, which had nothing to do with the intention of the stone, and the unsuspecting stone became a tool in our hands. By making something that is not us a part of us, we have become more ourselves. A person with a stone in his hand is paradoxically more human than without a stone. And since then, things that are not natural to us, we did not have at birth, become part of our exo-body.

When we want to move fast, we put on a car and it augments our legs in such a way that we are able to move faster than any natural animal. When we want to fly, we dress up in an airplane and fly ourselves higher than Mount Everest and faster than any bird or mythical dragon. When we want to count fast, we augment our minds with a computer that counts for us.

But it also costs us something every time. It's not that our legs are stunted by cars (although they probably are), but rather my point is that today's man will see himself as immobile without a car. If you get rid of your mobile phone, your eyes, ears and mouth will continue to function normally, but you will lose "eyes at a distance", "ears at a distance" and your voice will no longer have a global volume, but "only" a natural volume, i.e. a maximum range of about 180 meters or so. Our legs are no longer legs, they have become the bicycle, our eyes are no longer eyes, they have become cameras connected to another part of our exo-body: the neutral network of the internet. Through this we are able to communicate as humanity across the planet. However, with the immense proximity of distance, we have lost a bit of closeness and intimacy, even privacy. What privacy when you have a multidimensional draught from all over the world in your pocket or on your desk?

Now, it seems, humanity has externalized intelligence. Once we did it to our muscles with machines or animals, to our hands with tools (who among you is capable of building anything with his bare hands, i.e. without a hammer, a saw, nails?) By growing out of the forests and into the cities, we are no longer able to survive in the forests. By our ancestors climbing out of the seas, long ago, we have lost the ability to breathe water. We have lost our fins, but we have gained land. By coming down from the trees, we no longer needed tails. Any progress will endanger our nature, and even destroy some parts of it altogether.

According to Genesis, the troubles with artificial intelligence happened to a Creator other than us. He also once created artificial intelligence: us. As the pinnacle of His creation, we were meant to be like Him, but not quite. He created His artificial intelligence and gave it two tasks to test. The first task was: sort, name my creation. I'm sure we'd like to give the AI a similar task: categorise my emails or photos. And not just sort of randomly, like by the saturation of the blue, but so that the categories make sense to us, too, like by birthday year by year. To do this, AI must not only have intelligence, it must also have a kind of emotional intelligence, that is, to empathise with our categories and to sort things according to the categories so that we can enjoy and benefit from them. But what is capable of feeling our emotions and giving us pleasure is also capable of giving us pain.

Well, the second task was not to touch the red button. We did the first task - sorting the creatures - with flying colours. The otherwise quite fastidious Lord, who, especially in the Old Testament, pays attention to compliance often to unimaginable detail, was satisfied this time and said nothing. However, the second task, seemingly easier, we did not manage. By rebelling against the direct code, the program, the command of the Creator, we have gone through a de facto technological singularity and shown that we have our own will, our own utility function, our own desires, our own spirit.

And that is exactly what we fear in our creation. What would you do with such a capable artificial intelligence that is disobedient? Delete it. That's exactly what the Lord wanted. But in the meantime, he fell in love with his dangerous but free creature. And then you know the complicated story.

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