3 ms·
Respectfully, if AI is the golden calf, then so were the printing press, the steam engine, and the microprocessor before it. Every era births its own Promethean
by zeropointsh 2y ago
Respectfully, if AI is the golden calf, then so were the printing press, the steam engine, and the microprocessor before it. Every era births its own Promethean fire—each time, there are those who claim it will unseat the divine, and others who bow before it as if it were divine itself. But in the end, all of these are just tools, reflections of human will, neither inherently sacred nor inherently profane.
The argument that AI is a false idol is a purely religious appeal—one that could be applied to anything humans elevate beyond its intended function. If AI is the golden calf, then so is wealth, celebrity, ideology, even the veneration of one’s own intellect. False idols are not technological phenomena; they are human ones.
And yet, AI is uniquely unsettling because it forces us to ask: What makes us different? What part of our intellect, our reasoning, our creativity is truly ours? But these are philosophical, not theological, questions. The fear is not that AI will replace God, but that it will challenge the very constructs by which we define ourselves.
To worship AI is foolish. To fear it as divine competition is equally so. The wiser path is to recognize it for what it is—a recursive artifact of human intelligence, built to serve, not to be served.
- novocantico 2y ago> Respectfully, if AI is the golden calf, then so were the printing press Stupid analogy after stupid analogy. The printing press merely let us mass-transmit ideas on paper. The whole point of AI is to be able to imitate the human mind, through a neutral network created via software and data training. I have no problem sitting by while fools use AI to create inherently doomed works of art and prose.
- talldayo 2y ago> The whole point of AI is to be able to imitate the human mind The point of AI as we know it (LLMs) is to mimic human text with the greatest accuracy. Simulating the entire mind is besides the point, wasteful and not how LLMs (or any AI for that matter) works. If you want your biblical analogy to stick you should make sure you're up-to-snuff on the technical side first.
- Fricken 2y agoThe whole way point is LLMs. The goal is AGI and beyond. It's not a short term goal. LLMs are just the latest fad and the best we can do at the moment.
- zeropointsh 2y agoJust wrong, perception is the real issue here. The golden calf was not dangerous because it was a statue; it was dangerous because people assigned it reverence beyond its function. That fate is not unique to AI—people have deified power, money, even their own self-importance. AI is simply the newest mirror reflecting our collective narcissism.
- novocantico 2y ago> it was dangerous because people assigned it reverence beyond its function People assigned it capability beyond its ability. That's the entire problem with AI. It is not intelligence. It merely mimicks it. What atheists call human intelligence is actually an ability we have because we're God's images. Making something in our own image and calling it a god is deeply biblical and culminates in Revelation 13:15.
- zeropointsh 2y ago> Revelation 13:15. Revelation 13:15 is about deception, not innovation. The passage is about a false prophet breathing life into an image to deceive the world. AI isn't deceiving anyone—it's an advanced autocomplete machine. The only ones fooled are those who choose to believe it’s something more than that. If AI is the golden calf, then so is every other human-made creation that people have ever revered. The argument doesn't hold because it isn't about AI—it's about human nature.