Artificial Intelligence vs Human Identity

well good morning everybody it's january 2nd we survived 2020. at least some of us did we are painfully aware of the fact that many people did not survive 2020. it's appropriate for us to feel the gravity of that to feel the weight and the hurt and the pain of the losses that we have experienced in 2020. we're a network of intelligent i mean rational at least emotional volitional or freewill creatures what impacts one impacts all we are what one author has called the great web of humanity i mean visualize you're out walking in the woods and you come to a spider web a beautiful engineering achievement to say the least and you just accidentally touch one part of the web and the whole thing shimmers and shakes in the sunlight as water drops fall from it it's not possible for us as human beings to be impacted anywhere on the planet any single individual person is of such infinite value that only [Music] the death of god on the cross of calvary can give us a sense of how to calculate the value of a human being well as we launch in to this new year 2021 there is there is no line between these two years that the universe itself is aware of time marked off by years is a construct that we as human beings have have come up with as we look at the movements of heavenly bodies and say okay that's a year that's a month that's a week that's a day that's an hour those are minutes those are seconds and we look at the passage of time as human beings and we create markers and milestones in our minds from our perspective but there's nothing to suggest that the new year will be any different than the past year don't be discouraged just yet except as we ourselves choose to impose meaning and significance on the days ahead in our own individual lives and in the lives of the people with whom we have influenced the people we impact around us now i've given a lot of serious thought to what i would bring to you what i would share with you in this first message this first sermon of 2021 and it's going to seem strange at first but i want to explore with you something that is extremely significant with regards to developments that are coming our way in the coming year and in the coming two years three years decade i want to explore with you artificial intelligence versus human identity and what this means will become evident as we proceed now yuval harari is somebody to be figured into all serious scientific and philosophical thinking on the human landscape right now he is a force to be reckoned with he is a professor of history specifically at the university the hebrew university in jerusalem that's his post of duty but the guy is a prolific author you may have i've actually brought this particular book to your attention before in another context you may have noticed on the new york times bestseller list and on book shelves everywhere in the world where books are sold you may have noticed sapiens subtitled a brief history of human kind by yuval noah harari spent 19 weeks on the new york times bestseller list now yuval harari isn't merely exploring human history as the word implies here he is more significantly offering a picture his own perspective on human identity he's essentially asking and answering the question what is a human being and once having given his definition of what a human being is harare goes on to paint a picture of what the future of humanity most likely will be and artificial intelligence and robotics technologies figure massively into harare's thinking regarding the future of the human race and he employs rather stark chilling language to describe what he sees and we will explore momentarily what the premise of his vision is this stark grave chilling vision in an article for ted talks on their website having delivered a ted talk proper on a stage regarding artificial intelligence he also provided an article for ted talks and the article has the very provocative i would say offensive title the rise of the useless class that is the useless class of human beings that's the title that harare has given to this article i don't know if you can see it from where you're sitting but the sub text under the title is historian you've all know harari offers a bracing it's bracing that's for sure you're about to find out how bracing it is a bracing prediction he's prophesying he's foretelling he's saying ah this is what the future looks like and here's what he predicts just as mass industrialization created the working class i mean let your mind go back in history uh to the industrial revolution the steam engine and all the developments that gave jobs to massive numbers of human beings and human beings migrated many of them not all of them from the rural areas from farms right farming an agricultural society and began to participate in what we call industrialized society the industrial revolution produced the working class now harare says that just as mass industrialization created the working class check this out the ai that is artificial intelligence revolution which we are right now in the midst of by the way will create a new unworking class that is to say a class of human beings without jobs now he says in the article and we're quoting him now he says in the article the most important question in 21st century economics may be check this question out feel the weight of it what should we do with all the superfluous that word simply means unnecessary what should we do with all the unnecessary people once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans that's the question that he's posing in the article what should we do with the millions if not billions of people that will simply be unemployable due to the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies just to give you an idea of the level of advancement that has been made with regards to a.i currently what we're faced with is that the the fastest most powerful supercomputer on earth right now as of 2020 can do 425 quadrillion calculations per second don't challenge this supercomputer to a game of chess it will be over in a matter of seconds you can't think fast enough or far enough you cannot deduce the moves no matter what your iq in order to beat this machine versus for example just to put it in perspective one calculation per second conducted by a human being would take check this out 13.18 billion years to achieve the 425 quadrillion calculations that the machine can do in one second a machine bearing the workload in one second that would take a human mind more than 13 billion years to achieve that's the raw computing power that is at the fingertips of human beings right now so harare goes on with his chilling prediction and he says 99 of human qualities and abilities are simply redundant for the performance of most modern jobs you say well no he's got to be exaggerating there are all kinds of jobs all kinds of things that human beings can do better faster with a lower margin of error than artificial intelligence aren't there well i'll just give you a sampling of some of the professions some of the jobs that will cease to exist according to this projection i mean you and i can argue with and say ah that's not going to happen it may happen it may not happen it most likely is going to happen in fact it is happening right now human beings who are given the option to have a guy named joe smith dr joe smith perform their surgery with his hands and his tools versus hey you could have this machine do the surgery on you and it has zero margin of error and its hands do not shake people are already right now choosing the machine surgeon over the human surgeon these are just some of the jobs that are going the way of artificial intelligence and robotic technologies doctors drivers truck drivers will become a thing of the past teachers will become a thing of the past landlords weight staff at restaurants you're already getting a feel for this when you found yourself over the last just couple of years going into restaurants and nobody comes to talk to you because there's a little machine on the table that you just place your order yourself and pay with your credit card and never have to encounter a human being in the entire dining experience and that's nothing compared to what is coming down the pike other professions accountants proofreaders well this is an area that i've been engaged in for my entire adult life proofreading and editing i'm a writer so i do a lot of writing i need proofreaders i need people to look at what i write and and to notice any error grammatically that i've missed the best proofreader that i've ever had at my disposal is my wife sue she has an eagle eye for proofreading she sees things that nobody over the years of my engagement with writings ever notices so i always save her for last i have all the proofreaders read everything and then sue put your eagle eye on this manuscript you're the final one to read it and she still finds errors after three four five highly intelligent human minds have read this manuscript she still finds errors and then guess what the book gets published and people email me and say on page 19 and i go to sue and i show it to her and her countenance falls and she says to herself how did i miss that well guess what machines don't miss anything readers that is human proof readers will become obsolete in a matter of just a few years airline pilots gone will not exist anymore pharmacists gone lawyers praise god gone don't take that personal if you are an attorney and you are my brother or sister in christ and that was a little bit of a sting to your ego i don't mean anything at all by it except to say that we are faced with some serious implications so yvonne hirari goes on and he says in the 21st century we might witness we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class of human beings just people who can't get a job all that's left for them is a sofa and a screen and all sense of meaning and purpose and production evacuated from their humanity because nobody needs you needs me anymore so here's what he says people these this unworking class he says these are people devoid of any economic political or even artistic value who contribute nothing to the prosperity power and glory of society can you imagine millions if not billions of people who contribute nothing to the economic political and even artistic value now you know i don't see how a machine could write something blood on the tracks i don't see how a machine could write something like pride and prejudice and yet with all the computing power at its disposal right now publishers are preparing for algorithms to write novels because of the sheer power to take in all that is going on in a specified set of parameters we want a murder novel based on with x number of characters and a plot that you don't figure out until the last chapter just input that the computer in a matter of seconds writes the novel give it a pseudonym and that's what he means by even no artistic value so this useless class hirari says will not merely be unemployed i mean catch what he's saying here it will be unemployable this class of human beings not just unemployed hey if i just you know get up and motivate myself i could get a job no unemployable because the jobs are taken by artificial intelligence and robotics technologies and it is not a large quantum leap of logic to understand that a useless human class would necessarily become in a certain world view that we're about to explore a disposable class of humans to be useless is to be disposable to be of no value politically economically or even artistically to the human race the implications are heavy while harare says as algorithms push humans out of the job market here's what we can expect to see take place wealth and power might become concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite that owns the all-powerful algorithms creating unprecedented social and political inequality that is to say what we're witnessing right now is an ai race an arms race for the development of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies just on the level of patents that have been registered worldwide right now china has pending 4636 applications that is 64.8 of all a.i and robotics patents are owned by the chinese government there's not even a close second but the second is the united states with 1 416 applications or 19.8 of the patents pending for artificial intelligence and robotics technologies after that is the republic of korea with 532 applications india with 243 and all of europe every european nation combined every european nation combined holds only 116 applications presently and what this represents is a massive overturning of current power structures and wealth structures and we will witness wealth and power begin to move and to be concentrated in the direction of artificial intelligence technologies now in 1903 a genius thinker and educator w.e.b du bois essentially foresaw this and i want to share with you the roots of the thinking that has produced what it is that we're witnessing right now in our world you will remember that harare's assessment is thinking purely in terms of economics did you catch that the making of money is a human being [Music] capable of producing cash flow and your value and my value will be determined by whether or not we produce economic value that's harari's assessment that's the only way that a person can think when you reduce the human being to a mere machine in competition with other machines for sheer production value well in 1903 w.e.b du bois foresaw where this was going in the beginning phases when he said looking at the landscape of american life and his gaze was reaching over to europe as well but he said the habit and i'm quoting him the habit is forming the habit is forming of interpreting the world in dollars now when you read that sentence if you're like me you're thinking well that's my whole life my entire existence that's the only world i've ever known i've only ever known a world in which reality is interpreted in terms of the economy every political election that comes up you hear and see the memes it's the economy stupid the voting is always going to tend to move in the direction of what's best for the economy is what is embedded in that little statement it's the economy stupid well you and i have only ever known a world in which the value system has at its pinnacle money so it's hard for us to imagine that there was ever a time when something was more important than the economy it's hard for you and i because of how we've been raised and how we've been educated i mean think about it think about it for a minute why do you quote unquote get an education well in order to get a job a profession in order to get money in order to get i don't know a house and 2.5 children a swing set a boat maybe the entire way of thinking that we're familiar with is so economically defined that we can't even begin to imagine what du bois is referring to when he says the habit is forming of interpreting the world in dollars wait a minute du bois that's the only world i've ever known what do you mean the habit is forming well in 1903 if you go backwards from 1903 you did have in the world a way of thinking that viewed education as character development rather than economic development just pause and think this through with me for a minute the habit is forming in 1903 he says wow this is what it looks like to me people are beginning to interpret the world in terms of just money that's what he sees taking place watch this the final product of our training by which he means our educational institutions schools the final product of our training must be dubois says must be neither a psychologist or a brick mason but a man a human oh man i hope you guys are getting this the level of perception here is astounding he is simply saying that our educational institutions should not be in the business of producing professions that's not to rule out the pursuit of a profession but he says the final product the end goal the ultimate thing we're after in an educational institution you you take your little one at five years of age and and off to kindergarten you go and then first grade second grade straight up through what we call elementary school and what did the child learn straight up through junior high school and then high school and what's the objective what's the goal what is the entire system based on and what is it aiming for and then off to college you go if you're lucky enough or financially positioned enough to go off to college for what well du bois is saying what it ought to be about is making a person more human the educational system should be about producing people of character people with value systems that value what ought to be valued and devalue what is of lesser significance that is to say character in dubois's vision trumps money making to become a psychologist as the definition of my identity to become a brick mason i am a brick mason i am a truck driver i am a teacher i am fill in the blank whatever you happen to be is that what you are is that what you are do you hear my question is your identity as a human being defined in terms of your capacity for producing in order to generate dollars and cents du bois says no the educational institutions that were founded even here in america harvard yale princeton all of them were founded as character development institutions with the pursuit of a profession as a secondary factor you send your little boy your little girl off to kindergarten not just to learn how to add and subtract but to learn how to be more human to be more kind and gracious and generous and broad-minded intelligent on more than a rational level which has been just blown up to monstrous proportions as if it really matters what your iq is over what now finally finally i remember i remember so distinctly i can see myself sitting in my home on a chair in northeastern washington reading reading a book on the genius of leonardo da vinci that book stands out to me because it communicated to me hey wait a minute a human is more than its computing power the book conveyed to me and i don't even know if this was in the book but sometimes when you're reading a book you think thoughts that are beyond the book what came to me as i was reading the book is wait a minute a human being a human being isn't merely a value for its computing power no that book introduced to me for the first time and to most of society for the first time it was one of the very first books that came out coining the term emotional intelligence and i thought oh wow because i had only ever been to that point in my life aware of my computing power my iq my capacity for problem solving well anybody who's married here knows that you can't have a good marriage by merely approaching it from the problem-solving standpoint you had better be able to keep your opinions to yourself occasionally regarding your great computing power to solve the present problem in the relationship you'll have to keep that in reserve and blow some kisses across the room put on some soft music have a candlelight dinner say things like my opinion is secondary to the value of our relationship i love you beyond my opinion versus yours well as i read that book i began to realize that there is another kind of intelligence there's something that a human being brings to the world that is not sheer computing power for a bottom line financially and dubois understands this the final product of education must be to produce a human a good decent human who values others above and before himself or herself to produce things like courage and heroism and to produce things in the human being that's what the education is for and to make men to make men to produce humans off of the conveyor belt of our educational system to produce humans we must have ideals broad pure inspiring ends of living not sordid money getting oh i just love the tone here it's my tone it's a book i don't know what his tone was but i feel his tone i feel his disdain for reducing a human being to money getting what a low form of of perception of a human being that your value is equal to your capacity to crunch numbers or perform a task with your hands and then when the machine the rise of the machines puts you out of a job well then your uselessness makes you dispensable well du bois understands that life has to be more than that the worker must work for the glory of his handiwork not simply for the pay can you imagine you have a child and you raise your child and rather than say you're going to be a ex whatever you fill in the blank for your child so that they can be in the best financial position what if you were to raise a child and say to your child what are you good at what do you enjoy doing what are you passionate about and only talk about the financial potential of that profession as a secondary consideration what if human beings were assessed for their passions and their emotional intelligence and what they can contribute to the value of other people's lives rather than merely what du bois called money getting the thinker must think for truth as the end goal not fame we live in a celebrity culture that is that is grotesque right now where where we literally a celebrity himself keanu reeves of matrix fame recently read a statement by him in which he said i wish i could just walk down the street and hear people talking about ideas philosophy history and the value of human beings rather than talking about the kardashians now they're human beings too but i'm simply quoting keanu reeves when he says i really wish that the human perception of what matters would rise above what some hollywood celebrity is wearing to an event he's essentially saying we need to get over our obsession with veneer level existence and go deep we need to think for truth not for fame and the voice fleshes out in his context what i'm going to summarize now as education for the pursuit of truth beauty and goodness by beauty i don't mean merely aesthetic beauty i mean moral beauty truth beauty and goodness versus career cash and commodification you're going to choose how you're going to define yourself and your children as you raise them and as you interact with human beings we're on the verge of a crisis of identity the apostle paul in first timothy chapter 6 verses 6 and 7 says in this context hear his words now godliness with contentment is great gain he's deliberately in the greek using an economic term he is pushing back on defining a human being in terms of the human being's economic potential he's saying hey i'll tell you what is really of great gain i'll tell you what real wealth and riches is made of it's to be like god in character and to be content economically with less to be content with less for we brought nothing into this i love this we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out but the apostle paul is implying that there is one thing we can carry out and that's character identity who are you who am i are we merely money making machines or are we something more well he goes on in verse 8 and says and having food and clothing check this out just i don't even know if we're capable of adopting this perspective and having food and clothing with these we shall be content can i can i be content with just a just a few changes of clothes and some basic food to eat can i be content with just clothing and food maybe a roof over my head that i don't know why he didn't add that he was living in a warmer climate i mean can you imagine adopting this value system can you imagine he goes on and says but those who desire to be rich those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts or desires or pursuits which drown men in destruction and perdition the desire to get rich is an illegitimate use of mental energy it's not worth the algorithms of your frontal lobe money is not the thing for the love of money paul says is the root of all kinds of evil the king james version just leaves out the all kinds part but that was a bit much for the translators to handle so they added all kind no the king james version and the greek just says the love of money is the root of all evil all of it all of it the entire kitten caboodle the whole burrito with all its fixings the love of money is the root of all evil for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows i have witnessed this over the years because i've had the opportunity to interact with a lot of people who are of significant wealth and one of the common threads in all of these lives even the good ones people committed followers of jesus that i have known and loved for years they are continually because of their great wealth pierced with many sorrows because there are sycophants everywhere wherever there's money and the sycophants sometimes are your own children you have a lot of money you have warren buffett who simply says he's one of the wealthiest people on the planet and he says if my children want to make money they're going to have to make their own i'm not giving any of it to them it's all going to solve big problems for the human race if my child wants an education they're going to have to go into debt like everybody else to get their education what a perspective on bill gates very similar perspective i'll go ahead and pay for your college but i'm not giving you any of my money the money's going to other pursuits they simply discern that just dumping a bunch of money on a human being is not a good idea and yet there's not one of us right now knowing how destructive and sorrow inducing wealth can be there's not one person in this room myself included who right now if you were offered a billion dollars you wouldn't say i'll go ahead and give it a try it may destroy me but let's try it let's see what i do with it well paul goes on but you o man of god flee these things what things greediness the pursuit of money as an end goal in life and pursue other things like righteousness godliness faith love patience gentleness these are the things that make a human being of significant contribution to society if i have no money to give but in all of our interactions i have gentleness to offer in the face of your failures i'm giving you more than writing a check wow command those command those who are rich you can't command rich people anything but paul is extremely optimistic and he says command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living god who gives us richly all things to enjoy well paul's not an extremist god did supply us with an earth that produces abundance there's nothing wrong with having wealth per se and enjoying the products of the earth he's not suggesting that we all become hermits or monks and separate from society and subject our bodies to unnatural pain just to make sure that we don't become greedy he's saying order your value system so that whatever material wealth you happen to have it is of insignificance for your value as a human being before god and others your money means nothing in the eternal scheme of things what matters is gentleness and faith and love and patience that's what makes a human being a human being let them do good these rich people he says let rich people do good that they may be rich in good works ready to give willing to share storing up for themselves by giving by sharing their wealth with those who are in the disadvantaged position that's paul's point that might sound like socialism to you it is what it is paul is saying something here he's not suggesting that the government impose on the individual he's speaking deeper to the heart of the individual and saying give be willing to share and thereby store up for yourselves a good foundation for the time to come that they may lay hold of eternal life but we have before us the most unbelievable thing the commodity by commodifying all material and human resources which is the world we live in right now we are reducing humans to mere production machines that are becoming in harare's language useless what is a human being that's the question that presses in upon us as we witness the rise of the machines as we witness artificial intelligence and robotic technologies as we witness the development of a useless class we have before us two radically divergent stories that define a human being you've heard both of these stories the first one goes something like this once upon a time approximately 13.9 billion years ago there was a massive explosion and here we are but not for long because the universe that in the big bang began to expand is going to at some point begin to contract back to the nothingness that it once was and your life and mine will have meant absolutely nothing in that story quite a narrative isn't it here's the second story radically divergent in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth and god made humans in god's own image to love like god loves to be fruitful to multiply to tend the earth to produce its bounty as secondary to the value that we each have before god and one another well harare who is a subscriber to the first world view once upon a time 13.9 billion years ago says holding the logic steady but brutal says free will is a myth inherited from christian theology which is to say there's no such thing as a free will action that defines a human being which is to say there is no such thing as good or evil love or hate he goes on and says rather bluntly humans have no natural rights just as spiders hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights this is just harare being logical in deducing that if you begin with a survival of the survival of the fittest premise if you begin with the premise that 13.9 billion years ago and that's all there is to it and it's just a passing fad this thing we call life in the eternal scheme of the universe's expansion and contraction if your life in my life is merely the development of material creaturehood that is coming to an end well then the idea of rights the idea of free will the idea of the dignity of the individual the idea that i shouldn't cross a line to violate you it's out the window it's gone it means nothing your life is no more significant than that of a spider chimpanzee or a hyena as far as we can tell he says from a purely scientific viewpoint human life has absolutely no meaning humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary process that operate processes that operate without goal or purpose and in that kind of narrative in that kind of storyline what's left other than to grab all you can to get to the top of the heap and to be one of the individuals that survives the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics technology hence any meaning he says and this is his big punch line hence any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion this is an educator at the top of our world's current academic system praised and celebrated by everybody in academia who holds to this narrative once upon a time 13.9 billion years he is a thinker at the highest level of that world view and praised as such well by reducing humans to mere evolutionary machines pop science has concluded that humans are of lesser value than a.i than artificial intelligence do you see that we just came full circle in our time together if you begin with the premise that a human being is merely a material creature who has value for the generating of material gain then a human life means nothing and you have logically by deduction the development of a useless class we are witnessing in other words a crisis of human identity let me put it to you this way what we're witnessing with technology everything from the internet to robotics to ai is we are witnessing that human power is outrunning human goodness we have the power to produce technologies that people of our moral level of maturity should never have at their disposal it's like as i tweeted yesterday the internet is a powerful technology that the human race at its current level of moral maturity should never possess it's like giving a five-year-old a bottle of whiskey and a pistol and hoping nothing goes wrong we're not capable of wielding the kind of power that we have because we continually resist the higher objective of bettering human experience on the planet in terms of character rather than economic wealth well jesus in closing then he spoke that is our lord and savior jesus spoke a parable of them saying track with it so carefully the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentiful and the ground here could be a piece of terra firma it could be a piece of technology the internet is a ground of wealth development ai is a ground of wealth development and jesus says the ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully wow and he thought within himself saying what shall i do since i have no room to store my crops well what might naturally occur to him at this point oh i just have more than i need let me lessen the suffering of others and give no it doesn't occur to him so he said he said i will do this i will put i will pull down my barns and build greater bigger barns and there i will store all my crops and my goods and i will say to my soul to myself i will say self you have many goods laid up for many years take your ease eat drink and be merry while people are starving to death just miles away but god said to him fool this night your soul will be required of you then whose will those things be which you have with which you have been who will those things be which you have provided what what does it all matter what does it amount to so is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward god this is jesus talking then he said to his disciples therefore i say to you do not worry about your life that is your material life what you will eat and about your body and what you will put on jesus says life is more than food and the body is more than clothing you need far less than our culture has convinced you and i that we need and then this and do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink or have an anxious mind does that language not define our times people anxious on the edge what about my job what about my money making power what about my house what about my rent what about what about what about he says do not seek what you will eat or what you will drink or have an anxious mind for all these things the nations of the world seek after and your father knows that you have need of these things but seek the kingdom of god and all these things will be added to you there's an entirely different economic system that god operates by and it is a far cry different than the commodification system that our world operates by our world operates on the premise that a human being is a commodifiable resource that's what you are you're you're a resource commodified human versus the biblical view the view of jesus the view of the prophets is the covenant human the human whose definition is not its financial capacity but its capacity for love its capacity for relational integrity you are not a commodity you are a covenant creature of god with the awesome capacity to love by god's grace like god loves so 2021 is about to unfold before us the simple question that i want to put to you to me is what kind of human will you be what kind of human will i be what will be my value system how will i see you what do i see when i see you and not just you but every person with whom i have interaction from the gas i put in my car to the groceries i buy and the person that bags them up what do i see when i see a fellow human being may i suggest as we launch into 2021 that you and i looking upon one another see covenant creatures of dignity and importance by virtue of the love that can exist in our relationship father in heaven thank you for the good god that you are thank you for this this alternative storyline this alternative narrative in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth you created us in your image to love like you love thank you father for who and what we are please calibrate our vision for the coming year to believe in the capacity of each one by your grace to love like you love in jesus name amen hey thanks so much for watching we hope that message was a blessing to you god's word is powerful it penetrates into our minds into our hearts brings about transformation in every aspect of our lives listen we don't want you to miss any content so again we want to encourage you to click on subscribe and track with the content that's going to be coming out week after week and 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Channel: Storyline Church

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Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021