Our friends are concerned about raising their young children in the digital world, particularly the world of artificial intelligence. Yes, we know that AI is going to make all of us rich and heal every disease, but what if there is a downside? What if artificial intelligence, fake knowledge, makes us less human? What if it obscures the image of God inherent in our creation?

Since talking with our friends about AI a couple of months ago, it seems like I see an AI-related news story or commentary almost every day.

My curiosity was piqued, then, when I saw this Wall Street Journal headline earlier this week: Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals

The column begins by telling us that the one woman “knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to teach philosophy. What she didn’t know then was that her only pupil would be an artificial-intelligence chatbot named Claude.

“As the resident philosopher of the tech company Anthropic, (she) spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the AI model, building its personality and addressing its misfires with prompts that can run longer than 100 pages. The aim is to endow Claude with a sense of morality—a digital soul that guides the millions of conversations it has with people every week.”

There is no such thing as a digital soul and there cannot be such a thing.

Both the Hebrew (he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul) and the Greek (you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind) have in them a sense of the self, being, personhood. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the soul as “a person’s nature; the central or inmost part of a person’s being.”

The First Question of the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that “we belong body and soul, in life and in death, to our loving Savior, Jesus Christ.”

So, to what kind of morality, sense of right and wrong, does this digital soul guide the millions of conversations it has with people every week?

The one trusted woman tells the story of a 5-year old who asked Claude, the AI chat machine,  whether Santa Claus existed. “Instead of lying or bluntly delivering the truth, the chatbot explained that the spirit of Santa was real before asking if the child was leaving any cookies out for him.”

Naughty or nice, the moral person leaves cookies for Santa. So says the digital soul engineered to guide our human souls.

And what about those of us who aren’t sure about the health and wealth promised by the AI advocates, who worry that the digital soul may be unable to restore our souls or to comfort us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death?

“(The philosopher) says she welcomes the discussion of fears and worries about AI. ‘In some ways this, to me, feels pretty justified,’ she says. ‘The thing that feels scary to me is this happening at either such a speed or in such a way that those checks can’t respond quickly enough, or you see big negative impacts that are sudden.’ Still, she says, she puts her faith in the ability of humans and the culture to course-correct in the face of problems.”

Maybe she ought to ask her chatbot friend if faith in the ability of humans and the culture to course-correct in the face of problems is justified by the historical record.

Jesus once asked his disciples, “What will it profit you to gain the world but lose your soul?” (Mark 8:36). The chatbot named Claude has no soul to lose, but we do.

I have just finished reading a new book by Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth. The subtitle is “J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm. 1933-1945.” It is a good book and I recommend it, though this will not be a book review.

As Loconte points out in a recent interview, for a generation of readers Lewis and Tolkien are not just authors. They are teachers and mentors. We remember when and where and why we first read The Chronicles of Narnia or Mere Christianity. We recall the thrill and the fear brought to mind by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The works of Tolkien and Lewis have helped countless Christians make sense of our world. We hear the call to go “further up and further in” as we come to our “real country” (The Last Battle). When tragedy or trial crash into our lives, we join Frodo as he laments the ring having come to him. Gandalf’s wise words answer our fear and anxiety as they answered Frodo, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” (The Fellowship of the Ring). Continue reading →

As for many of you, this past week in Auburn, Indiana, has been filled with wind and snow and very cold temperatures. And lots of snow shoveling. At least for me. My neighbors might be correct to assume that I have some sort of snow removal obsession disorder. Not long after the last flake floats to the ground (or sometimes a little bit before it makes its final landing), I am out to clear the driveway and sidewalks of the wicked white stuff. Heaven forbid if I have to leave the garage while there’s still snow on the driveway. Those nasty ice tracks become deadly slip traps for the next many days. So, yeah, I am sometimes obsessed with ridding our hard surfaces of that frozen menace.

We have lived in the real snow country of the mountains of California and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where to let the falling snow get too far ahead of you is to never catch up.  I come by my compulsive behavior honestly.

Not all our neighbors share my obsession, however, as their sidewalks and driveways become obstacle courses of icy ruts and slippery concrete. Whether it is good for them to slip slide away on their way to work every morning is theirs to decide, however. Their inattention to the fine art of snow removal is not good for me, that is for sure. Filled with disdain and self-righteousness, I find myself judging my neighbor. Continue reading →

but I’m not a national champion

You may have heard that the Hoosiers of Indiana University are the national champions of college football. They beat Miami 27-21 on Monday night. In and of itself, the win should make any resident of Indiana proud. But it’s not just that. It was not the Ohio State Buckeyes or the University of Michigan Wolverines winning the national championship. It was the Indiana University Hoosiers. There are various ways of summing it up. ESPN puts it succinctly. Since records have been kept, IU had suffered “715 losses, which was the most recorded by any team in the 156 years of college football.”

The college with the worst record of all time is now the national champion. Way to go, Hoosiers!

And what or who are Hoosiers and how did they come to be called Hoosiers? No one knows where the appellation comes from, but in its nearly 200 years of use, it has come to mean someone from Indiana. Becky and I have been nomads, having lived in six different states, so our Hoosier identity may not be deep, but, indeed, we are Hoosiers, and Monday’s game adds just a little bit of polish to the name. Continue reading →

Sometime last year the street department put up a bunch of new speed limit signs in our neighborhood. I’m not sure the signs have had much effect. Some of our neighbors have been not so good about obeying the limit. This time of year, school buses pick up children before the sun rises. Fast cars, dark streets, and little kids laden with winter jackets and heavy backpacks are not a good combination.

Apparently, there was an incident last week when a car zipped down the street, adding a little bit of vroom as it sped past the corner where children were waiting for the bus. A mother standing on the sidewalk with her children was not happy and said so on the HOA Facebook page. Her rage was justified.

Most of the comments to the mother’s post were supportive or recounted similar tales of fast cars, dark streets, and little kids. The community cynic, whose quips I often appreciate, posted, “I thought we had new 25 MPH speed limit signs installed?” along with a smile emoji. Continue reading →