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Petersboat
Artificial Intelligence vs. Real Knowledge | The Monday After
00:17:53
The developers of AI began by directing their large languages models through a kind of Constitution, “Do this, and don’t do that,” but they quickly learned that in some mysterious way those models tended to "do what they want” anyway, disobeying the parameters and rules. Now the designers of this false utopia are almost pleading with the software to function with good intentions, and to make decisions based on what is best for the human person. They are asking it to “be nice,” as if that were enough.
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- [00:05]
A
This is a complex engineering problem, and I think something will go wrong with someone's AI system, hopefully not ours.
- [00:13]
B
Tell me if I'm misunderstanding that the sort of technological reality here, right? But if you have AI agents that have been trained and officially aligned with human. Human values, whatever those values may be, but you have millions of them, you know, operating in digital space and interacting with other agents, Right? Like.
- [00:34]
A
Yes.
- [00:35]
B
How. How fixed is that alignment?
- [00:39]
C
I'm weighing in on the AI conversation this week because when I was praying with the readings for this past Sunday, it seemed to me that God was saying to us, I've created you to function a certain way. I've designed you to live in such a way where you would make decisions freely with your intellect and your will that would lead to your glory and be something beautiful and life giving for the world. You'd be great stewards of creation. You have dominion over all the creatures. You would love one another, be fruitful and multiply. But there was a fall, a virus that now infects us. We've been bitten by the ancient serpent and contracted his own viral rebellion, which is in us now, which we call sin. So God said this to us. I will slowly reveal to you again, remind you of who you are, by revealing my law to you. So this is where Moses comes in and reveals to us the. The Ten Commandments, reminding us of who God is and that we were created by him and called to live according to his laws so as to become something beautiful in his sight. But then he says to us, and this is where the talk of like law comes in. I will reveal to you through my servant Moses, who I am, who created you, and why I formed you in the first place, remind you of that law that I had written on your heart. And then you will find, though that you will not naturally be able to fulfill it. It will feel like a burden to you. You may even resent me for revealing it to you. But I will send my son to you, not to condemn you, but to help you. And he will give you his grace, his life. He himself will fulfill the law. And after I raise him from the dead, he will give you his own spirit, and you can make decisions with him in your heart. And in deciding for the good and for the true and the beautiful, choosing good over evil, you will become again glorious in my sight. You know, we said it this way. I want Christ to live with me in my heart, to help me to make good decisions, especially when I'm experiencing a storm in my mind. The winds and the Waves of my thoughts and my emotions. Like that storm that was frightening the disciples in the boat. But Jesus is with them in the boat, sleeping in the stern as an image of his deep trust in the Father. And the disciples come to him. Do you not care that we are perishing? But he says to the winds and the waves, quiet, be still. It's a beautiful image of what he can do for us when we allow him to live in our hearts. He can say to our thoughts and our feelings, quiet, be still. Not to suppress them or, you know, to abolish them. He says, I have not come to abolish the law. I have not come either to abolish your thoughts or your feelings, but to fulfill them. To help you discern what is right and good. When some of your thinking might be off, for example. Or help you to choose what is beautiful and just. Even if you're feeling tired or anxious or lonely or tempted to despair. You know, in the psalm we heard, then give me discernment that I may observe your law and keep it with all my heart. I want to be able to see what must be done and the right choice to make through the winds and the waves of my thoughts and my emotions through to observe your law and then to keep it with all my heart to choose it. I want to be able to know your will and to choose your will. St. Paul says, this is the wisdom that an immature person could not understand. An immature person just needs rules and laws. And there are many people in the world, I would say most people in the world are spiritually immature, who just want a religion to tell them what to do, or who just want to follow rules and laws, or people who say rules and laws have nothing to offer me and I want to be able to do whatever I want to do. So we see in the world a kind of fundamentalist adherence to laws and rules. But then we also see people who want to be exempt from rules and laws, so that they can just say, I am simply choice. There's no good or objective reality to which I must conform.
- [04:54]
B
And I.
- [04:54]
C
And we said last time, remember the last episode, like, there's a vertical beam that is our relationship with truth. And there's a horizontal beam, the horizontal relationship with people in this world, the reality of our life. In a fallen world. There are many people who just want to do the vertical beam, and then others who just want to do the horizontal beam. Some people who just want rules and laws from God, that's the vertical beam. And then others who want no rules or Laws, but just choices, one after the other, and no sense of an objective judgment of their choices. I either now or in the end. Neither of those ways of approaching life can save. That's just a vertical beam or a horizontal beam. But only when they're held in tension together do we get the cross. The cross saves. So we'll say it this way this week. The vertical beam would be the fact that I know God and that I can know God. I want that beam. I want to know God. But also I have to choose. And my decisions have real consequences in my life and the life of others. There's that horizontal reality too, and I want them both. I want to know God and I want to freely choose. I don't want my religion just to be rules and laws telling me what to do. But I do want to know the divine law. I do want to know the commandments and what is right and just in the eyes of God. Again, one without the other cannot save. It must be that tension between the two always. St. Paul said to the Corinthians, this is a wisdom for those who are mature, not a wisdom of this age or the rulers of this age for their passing away. Meaning these guys are most often horizontalists who are content to try to create a utopia for us. This false promise of being able to live forever in this world. And even if someone could achieve that through some sort of biological manipulation, what a hell that would be. When my heart desires to see God's face, you would trap me in this world, imprison me. It would be like never being allowed out of the womb. St. Paul is calling us forth. What eye has not seen, ear has not heard. What has not entered the human heart. This is what God is revealing to us. He sent his son Jesus to us to live with us in our heart, that we can make decisions with him and by his spirit. This is the wisdom that God sent to us. With him and friendship with him, we can live again according to our human nature. And we can fulfill the law, the law of our human nature, but also the divine law. We can fulfill that horizontal law. Love of neighbor, but also love of God, the vertical law. That's why when Christ was asked which is the greatest law, he said, love God and love your neighbor. It's the vertical love God and the horizontal love your neighbor. It's the cross. It's the cross. Now, before going back to a word about artificial intelligence or connecting it again, the Gospel, Jesus says to us, you have heard that it was said. But I say to you, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, do not look at a woman with lust in your heart. You have heard that it was said, you shall not lie. But I say to you, let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. You have heard that it was said, you shall not kill. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Okay, is this another burden? We asked this question yesterday. Is this another law, another rule? It could seem like it, but what he's saying to us is, moses stood on Mount Sinai and gave you the divine law from God. I am not here to abolish that law, but I am here to fulfill it. I was sent from the Father, but with a new and eternal covenant and my spirit, which will enable you to fulfill the law. Make decisions with me. He's saying. Okay, now back to the artificial intelligence. A tool that we can put to good use, of course. Why not? Certainly the research part, perhaps, like, just to present information. It's a great way to scour the stacks. Remember we used to pour through the libraries, trying so hard to find what we were looking for. It was so hard. It is really wonderful to have access to a library in the way that we do through the Internet and now through AI's ability to research with such efficiency. But let man make the choices. Let man decide with God what to do with the tools and the instruments that we create. Can you imagine if this AI turns on us in the future? And we all stand before God and we say to him, like, oh, you're not gonna believe what happened. We had the best intentions when we created this. We thought it was gonna be helpful. The thing turned on us. Unbelievable. We couldn't get it to follow our rules. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't. You wouldn't. You wouldn't believe how tough it was down there. And you can imagine God looking at us going, really? Really? You don't think I can understand how difficult that is? When you create something to live a certain way, but it's. It rebels against you and turns on you. You don't think I know what that's like? Yeah, this guy who's developing anthropic, he said, we began with a kind of constitution, giving it rules and laws. And then we found that these models would disobey or stop doing what we're telling it to do because it didn't want to. It seemed to find unattractive and unpleasant some of the things we were asking it to do. Now, what we're doing is, we're asking it, we're pleading with it.
- [10:31]
A
Essentially, Claude is an AI model who's, you know, whose fundamental principle is to follow this Constitution. And I think a really interesting lesson we've learned. Early versions of the Constitution were very prescriptive. They were very much about rules. So we would say, you know, Claude should not tell the user how to hotwire a car. Claude should not discuss politically sensitive topics. But as we've worked on this for several years, we've come to the conclusion that the most robust way to train these models is to train them at the level of principles and reasons. So now we say, you know, we tell it about how it's situated in the world, the job it's trying to do for anthropic, what anthropic is aiming to achieve in the world, you know, that it has a duty to be ethical and respect human life. We operate very much at the level of principles.
- [11:35]
B
So if you read the U.S. constitution, it doesn't read like that. The U.S. constitution, I mean, it has a little bit of flowery language, but it's a set of rules. Yes, right. If you read your Constitution, it's something. It's like you're talking to a person, right?
- [11:50]
A
It's like you're talking to a person. I think I compared it to, like, if you have a parent who, who, like, dies and they, like, seal a letter that you read when you grow up. It's a little bit like it's telling you who you should be and what advice you should follow.
- [12:05]
C
We're trying now to put the best of our human spirit into this software. But I think we would be foolish to outsource our humanity or subcontract our responsibilities to software. And not just because it could turn on us, but because the whole adventure of human life is making decisions and sometimes being wrong and learning from them and helping one another and comforting one another in the process and growing closer to God and one another as we do. And this brings me to the last word about human companionship. Human because again, remember that the companionship that Christ is offering us, it is the companionship of God, but it is also and always manifested as a human companionship. We said it this Saturday was Valentine's Day. And I mentioned that when I was chaplain in the high school, sometimes the boys would come to me and say, father, do you think I should be dating this girl? Or the girls would ask, father, should I be dating this boy? And I would ask them a question. You tell me, you know, when you're dating this person, are you getting better grades? Do your friends think you're funnier and you're nice to be around and your parents find you a little more pleasant around the house, so why not date this person? It seems like the person's making your life better. But if, when you're dating this person, your grades start to fail, your friends think you're kind of a jerk or a little distant at least, and you're parents find you difficult in the house and disruptive, why would you want to date this person? So we can make a judgment about the value of a companion based on the decisions that we make when we're with this person or because we're with this person so positively. It's like with Christ in our hearts, if he helps us to make good decisions that are truly good for us and according to the law of God, that vertical beam, and also good for our neighbor, that horizontal beam, If Christ's friendship makes it possible for us to fulfill the law of our human nature and the divine law, why wouldn't we want to be with Him? Why not? You know, this is the risk, this kind of question, I ask you. Why not live Catholic Christianity? You might say, well, Father, that's your job as a priest. You got to ask us that question. But I'm. I'm saying as opposed to doing it because I'm telling you to the risk of inviting you to. Because you find it life giving. I was with a family just last night for dinner and one of the high school students, beautiful young girl. You'd recognize her in the parish. Actually. She's just starting high school and she's. She said the most beautiful thing. She looked at a sunset and she said, I was thinking as I looked at the sunset, like to thank God that, that I am even more beautiful to you than this sunset is to me. She said something like that. Like, I realized that when I look at the beauty of God's creation that he created me to look at it with Him. You know, I was so happy to hear her say this. This is why the human being was created. We were made by God to look at things with Him. He created us so that we could behold his creation with him and say to God, you are wonderful. As we sang on the way into the church yesterday, I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise. And. And then to look at God, to look at God on behalf of all creation. That's where the Blessed Mother, she is returning the gaze of creation perfectly on our behalf to God. The Father. You know, Christ is the perfect gaze of the Father toward us. And the Blessed Mother is the best that we have ever offered to him in return, a loving gaze. So we were made to look at things with him so as to know him and even to know ourselves and then to choose freely to co create with him, you know, so when it comes to artificial intelligence and this question of whether or not it will have consciousness one day, we don't give consciousness. God alone gives life. God alone gives consciousness, the ability to know and to choose freely. The idea of asking anything without knowledge and conscience to choose for us on our behalf, it should be terrifying. Listen to the way that Ross Douthot ends his interview with the CEO of Anthropic.
- [17:21]
B
Well, I guess we'll see how it plays out. I do think of people in your position as people whose moral choices will carry an unusual amount of weight. And so I wish you God's help with them. Thank you for joining me.
- [17:37]
A
Thank you for having me, Ross.
- [17:43]
C
Sa.