6 ms·

Software CEO to Catholic panel: AI is more mass stupidity than mass unemployment

83 points by rntn 1y ago

mensetmanusman 1y ago
Overabundance of calories and fast food led to an obesity epidemic and now nearly half the youth at risk of type 2 diabetes. However, it also led to the counter reaction of cross fit and extreme fitness by a small percentage. The same will happen with AI. Most people will become smooth brains when they don’t have to exercise thought and a small fraction will use it to push the bounds of what humans are capable of.
- conartist6 1y ago
  Most people spreading the gospel of AI don't even seem to remember the kinds of feats that humans are capable of. They want to sell you back your own potential at a markup, so it's not good for them if you believe in your own potential and won't give it away
- red_rech 1y ago
  Good luck holding together a society in which large swaths of the population find themselves useless and starving.
- b112 1y ago
  I can see this outcome, however... there's a lot more nuance to worry about here. The small percentage, even now, can still get good food. And even grow their own crop. We're already losing physical books, and data online will slowly become more and more circumspect. That is, AI training on AI, with more and more nonsense blogs, will make simple accuracy of any data very rare. A strong mind may have the capacity to not be taint by AI too much, but what if it cannot get anything non-AI tainted to feed it? What if there are no teachers of any caliber left, for they are all smooth-brains as you say? What if society is run AI itself, and no one understands anything at all? That incredible mind may make some progress, but will lack the solid foundation you and I have had.
jimkleiber 1y ago
> Also on the panel, Father Michael Baggot worried that "artificial intimacy is going to distract us from, and deter us from, the deep interpersonal bonds that are central to our happiness and our flourishing." > He called for guardrails on AI to stop it capturing individuals' "minds but … also our affections." > Fr Baggot cited the example of Magisterium AI, a Catholic chatbot. He sits on the scholarly advisory board for the service, and said its creators had worked to prevent it being "anthropomorphic" adding, "We do not want people having an intimate relationship with it." I appreciate that coinage, "artificial intimacy," and want to explore the implications of it more.
- ferguess_k 1y ago
  Some people probably don't want that "deep interpersonal bonds" though. I know I don't want. I know some people who don't say they don't want but act in every way that they don't want. Although I don't like the future proposed by the AI companies, this is the least of my concerns. The only big concern is employment. Like, if AI creates more jobs than it destroys, sure, go ahead, do it now.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    If the cure for the loneliness epidemic is community, through which interpersonal bonds are required, I suppose it is fine if we allow folks to opt out of community and human connection and use chatbots as they would heroin or meth; maxing out dopamine within their tolerances until death. Free will, self determination, and all that. But, we should also be mindful of the second order effects of such policy (the future ending up some combination of internet gaming cafes where people occasionally play so long they die, and "Ready Player One").
    - ferguess_k 1y ago
      Yeah I agree with that, basically genuine choice for all. BTW I just don't want "deep" bonds, but some sort of bonds is always good. Not sure how "deep" he meant though.
bestouff 1y ago
So I guess it's good for the church ?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- observationist 1y ago
  So if the Trump supporters fall in behind this, would that make them the "Orange Catholics"? ...and they'll be right there in time for the Butlerian Jihad as society battles it out with AI.
everdrive 1y ago
It seems pretty clear that LLMs will create another cleavage between the upper and lower classes. 200 years ago if you were rich you were overweight, and everyone else was skinny. These days it's reversed. You need a combination of money and impulse control to avoid being overweight. Right now, if you're scrolling on your phone constantly vs. reading, working out, doing chores, etc., you probably fall somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the bell curve for impulse control. The privileged few among us (I am not one of them) don't struggle with avoiding these addictions. And finally, LLMs. They certainly _could_ be used to help individuals bootstrap and quickly gain a basic competence in a new topic, and allow those individuals to reach greater expertise more quickly. But _a lot_ of people will just offload their thinking to the LLMs and actually erode their skills. Is this strictly inevitable from a conceptual standpoint? No. But practically speaking a lot of people will fall into this trap, which enlightened technologists will scratch their heads. "I don't understand why people say LLMs make you dumber, I've used them to advance my career and expand my knowledge, etc. Sounds like you guys just don't like progress."
- raincole 1y ago
  > everyone else was skinny Malnourished. The word you were looking for is malnourished. Junk food is a problem but the abundance of food didn't somehow cause "cleavage between upper and lower classes."
  - everdrive 1y ago
    Depends on when in the past, but fair enough. I'm not saying "the past was better" but that our overabundance of calories presents a novel problem (ie, the need for money & impulse control to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc) that didn't previously exist, and now pretty clearly marks class boundaries.
    - philipkglass 1y ago
      In 1970 Americans already had an abundance of calories available, but they didn't yet have an obesity epidemic. One big difference is that in 1970 a typical person could afford 4000 calories of food a day, but most people still ate food cooked or assembled from basic ingredients at home. It's possible but less likely for someone to prepare and eat 4000 calories a day worth of homemade fried chicken, cookies, mashed potatoes, etc. Americans today can afford to eat 4000 calories worth of food and it's already optimized for palatability and convenience. It's relatively easy to eat 4000 calories of Doritos, microwave burritos, and boxed cookies. There's advertising to remind you of its existence and researchers dedicated to optimizing the delight of eating these products (increasing the odds of overeating just because it's pleasurable and frictionless). The transition from "abundance" to "abundance multiplied by advertising and product optimization" drove obesity more than simple availability of calories, IMO. I see a parallel with digital information. There was more than enough information on the Web to spend all day looking at it even before social networks were common. But that "home cooked" experience wasn't engineered for engagement time, so companies that optimized products for engagement were, in practice, a lot better at getting people to look at digital information for many hours per day.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
gdulli 1y ago
> Wilson rejected the idea of mass joblessness due to AI as "a very silly fear because human desires and human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do." What are companies going to pay these now-dumber people to do, once they've automated away the jobs the smarter versions of these people did? Will the AI be able to perform the original jobs but unable to perform the jobs achievable by these now-dumber people? Are we a better-off society if a net dumber population is doing a manual labor job that the robotics companies haven't solved yet?
- red_rech 1y ago
  > What are companies going to pay these now-dumber people to do, once they've automated away the jobs the smarter versions of these people did? Kill each other, in some ways.
- vinyl7 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Nasrudith 1y ago
    That whole dumb trope which amounts to projecting your desires to kill the upper classes to bring about a utopia onto "the other" again? It is a projection-propaganda meme accusing the enemy of planning violence to justify your own, mixed with trying to recruit a revolution they feel entitled to. Even a complete cynical Machivellian with no morals would have better uses for masses post automation. Even keeping them on the dole just to have a conscriptible population to do the massive amounts of logistical gruntwork would make sense. Populations are a variable in military power, even as war machines mean fewer boots on the front lines and more in the logistical support. Only a complete idiot would throw a large population advantage away.
- vagrantJin 1y ago
  Placate them by any means. History has provided the answers.
api 1y ago
Misuse of AI is mass stupidity. The problem is that people don't understand how these things work, and the technology has been oversold (as nearly every new tech is) as something more powerful and more trustworthy than it actually is. AI is incredibly useful. I'm already getting a ton of use out of it. But you have to treat it like an untrustworthy source, or at least have a "trust but verify" attitude. You also have to understand that it is not sentient, doesn't "care" about you, and is just a hugely powerful autocomplete engine. Any sense of intimacy or understanding you have with it is an illusion. In engineering I treat it like a junior intern that is very fast, has memorized a huge amount of info, but makes mistakes and has to be hand-held and anything they produce must be examined and tested.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > In engineering I treat it like a junior intern that is very fast, has memorized a huge amount of info, but makes mistakes and has to be hand-held and anything they produce must be examined and tested So you spend your own experienced dev time chasing down a high volume of junior dev mistakes instead of writing high quality experienced dev code? Sorting through large amounts of junior intern code does not seem like a valuable use of an experienced dev's time.
  - api 1y ago
    I use it where it saves time and don't use it where it doesn't, and have learned over time where those places tend to be. As AI gets better it'll get useful in more places. Like any dev tool you have to play with it.
    - mwcampbell 1y ago
      Are there places where it reliably saves time, though? Unlike most software tools, LLMs are stochastic, right?
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        In my experience they reliably waste much more time than they save
raincole 1y ago
[flagged]
- paxys 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ordinaryradical 1y ago
    I think this kind of low-effort, “religion bad haha” take is not really worthy of HN. I’d rather read a meaningful comment about the value of an institution trying to sway people’s beliefs versus a machine, just as sharp a critique even, but at least with something thoughtful to contribute.
    - paxys 1y ago
      We aren't talking about religion as a whole but specifically the catholic church. Look up their track record in the topics I just mentioned. And flippant criticism of a religious authority is perfectly acceptable here just as it would be for a private company or the government or anyone else.
      - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
        I'm pretty sure it's not. There's over half a dozen entries in the HN guidelines that ask for thoughtful and insightful posts and not "flippant criticism": "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
felipeerias 1y ago
The original article is far more informative imho: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/266761/catholic-university-of-america-panel-explores-how-christians-should-think-about-ai https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/266761/catholic-univ...
wiggidy 1y ago
For every person that uses AI to learn, there are one or more people that use it to avoid learning. The gap between people exacerbates. Some people are driven by curiosity, but they are the minority. The effect of AI is that the productivity of the few is multiplied by a higher number than the productivity of everyone else, from my anecdotal experience.
- logicchains 1y ago
  You could say the same about technology in general WRT physical capability. Most people use technology to avoid exercise, but some people use science and technology to exercise even better, achieving levels of strength that weren't possible in previous centuries.
kibwen 1y ago
> Wilson rejected the idea of mass joblessness due to AI as "a very silly fear because human desires and human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do." While I'm highly skeptical that the current iteration of LLM tech will lead to mass joblessness, the reasoning above is flawed. If it costs less to employ a bot than to employ a human, then the price of human labor will fall until it reaches equilibrium with the bot. And if that equilibrium price happens to be below what it takes to keep a human alive, then it doesn't matter if "human wants are infinite" because it would be cheaper to fulfill those wants without paying a human.
- techblueberry 1y ago
  Yeah, we’ll see what happens, but one of the interesting things about the book sapiens, is it highlights that there are plenty of paradigm shifting events in human history that change our basic assumptions. “Life is suffering” meant something very different when the Buddha first said it to now. The idea that “the only constant is change” is a relatively modern creation(or at least the significance of it), so this idea that economics is going to keep working the way it always has - at least feels like it’s going to change if we get more advanced AI.
- dullcrisp 1y ago
  What if you want is to keep a human alive. How can that cost less than keeping a human alive?
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    Great question that will unfortunately be ignored by GP, as it happens usually.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    I don't think anyone pushing AI really cares about keeping humans alive AI is a fundamentally antisocial anti-human technology
  - kibwen 1y ago
    The assertion that we are refuting is this: "human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do". The context here is specifically about employment, human labor, and the spectre of joblessness. What you're describing is not a labor market, it's charity. And indeed, one peaceful, idyllic solution to mass unemployment that gets trotted out is something like UBI, where you pay people to simply keep them alive, without expecting anything in return. But that's not at all what's being discussed here; instead, what the OP is asserting is the usual yarn that technological advances will not decrease human employment, but at a certain point this simply stops being the case, and that point will be reached if or when the price of artificial labor falls below a critical level. In short: at the limit of technological advancement, you can either prioritize a market economy, or you can prioritize keeping people alive; you cannot have both.
gill-bates 1y ago
In these times I'm finding myself more drawn to reading and trying to understand christian views on a number of modern issues. Does anyone know where to find more? Where are the modern christian scholars? Are there christian publications easily available? In the universities I found those sources are available, but only in the specific context of studying religion but much less so as another voice on the subject at hand.
- friendly_deer 1y ago
  First Things[0] is one of my favorite magazines. It has perspectives I rarely see anywhere else, and generally well articulated and argued for (provided you accept Christian first-principles). New Polity Podcast[1] also regularly features smart conversations. [0] https://firstthings.com/ https://firstthings.com/ [1] https://newpolity.com/podcasts https://newpolity.com/podcasts
  - gill-bates 1y ago
    Thanks! I'm used to looking at an argument and understanding that it comes with a set of presuppositions that must be accepted for the argument to follow (my academic background is in philosophy). I suppose the position I find myself in is at least toying with those presuppositions. I am finding the arguments that stem from them to be valuable and I can adopt the first principles while thinking about it and I'll leave the question of whether they themselves are right or worth holding for another moment.
- nlavezzo 1y ago
  Some of my favorites recently for intellectually engaging Christian thinking are "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God" podcast (first season is the best), and the book "Reasonable Faith" by William Lane Craig.
  - gill-bates 1y ago
    Interesting looking book, but it seems a bit too meta for what I'm looking for. I'm not really looking for an argument for Christianity, but rather arguments from Christianity on modernity. Or did I not understand the role of that book?
wwilson 1y ago
I am one of the people who was on the panel. As always, it's a very lossy process when a journalist is summarizing another journalist summarizing a 90 minute discussion. Happy to expand in the comments here on any of the issues that got brought up.
- JLO64 1y ago
  You stated that “the conversation about where the technology is going and what we’re going to do with it is happening among people who do not care … what any Christian church has to say on the topic.” As a Catholic myself, I wonder what the church should say/do with regards to technology like this and would like to know where you stand on it. Personally I think that further public discussions need to be held on the morality of potential implementations of AI (I’m thinking ahead by decades once LLMs can really make a dent in the workforce) but question the effectiveness of the Church participating in discussions like that.
kkaske 1y ago
The phrase "artificial intimacy" really sticks with me. If machines can simulate emotional engagement good enough and past a certain threshold, many users will treat AI more as real people. This might happen consciously or unconsciously. That illusion of closeness could have the potential to warp how we relate to REAL people. Over time, if your "listener" never judges you or walks away, you might measure real human bonds against an unfair standard.
josefritzishere 1y ago
I would argue it is both massively stupid and massively wasteful. We are so good we can lose/lose.
returnInfinity 1y ago
Using AI effectively is a skill. As more people acquire it, it gets more useful.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  My problem with the "Using AI is a skill" mentality is that it sure doesn't feel like one It reminds me of people who think slot machines have some element of skill involved. If you pull the lever juuuust right it will be a jackpot....
rglover 1y ago
I think this will be the inevitable outcome. I wrote a post [1] about this a few months back explaining how (I think) the long shot of AI adoption is an extreme dumbing down to the point where humans no longer know how to organically build or maintain what they need without AI. [1] https://ryanglover.net/blog/chauffeur-knowledge-and-the-impending-ai-crack-up https://ryanglover.net/blog/chauffeur-knowledge-and-the-impe...
mvdtnz 1y ago
[flagged]
frm88 1y ago
Not one comment in this thread mentions exorcism. I was floored by information that those are still real and practising and even holding conferences. So I went to read the Catholic church's explanation on the topic [0] and yes, demonic possession is rare but it exists in their worldview. What exactly are those exorcists doing - more to the point why would you need 1000 of them? It's 2025 and we're talking demons in the same breath as AI. [0] https://catholicus.eu/en/the-exorcists-of-the-vatican-reality-and-myths-about-the-ministry-of-exorcism/ https://catholicus.eu/en/the-exorcists-of-the-vatican-realit...
RLAIF 1y ago
[dead]

83 points by rntn 1y ago

Overabundance of calories and fast food led to an obesity epidemic and now nearly half the youth at risk of type 2 diabetes. However, it also led to the counter reaction of cross fit and extreme fitness by a small percentage. The same will happen with AI. Most people will become smooth brains when they don’t have to exercise thought and a small fraction will use it to push the bounds of what humans are capable of.

conartist6 1y ago
Most people spreading the gospel of AI don't even seem to remember the kinds of feats that humans are capable of. They want to sell you back your own potential at a markup, so it's not good for them if you believe in your own potential and won't give it away
red_rech 1y ago
Good luck holding together a society in which large swaths of the population find themselves useless and starving.
b112 1y ago
I can see this outcome, however... there's a lot more nuance to worry about here. The small percentage, even now, can still get good food. And even grow their own crop. We're already losing physical books, and data online will slowly become more and more circumspect. That is, AI training on AI, with more and more nonsense blogs, will make simple accuracy of any data very rare. A strong mind may have the capacity to not be taint by AI too much, but what if it cannot get anything non-AI tainted to feed it? What if there are no teachers of any caliber left, for they are all smooth-brains as you say? What if society is run AI itself, and no one understands anything at all? That incredible mind may make some progress, but will lack the solid foundation you and I have had.

jimkleiber 1y ago

> Also on the panel, Father Michael Baggot worried that "artificial intimacy is going to distract us from, and deter us from, the deep interpersonal bonds that are central to our happiness and our flourishing." > He called for guardrails on AI to stop it capturing individuals' "minds but … also our affections." > Fr Baggot cited the example of Magisterium AI, a Catholic chatbot. He sits on the scholarly advisory board for the service, and said its creators had worked to prevent it being "anthropomorphic" adding, "We do not want people having an intimate relationship with it." I appreciate that coinage, "artificial intimacy," and want to explore the implications of it more.

ferguess_k 1y ago
Some people probably don't want that "deep interpersonal bonds" though. I know I don't want. I know some people who don't say they don't want but act in every way that they don't want. Although I don't like the future proposed by the AI companies, this is the least of my concerns. The only big concern is employment. Like, if AI creates more jobs than it destroys, sure, go ahead, do it now.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  If the cure for the loneliness epidemic is community, through which interpersonal bonds are required, I suppose it is fine if we allow folks to opt out of community and human connection and use chatbots as they would heroin or meth; maxing out dopamine within their tolerances until death. Free will, self determination, and all that. But, we should also be mindful of the second order effects of such policy (the future ending up some combination of internet gaming cafes where people occasionally play so long they die, and "Ready Player One").
  - ferguess_k 1y ago
    Yeah I agree with that, basically genuine choice for all. BTW I just don't want "deep" bonds, but some sort of bonds is always good. Not sure how "deep" he meant though.

bestouff 1y ago

So I guess it's good for the church ?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
observationist 1y ago
So if the Trump supporters fall in behind this, would that make them the "Orange Catholics"? ...and they'll be right there in time for the Butlerian Jihad as society battles it out with AI.

everdrive 1y ago

It seems pretty clear that LLMs will create another cleavage between the upper and lower classes. 200 years ago if you were rich you were overweight, and everyone else was skinny. These days it's reversed. You need a combination of money and impulse control to avoid being overweight. Right now, if you're scrolling on your phone constantly vs. reading, working out, doing chores, etc., you probably fall somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the bell curve for impulse control. The privileged few among us (I am not one of them) don't struggle with avoiding these addictions. And finally, LLMs. They certainly _could_ be used to help individuals bootstrap and quickly gain a basic competence in a new topic, and allow those individuals to reach greater expertise more quickly. But _a lot_ of people will just offload their thinking to the LLMs and actually erode their skills. Is this strictly inevitable from a conceptual standpoint? No. But practically speaking a lot of people will fall into this trap, which enlightened technologists will scratch their heads. "I don't understand why people say LLMs make you dumber, I've used them to advance my career and expand my knowledge, etc. Sounds like you guys just don't like progress."

raincole 1y ago
> everyone else was skinny Malnourished. The word you were looking for is malnourished. Junk food is a problem but the abundance of food didn't somehow cause "cleavage between upper and lower classes."
- everdrive 1y ago
  Depends on when in the past, but fair enough. I'm not saying "the past was better" but that our overabundance of calories presents a novel problem (ie, the need for money & impulse control to avoid obesity, heart disease, etc) that didn't previously exist, and now pretty clearly marks class boundaries.
  - philipkglass 1y ago
    In 1970 Americans already had an abundance of calories available, but they didn't yet have an obesity epidemic. One big difference is that in 1970 a typical person could afford 4000 calories of food a day, but most people still ate food cooked or assembled from basic ingredients at home. It's possible but less likely for someone to prepare and eat 4000 calories a day worth of homemade fried chicken, cookies, mashed potatoes, etc. Americans today can afford to eat 4000 calories worth of food and it's already optimized for palatability and convenience. It's relatively easy to eat 4000 calories of Doritos, microwave burritos, and boxed cookies. There's advertising to remind you of its existence and researchers dedicated to optimizing the delight of eating these products (increasing the odds of overeating just because it's pleasurable and frictionless). The transition from "abundance" to "abundance multiplied by advertising and product optimization" drove obesity more than simple availability of calories, IMO. I see a parallel with digital information. There was more than enough information on the Web to spend all day looking at it even before social networks were common. But that "home cooked" experience wasn't engineered for engagement time, so companies that optimized products for engagement were, in practice, a lot better at getting people to look at digital information for many hours per day.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

gdulli 1y ago

> Wilson rejected the idea of mass joblessness due to AI as "a very silly fear because human desires and human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do." What are companies going to pay these now-dumber people to do, once they've automated away the jobs the smarter versions of these people did? Will the AI be able to perform the original jobs but unable to perform the jobs achievable by these now-dumber people? Are we a better-off society if a net dumber population is doing a manual labor job that the robotics companies haven't solved yet?

red_rech 1y ago
> What are companies going to pay these now-dumber people to do, once they've automated away the jobs the smarter versions of these people did? Kill each other, in some ways.
vinyl7 1y ago
[flagged]
- Nasrudith 1y ago
  That whole dumb trope which amounts to projecting your desires to kill the upper classes to bring about a utopia onto "the other" again? It is a projection-propaganda meme accusing the enemy of planning violence to justify your own, mixed with trying to recruit a revolution they feel entitled to. Even a complete cynical Machivellian with no morals would have better uses for masses post automation. Even keeping them on the dole just to have a conscriptible population to do the massive amounts of logistical gruntwork would make sense. Populations are a variable in military power, even as war machines mean fewer boots on the front lines and more in the logistical support. Only a complete idiot would throw a large population advantage away.
vagrantJin 1y ago
Placate them by any means. History has provided the answers.

api 1y ago

Misuse of AI is mass stupidity. The problem is that people don't understand how these things work, and the technology has been oversold (as nearly every new tech is) as something more powerful and more trustworthy than it actually is. AI is incredibly useful. I'm already getting a ton of use out of it. But you have to treat it like an untrustworthy source, or at least have a "trust but verify" attitude. You also have to understand that it is not sentient, doesn't "care" about you, and is just a hugely powerful autocomplete engine. Any sense of intimacy or understanding you have with it is an illusion. In engineering I treat it like a junior intern that is very fast, has memorized a huge amount of info, but makes mistakes and has to be hand-held and anything they produce must be examined and tested.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> In engineering I treat it like a junior intern that is very fast, has memorized a huge amount of info, but makes mistakes and has to be hand-held and anything they produce must be examined and tested So you spend your own experienced dev time chasing down a high volume of junior dev mistakes instead of writing high quality experienced dev code? Sorting through large amounts of junior intern code does not seem like a valuable use of an experienced dev's time.
- api 1y ago
  I use it where it saves time and don't use it where it doesn't, and have learned over time where those places tend to be. As AI gets better it'll get useful in more places. Like any dev tool you have to play with it.
  - mwcampbell 1y ago
    Are there places where it reliably saves time, though? Unlike most software tools, LLMs are stochastic, right?
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      In my experience they reliably waste much more time than they save

raincole 1y ago

[flagged]

paxys 1y ago
[flagged]
- ordinaryradical 1y ago
  I think this kind of low-effort, “religion bad haha” take is not really worthy of HN. I’d rather read a meaningful comment about the value of an institution trying to sway people’s beliefs versus a machine, just as sharp a critique even, but at least with something thoughtful to contribute.
  - paxys 1y ago
    We aren't talking about religion as a whole but specifically the catholic church. Look up their track record in the topics I just mentioned. And flippant criticism of a religious authority is perfectly acceptable here just as it would be for a private company or the government or anyone else.
    - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's not. There's over half a dozen entries in the HN guidelines that ask for thoughtful and insightful posts and not "flippant criticism": "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Don't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but please don't be rigidly or generically negative. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

felipeerias 1y ago

The original article is far more informative imho: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/266761/catholic-university-of-america-panel-explores-how-christians-should-think-about-ai https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/266761/catholic-univ...

wiggidy 1y ago

For every person that uses AI to learn, there are one or more people that use it to avoid learning. The gap between people exacerbates. Some people are driven by curiosity, but they are the minority. The effect of AI is that the productivity of the few is multiplied by a higher number than the productivity of everyone else, from my anecdotal experience.

logicchains 1y ago
You could say the same about technology in general WRT physical capability. Most people use technology to avoid exercise, but some people use science and technology to exercise even better, achieving levels of strength that weren't possible in previous centuries.

kibwen 1y ago

> Wilson rejected the idea of mass joblessness due to AI as "a very silly fear because human desires and human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do." While I'm highly skeptical that the current iteration of LLM tech will lead to mass joblessness, the reasoning above is flawed. If it costs less to employ a bot than to employ a human, then the price of human labor will fall until it reaches equilibrium with the bot. And if that equilibrium price happens to be below what it takes to keep a human alive, then it doesn't matter if "human wants are infinite" because it would be cheaper to fulfill those wants without paying a human.

techblueberry 1y ago
Yeah, we’ll see what happens, but one of the interesting things about the book sapiens, is it highlights that there are plenty of paradigm shifting events in human history that change our basic assumptions. “Life is suffering” meant something very different when the Buddha first said it to now. The idea that “the only constant is change” is a relatively modern creation(or at least the significance of it), so this idea that economics is going to keep working the way it always has - at least feels like it’s going to change if we get more advanced AI.
dullcrisp 1y ago
What if you want is to keep a human alive. How can that cost less than keeping a human alive?
- moralestapia 1y ago
  Great question that will unfortunately be ignored by GP, as it happens usually.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  I don't think anyone pushing AI really cares about keeping humans alive AI is a fundamentally antisocial anti-human technology
- kibwen 1y ago
  The assertion that we are refuting is this: "human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do". The context here is specifically about employment, human labor, and the spectre of joblessness. What you're describing is not a labor market, it's charity. And indeed, one peaceful, idyllic solution to mass unemployment that gets trotted out is something like UBI, where you pay people to simply keep them alive, without expecting anything in return. But that's not at all what's being discussed here; instead, what the OP is asserting is the usual yarn that technological advances will not decrease human employment, but at a certain point this simply stops being the case, and that point will be reached if or when the price of artificial labor falls below a critical level. In short: at the limit of technological advancement, you can either prioritize a market economy, or you can prioritize keeping people alive; you cannot have both.

gill-bates 1y ago

In these times I'm finding myself more drawn to reading and trying to understand christian views on a number of modern issues. Does anyone know where to find more? Where are the modern christian scholars? Are there christian publications easily available? In the universities I found those sources are available, but only in the specific context of studying religion but much less so as another voice on the subject at hand.

friendly_deer 1y ago
First Things[0] is one of my favorite magazines. It has perspectives I rarely see anywhere else, and generally well articulated and argued for (provided you accept Christian first-principles). New Polity Podcast[1] also regularly features smart conversations. [0] https://firstthings.com/ https://firstthings.com/ [1] https://newpolity.com/podcasts https://newpolity.com/podcasts
- gill-bates 1y ago
  Thanks! I'm used to looking at an argument and understanding that it comes with a set of presuppositions that must be accepted for the argument to follow (my academic background is in philosophy). I suppose the position I find myself in is at least toying with those presuppositions. I am finding the arguments that stem from them to be valuable and I can adopt the first principles while thinking about it and I'll leave the question of whether they themselves are right or worth holding for another moment.
nlavezzo 1y ago
Some of my favorites recently for intellectually engaging Christian thinking are "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God" podcast (first season is the best), and the book "Reasonable Faith" by William Lane Craig.
- gill-bates 1y ago
  Interesting looking book, but it seems a bit too meta for what I'm looking for. I'm not really looking for an argument for Christianity, but rather arguments from Christianity on modernity. Or did I not understand the role of that book?

wwilson 1y ago

I am one of the people who was on the panel. As always, it's a very lossy process when a journalist is summarizing another journalist summarizing a 90 minute discussion. Happy to expand in the comments here on any of the issues that got brought up.

JLO64 1y ago
You stated that “the conversation about where the technology is going and what we’re going to do with it is happening among people who do not care … what any Christian church has to say on the topic.” As a Catholic myself, I wonder what the church should say/do with regards to technology like this and would like to know where you stand on it. Personally I think that further public discussions need to be held on the morality of potential implementations of AI (I’m thinking ahead by decades once LLMs can really make a dent in the workforce) but question the effectiveness of the Church participating in discussions like that.

kkaske 1y ago

The phrase "artificial intimacy" really sticks with me. If machines can simulate emotional engagement good enough and past a certain threshold, many users will treat AI more as real people. This might happen consciously or unconsciously. That illusion of closeness could have the potential to warp how we relate to REAL people. Over time, if your "listener" never judges you or walks away, you might measure real human bonds against an unfair standard.

josefritzishere 1y ago

I would argue it is both massively stupid and massively wasteful. We are so good we can lose/lose.

returnInfinity 1y ago

Using AI effectively is a skill. As more people acquire it, it gets more useful.

bluefirebrand 1y ago
My problem with the "Using AI is a skill" mentality is that it sure doesn't feel like one It reminds me of people who think slot machines have some element of skill involved. If you pull the lever juuuust right it will be a jackpot....

rglover 1y ago

I think this will be the inevitable outcome. I wrote a post [1] about this a few months back explaining how (I think) the long shot of AI adoption is an extreme dumbing down to the point where humans no longer know how to organically build or maintain what they need without AI. [1] https://ryanglover.net/blog/chauffeur-knowledge-and-the-impending-ai-crack-up https://ryanglover.net/blog/chauffeur-knowledge-and-the-impe...

mvdtnz 1y ago

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frm88 1y ago

Not one comment in this thread mentions exorcism. I was floored by information that those are still real and practising and even holding conferences. So I went to read the Catholic church's explanation on the topic [0] and yes, demonic possession is rare but it exists in their worldview. What exactly are those exorcists doing - more to the point why would you need 1000 of them? It's 2025 and we're talking demons in the same breath as AI. [0] https://catholicus.eu/en/the-exorcists-of-the-vatican-reality-and-myths-about-the-ministry-of-exorcism/ https://catholicus.eu/en/the-exorcists-of-the-vatican-realit...

RLAIF 1y ago

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