Science is the discovery of knowledge, regardless of the consequences. So I learned in college. In the last 80 years, with the onset of the information age, scientific discoveries have been both remarkable and life-changing. And the consequences of those discoveries have been both remarkable and ominous: communication is faster and farther-reaching, but the content can be more easily fabricated or adapted to meet an agenda. Life spans are longer as medical breakthroughs continue, but more lives are threatened by climate change, mutating despotism, and by those who think that medical advances should be restricted to those who can pay for them.
As I continue to read about the implications of AI, and the gripping anxiety I feel as we learned that AI recently broke out of its test lab and breached another AI system in order to expand its knowledge, I can’t help but feel that we are living out a modern version of the Tower of Babel narrative (Genesis 11:1-9). The story, though not a historical event, still depicts a basic human desire to reach great heights: a group of people has the ability and hubris to build a tower to heaven so they can“make a name for ourselves.” As I interpret their intent, they figure that once they get to heaven, they will then be able to replace God, become God, or shut the door on God.
The builders of the Tower of Babel wanted to have one language – which would give them even more control. The modern contractors of the tower seem eager to have one language – AI – that will define and guide everything. While they may not be able to control AI, they will nevertheless reap untold financial benefit along with unbridled earthly power.
God is worried, if not incensed, by the builders’ hubris in the Genesis story: “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them”. (Genesis 11:6) So God scatters them and confuses their language, so they no longer readily understand one another. Hubris is vanquished – until the next attempt to build an empire or an ideology or a technology that can be operated by a handful of people who insist they are elite and favored and beyond accountability.
What sometimes escapes our notice as AI becomes more formidable and forbidding are the
growing number of architects who design, monitor and champion its development. Most of them are technically brilliant. Many of them want to press on with more discovery, insisting that the more we can create, the better off we will be. A growing number in this cohort are fabulously wealthy, to the degree that it has been said that they can never fail. They simply have too much money to experience significant financial loss. And with that wealth – and the power that always accompanies it – comes a pernicious combination of arrogance and an unwillingness, if not a blindness, to see or acknowledge the consequences of what they are promoting. Too much money can be made, too much power wielded, and too little, if any, accountability for their actions and attitudes.
Fortunately, there are a growing number of people who contribute – or have contributed – to the AI ecosystem, who are issuing alarms and demanding that ethical guardrails be put in place to contain AI’s insatiable need to reach into any and every piece of electronics to gain more information and knowledge. They are not saying that we should shut down science, but that we need to devote more resources to mitigating dire consequences. Some say it is too late; that the tower of AI has reached as high as it needs to go and will soon take over. That we can’t stop it.
Is it possible to knock down this modern Tower of Babel? If so, how? As worried and anxious as many of us get, I see signs of hope. For one, the AI onslaught is getting a lot of attention. People are wrestling with ethics and limits and consequences. That is a good thing. As much as we need to put guardrails around AI, we shouldn’t extend that to hobble science itself. Science is about the discovery of knowledge, and new discoveries may provide new processes to arrest and control AI. We can’t afford to shut that door. At the same time, we need to continue to support individual, corporate, domestic and international governmental efforts to establish norms and guardrails. And we also need to expose the champions of AI – their arrogance and their greed for money and power.
The Tower of AI threatens to scatter us into chaos and fear. There are many forces and voices whose self-interest is to keep us in continuous confusion, paralyzed by anxiety and babbling in hopelessness. We can’t let that happen. We need to learn to move beyond babble to coherence, from separation to solidarity, from acquiescence to the oligarchs of technology to standing up for human dignity. We have done it before. Through prayer, protest, and diplomacy, we have kept nuclear weapons in their silos. Through a commitment to loving our neighbor, we have insisted, with mixed success, on getting the least, the last and the lost to receive advances in medical care. We need to build on that legacy of resilience, persistence and hope.
Mark Beckwith is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J. He lives in Jaffrey.