Would you want your daughter to marry one?
Let’s start off on a light note. A long time ago when computers were still new (yes, it was that long ago), when I was at my first academic assignment, the head of the economics/business division (which dealt with computers) gave a talk on artificial intelligence. One of the humanities faculty in the audience put a question after the talk “Would you want your daughter to marry one ?” (a computer). Legend has it (I wasn’t there) that he answered “Yes, if she loved him.” Another version of this legend has it that someone shouted out after the question, “Why not—his wife did.”
At that time the question was facetious. Now? Well, I’ve heard that one can engage paid AI girlfriends/boyfriends as chums or as partners in conversation on a deeper level.. So the question is timely. Commercial use aside, I contend that the question involves counter-factuals, products of the imagination like unicorns and hobbits, things that have not existed, do not exist and will not exist. Artificial Intelligence constructs, be they material or purely digital—androids, robots or simply a complicated code—will never have self-awareness, never be conscious entities, despite a multitude of plausible sci-fi stories about these. (See here and here for my thoughts about this.)
AI and morality
Given that AI instruments do not now and never will have consciousness—awareness of a self—do we need to fear them? Only as we need to fear other instruments, made by humans and used by humans to no good end. In this post and those following I will explore another question: can AI instruments give useful advice on moral issues? Since such advice is a distillation of human writings, it will be no better (or worse) than what humans have had to say. However, it’s certainly conceivable that the brandy distilled by AI may pack more punch than the wines of several human’s essays.
Here’s a map of the territory we’ll explore. A question involving moral/theological issues will be put to each of the four AI agents I use: Copilot (Microsoft); Perplexity Pro (paid subscription, Perplexity); Claude (Anthropic); Grok3 (xAI-Elon Musk). Each AI agent has, so to speak, a different personality (if that term applies to a non-person) and skill set, on which I’ll comment in the articles. The first of these questions, to be addressed in the next article, will be “Should the a politician who promotes legislation that is contrary to Catholic teaching be barred from receiving Holy Communion.” But before that, I’d like to comment briefly on my understanding of what AI is—these comments are not to be taken as an “AI for Dummies” text. Rather, they will inform you, the reader, of my own bias in interpreting AI comments. For those interested, Youtube has a host of videos on what AI is and how it works, so I’ll leave it to you to do background.
AI is Machine Learning
In my opinion, the name “Artificial Intelligence” is misleading. A more descriptive term would be Machine Learning. There is no intelligence involved. It is a matter of training computers by repetition: that’s wrong, this is right examples (neural networks, etc.). This training uses immense datasets to show what patterns, word associations, computer codes go together. Thirty years ago, when I was interested in computer analyses of radiology images, I learned that a computer could be trained to detect tumors in mammogram images; the computer would perform better than a radiology resident, but not as well as a radiologist specializing in mammography. Intelligence wasn’t involved (except for the human training the computer); only a large number of mammograms and repetitive training.
Indeed, the AI agent can sometimes be seriously off-base. In an effort to answer questions, an AI agent can “hallucinate,” give answers that are altogether wrong or miss the point. This can happen if the agent is given incorrect or incomplete information on which to base its answer. Here’s a recent example: the antisemitic outbursts put forth by Grok (see here). And I’ve seen other examples in my own work with AI agents.
What AI can do well is to summarize, to construct images* (given appropriate prompts), and search the internet.
Request for questions
Finally, I’ll ask the reader to submit questions in the comments below that he/she thinks might be of interest in this series.
*Note:
The feature image for this article was constructed from a prompt to Grok3.
From the link;
” the tech billionaire said, indicating that the newest version of the chatbot, which was first launched in 2023, is “smarter than almost all graduate students in all disciplines simultaneously.”
Smater….
…..not wiser?
What’s more profitable to mankind?
No I wouldn’t. AI cannot love her back. I would want all our children’s spouses to love them and vice versa.
It looks like we are going to have to visit the story of how God created Adam and Eve over and over again (in the not too distant future) to prove that God made man in His own image and likeness. No human creation can ever create someone/something in Gods image and likeness. God is the beginning and the end.
I imagine the whole thing to play out in a similar way to the “what is a woman” debate. *sigh*
“Would you want your daughter to marry one?”
Does AI have informed consent?
After Cain killed his brother Abel, Cain went into the land of Nod, had relations with a Neanderthal and brought forth Canaan. Canaan said that he would kill any one who struck him. The Lex Talionis, the law of tit for tat, an eye for an eye was promulgated.
Adam had a soul, therefore Cain had a soul and Canaan had a soul but the Neanderthals had no soul.
Father Robert Spitzer, on EWTN, said that man became conscious of himself at 70,000 years ago, as evidenced by their burial of others.
Therefore the Neanderthals in my opinion are the missing link.
Free will is a mark of the immortal human soul.
AI may have informed knowledge, but AI will never have consent as AI has no rational, immortal human soul and never will.
“Artificial Intelligence constructs“, good phrase & that’ll make a great acronym.. AIC.
My question or concern is this:
How do we counter people’s belief in taking AIC’s word as Gospel? (Thus divinizing AIC, man’s creation as a god..)
I’ve seen this beginning to happen and presume this will get worse, given that many or most people won’t read five pages into a Google search.
First off, I haven’t downloaded this, but I’ve heard Matt Fradd praising it:
https://www.truthly.ai/
Secondly, we’re not even supposed to read the Doctors of the Church uncritically.
I think the question is posed to the wrong gender.
It is *men*, increasingly vilified by feminism, that have already started to give up on the feminist version of wedlock. Several articles have been written about men opting out of the dating and marriage scene out of a belief that feminism weaponized it into a no win battle.
A human looking android that is programmed to be nice to you and compliant is an awful strong temptation to men raised on porn with no real moral training to say why it’s a bad idea. Passport bros (foreign marriage) was the prototype. If it really becomes widely available, marriage numbers will fall off a cliff.
Some people are expecting AI to be like the 1967 version of Star Trek friendly with a female voice. Knowing humanity’s capability for mischief, I would think that belief grossly misplaced.
I would second that, TBO. If there were androids for purchase custom ordered, marriages would plummett. Men in the MGTOW movement would spend a boatload on this.
And it’s a shame.
All men need is the Perpetual Virgin.
Once you leave the traditional male female pair bond basis of marriage for forming families in which offspring can be raised, you enter the world of the alphabet groups. The end result of the sex revolution is going to be making sex a fill in the blanks operation with anything animal, vegetable, or mineral. AI/androids then become another group(s) to add to the alphabet groups. While I have no personal interest, from time to time news accounts will bring up the subject of sex toys. Will AI/androids be another form of sex toy?