How to Think Clearly in the Age of AI
Professor and author J. Budziszewski on personhood, relationships, and the reality of God.
In Part 1 of this interview, Professor Budziszewski reflected on how technology, and specifically AI, is eroding our ability to think. In the concluding half of the conversation, Budziszewski moves beyond technology into philosophy, theology, and the nature of reality. There’s a way to think clearly in an age of distraction. Belief in God is reasonable. Belief in human persons is crucial. And it’s possible to remain fully human around artificial intelligence. Budziszewski offers up a helping of hope and sanity here. And there’s plenty more where this came from in his book. Enjoy!
MCDIARMID:
You’ve recently said this about AI on your website blog: “I know AI is useful for things like company voicemail systems. However, if you want to learn to think, it’s poison. Try reasoning with a voicemail system, and you’ll see what I mean.” What are some practices we can implement in our daily lives that help us think clearly?
BUDZISZEWSKI:
Don’t be in such a hurry. Build quiet into your life. Don’t pretend that you can multi-task. Whenever we think we are doing two things at the same time, we are really just switching rapidly between them. Sometimes this is necessary, for example when have to keep an eye on the soup but also keep an eye on the baby. But for serious thinking, it just doesn’t work.
Try to become aware of what you take for granted, some of which may be good, but some of which may not. Read real books, not just internet postings. Include old books. Get outside the little island of your own time. Read the best books more than once. Whenever you read something difficult, read it out loud. Whenever you read something beautiful, do the same. Don’t shun the difficult; seek the beautiful; avoid the foul.
Learn what an author teaches not just for the sake of knowing what he teaches, but in order to find out whether it might be true. If you think of an objection, don’t just stop; reflect on how the author would reply. Consider possible objections to your own views, too. Don’t hurry in framing your questions, because a badly framed question predisposes you to a badly reasoned answer.
Don’t just think about what you believe, but also about what reasons you can offer for believing it. Avoid jargon. Whatever you can’t explain in simple language, you don’t understand. Don’t skip necessary sleep. Don’t consume mind-altering drugs. Become familiar with how your mind works, and also its rhythms. There is a time for lying fallow, and a time for sending up shoots.
We speak about avoiding peer pressure, but we can’t completely resist the influence of our milieu, because we are social beings. Therefore, get into a healthy milieu. Look for sane peers and avoid crazy ones.
“But that’s all just common sense.” Right. Don’t reject common sense; elevate it.
MCDIARMID:
What about our relationships? The ability to communicate with machines is changing how we relate to one another. What can we do to protect and strengthen our relationships?
BUDZISZEWSKI:
Turn off social media. Don’t monitor messages continuously, but only at fixed times. Spend time with real people. Love those entrusted to you. Never accept an electronic substitute for a real person. Never believe an algorithm which tells you that it is a real person; that is what it is programmed to do.
MCDIARMID:
Human beings possess a unique and powerful innovative energy that can bring forth new things that did not exist before. How can we use and protect that innovative power with AI now in the mix?
BUDZISZEWSKI:
Since I’ve been making suggestions about that all along, what can I say that I haven’t said already? I think perhaps the most important thing to think about is that so many of us don’t really believe in human persons. I speak as someone who was once a passenger in that boat. I didn’t believe in the reality of persons either, and denied personal responsibility.
But a person is not just a what, but a who. If we think of ourselves as mere whats, then we will be suckers for treating AIs themselves as whos, and we will sell our human birthright for a mess of pottage.
Only a human person is made in the image of God. An AI program is made in the image of God knows what. Part of the reason for disbelief in persons, I think, is that so many of us can’t bring ourselves to believe in God in the first place. If there is no God, then how can we be made in His image?
But it is reasonable to believe in God. After all, reality is not self-explaining. “Why is there something, and not rather nothing?” If there is no God, then underlying everything that seems to be something, there really is only nothing. Yet that can’t be right, because then there would be no seeming either.
I don’t think the reason for widespread disbelief in God has much to do with rational argument. I think it has to do with fear. We don’t want God to be real, or at least we don’t want Him to be what He is. We don’t want to have to deal with someone who loves us more than we love ourselves, because for the sake of that inexorable love we may have to change.
MCDIARMID:
How does your new book Pandemic of Lunacy address the potential pitfalls of technologies like AI?
BUDZISZEWSKI:
Although it doesn’t discuss AI explicitly, it does discuss most of the things which make AI dangerous – the bad habits and fantasies which encourage us to bow to AI as a master instead of using it as a sharply limited tool. Just now we were just talking about disbelief in God, and disbelief in the reality of persons made in the image of God. I discuss all of those things.
Part 4 is about various delusions about what it means to be human, for instance that human nature is merely animal, or that we can transcend human nature (perhaps by uploading our minds into computers). Part 5 is about delusions about what is real and unreal, for instance that reality doesn’t have to be logical or make sense, or that all that exists is material. Part 6 is about delusions about God and religion, for instance that we can’t know the truth about God – or, more startlingly, that the truth about God just doesn’t matter.
But I think delusions about these things are related to delusions about other things. Errors aren’t just errors; they are also seeds of other errors. If we are confused, say, about whether there is a real right and wrong, or whether the sexes can be anything we want them to be, or whether scientists, scholars, and experts are neutral authorities, we are going to be confused about a lot of other things too.
I don’t think lunacy is a fate. I think sunny sanity is possible, even today. That’s what I write about. That’s what I promote.
MCDIARMID:
Where can readers get a copy of your book and learn more about your work?
Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy is available through online booksellers like Amazon, as well as at the website of the publisher, CreedandCulture.com. You can also get it at any brick-and-mortar bookstore, and if your favorite one doesn’t have it, you can ask the store to order it for you.
I also invite anyone who is interested in my work to visit my website, The Underground Thomist, undergroundthomist.org. There they can find my talks, articles, books, biography, a weekly blog, and lots of other things which I hope they will find interesting.
This is great! I find it alarming how easy it is to start thinking of an AI as a who too. It’s a slippery slope and it’s scary. We need more real relationships with real depth and the ability to be real with one another and the reason people gravitate to AI is because they can feel like they’re interacting and learning without all that relationship mess. But that is not what God designed us for. And with no real depth of relationship we learn nothing about what really matters like how to love the way Jesus taught us to love.
Think about it- you want to ask a question but you know people expect you to Google it now. But you needed real relationship and true compassion not Google.