It was the lead story on the paper’s web page today, again. A ranking bishop in the conference formulated policy imperatives regarding it, again. And our Archbishop finally told us last week who the keynote speaker at our fall priest’s convocation this November would be: the United States priest expert in it.
Try as I might, I simply cannot get excited about it. It was the subject of our new Holy Father’s first encyclical letter. I confess I made one good try at reading that and did not get very far. In all the infotainment outlets, the new buzz about it involves words like annihilation – of the human race, that is. As the meme goes, that escalated quickly.
I would not presume to speak for anybody other than myself, but I think about it as technology, and not even as “a” technology, but rather as a technological development, possibly even an incremental one: the next step along the developmental path. Yes, even incremental developments have personal and social impact.
Think of the step from the ability to produce practical, reliable flying machines to safe, regular, accessible passenger air travel. Sure it makes a difference. It has made a difference in my life and our world. Some of its impact has been negative even if we except episodes like 9/11. Most of its impact has been positive. As a technological project, it is still a work in progress. Will it expand to space? Will it be abandoned to reduce use of petroleum products? Will become ever more affordable, or prohibitively expensive? Will it ever be perfectly safe? Will it ever be comfortable?
Our technology for processing data and simulating material reality is growing by leaps and bounds. The human capacity for artifice and susceptibility to it seem to progress hand in hand. We suspend disbelief to be entertained, whether by our own elementary school children presenting themselves as George and Martha Washington or Tom Holland swinging through urban canyons on webs that shoot from his cuffs. Ha ha that was fun. The entertainment ended, disbelief is once again taken up and is perhaps our best tool. Virtual reality disappears when the goggles come off and your real work remains still undone. And artificial intelligence is not and never will be. Intelligence, that is.
The best disposition to maintain in the face of the self-aggrandizing and self-exaggerating computation and simulation of information technology now claiming for itself the name of intelligence is, I think, to nurture authentic intelligence. Read a book, write a letter, paint a picture, and memorize a poem – then compose one yourself. Sing a lullaby – or the post-Communion hymn in church! Teach a child to bake cookies or mow the lawn. Grow a garden, every year. Play a game or compete in a sport. Build a bed or a shed. Get better at something you are already good at. Be a mom, or a dad, or a friend. Pay attention to the person in front of you and try to figure out what he will do next. There is technology in all of that, and real intelligence as well.
There was a panic a few centuries back about the invention and proliferation of the crossbow. Yes, it did have an impact and some of that was negative, but then there was Agincourt. Human genius will always outperform mere technology.
The more intelligence you nurture in your life, the less susceptible you will be to the siren song of the artificial kind, and the more able you will be to use it and prudently. Prudence; ah, now there is something we priests could stand to build a convocation around.
