Relearning the Hard Lessons of History

I suppose it’s kind of a quirk of human nature to overestimate oneself. “Texting and driving is bad, but I can handle it.” I see one of the best examples to some extent (notice the qualifier here) in myself. I can see the dangers and pitfalls of technology quite clearly, and yet the only way you can read my words is through technology.

That doesn’t change the facts though. Technology is incredibly useful, but should we not question whether (or how) it makes our lives any better?

I remember the old days – before computers and email (especially email). Before CBT’s (Computer-Based Training). We managed. We wrote letters. We called. We sought people out and spoke to them face-to-face. It worked.

And then along came computers. I remember especially in the early days the talk of going to a “paperless” environment. With computers, we could do most everything electronically. And yet we all know this isn’t what happened. Maybe Kindle really has saved forests upon forests of trees, but books have not gone away. Printers and copiers are still going strong, but we don’t print everything, and that’s a good thing. Still, I get the feeling that we print as much. It’s only that now we’re overwhelmed with information. Not all of it is printed out, but there’s so much more of it that the small percentage that is printed is equivalent to what we may have printed or published in the time before computers – especially since printing and publishing in those days was not nearly as easy a thing to do.

We have to consider trade-offs here. We all know that one of the primary uses of technology is to manipulate the consumer. For every ten cases where technology can be used to inform, there are at least a few where it’s used to misinform. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, this can only get worse. I just listened to a NY Times The Daily podcast (“The Ballad of ‘Deepfake Drake’”) that chronicled the recent viral rise of a song by hip-hop artists Drake and The Weeknd – only it wasn’t a song by the two, but an AI song generated by an anonymous music producer in the style and using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd from the plethora of recordings already out there.

That same podcast included a sampling of a conversation between Joe Biden and Donald Trump that never took place. So it’s obvious, AI can be used to manipulate even more, and in that, more nefariously than it has ever been in the past. Any student of human nature (as we all should be) should be able to imagine where this is going. With the images and voices of the famous freely available, I can’t even say “It’s a matter of time…” when it comes to what people will do with them. Got a thing for someone famous? How about your own personal video of them doing whatever you want for you personally? It’s a stalker’s dream.

Or worse.

One can only wonder how the justice system will prosecute the purveyors of child pornography when the children in it don’t even exist. Will it happen? I’m sure it already has. How long did it take for ChatGPT to make its way into college papers? We heard about that happening almost as we were hearing about the program itself. “Here’s some new technology. Let’s see how we can use it to cheat.” It is in our nature to find new ways to do evil whenever we can. Remember – the rise of Netflix and other streaming services was helped immensely by the multi-trillion dollar porn industry developing the technology to stream their product online.

I’m reminded of the famous line in Jurassic Park uttered by Jeff Goldblum – “…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” We rush headlong into new things so quickly that we overlook the inevitable consequences. The question is, though, can we? Can we actually put the brakes on things like AI and ask ourselves “should we really go there with this stuff?”

Unfortunately, the answer to “Can we?” is “No. We can’t.” Because human nature. Because there will always be at least one, but in this case, millions upon millions, who are looking at how they can make the most money out of it. In the end, even if AI can put on a veneer of respectability and usefulness, there will always be this hidden (or not so hidden) undercurrent of swill – crime, exploitation, abuse – that will gladly be devoured in the shadows by hundreds-of-millions of obsessed consumers. We stand at the threshold of our next dirty-little-secret.

Our only way out is to unplug from that and plug into something better. Something infinitely better. Something that explains the reality of our nature – that keeps us from sugarcoating this all and saying “it’s no big deal.” Something that gives us an alternative that actually shows us the way to hope without putting us in an endless loop of thinking we can get there ourselves. Because it’s obvious – we put us there, and we can’t stand on the crumbling foundation of our own nature to lift us out of it. It’s naïve to think that we can, and yet that’s the message we get out of just about every “solution.” “Evolution put us here, and we’ll just eventually move on to the next level.” That line of thinking has mankind making incredible advances, leading to  the inevitable entrance into some kind of Utopia where we all live in peace with our fellow man.

And yet…well, that’s the whole point of what I’m saying. The incredible advances are only leading us deeper down the hole.

But man is a spiritual being, so we’ll find a way, right? Sadly, even those that appeal to what we often call “God” can’t get it right. “If we do this, this and that, but throw in some kind of ritual or prayer, we can fix it. Oh – and ‘God bless America.’” Where’s the hope in that? When have we crossed the line of “good enough?” When do I get my virgins? My own world to rule as a god? My nirvana? We think we can keep working and hopefully we’ll find out when we die, but there’s a huge difference between “hopefully” and actual “hope.” In the case of God, “hope” comes from a faith in something that is real – something outside of us upon whom we can rely. “Hopefully”? Well, we may as well just say “maybe” in that case.

I appeal to you in this. I listened to a podcast this morning, and it taught me just one more thing about the world – the things we do point to a need, now more than ever. We need someone to save us from this morass we’ve created. And we need someone more than the collective “Us,” because it is the “Us” who have made this mess in the first place and continue to contribute to it. You don’t have to listen to a podcast to see it – just take a look around. Pick your own personal issues – the things about which you care in this world but still see getting worse no matter how much humanity pours into it – and then be real with yourself. Poverty, racism, climate change. Abuse, exploitation, trafficking. Entire nations endorsing hacking, phishing, misinformation, cyber-warfare. And AI is just the latest tool that will be used to drag us into that mud. Sure, it’ll keep its veneer of respectability.  It’ll be used to help in countless cases, but for every ten times it is, there’ll be that one dirty-little-secret that we’ll toss on the pile of dirty-little-secrets of history that we’ve accepted as the cost of doing business. And one-tenth of countless piles up pretty high.

In the end, can we keep it up? History should be lesson enough for us…

²⁸ And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Romans 1: 28-32