Humans Will Always Have the Advantage Over AI (Hank Unplugged Short)

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

5 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2023

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, has been re-reading Jay Richards’ outstanding book, The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines. We so often swallow the skin of the truth stuffed with a big lie—in this case the myth that artificial intelligence will soon replace us. Richards shows that while AI certainly brings challenges, it also has its opportunities. And in this sense the age of AI is like the agrarian age, the industrial age, and the information age—they were all ages of opportunity. And the age of AI is ripe for doing only what human beings can bring to the table. Mind and creativity trumps matter. Machines are not aspirational and will not ever be able to do much of what human beings can do—parent, heal the broken hearted, produce homilies empowered by the Spirit of God. So why the hysteria? Because we in the West have swallowed the myth of materialism. Elon Musk questions whether there is such a thing as consciousness—emblematic of the myth that our minds are simply meaty machines. In reality, a machine will never be able to have first-person subjective experience. Self-awareness is, in principle, beyond AI. Richards quotes George Gilder: “The inability of modern techno-philosophers to grasp the difference between machines and human beings is a great trahison des clercs [treason of the clerks—intellectuals] of our time.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Hank Hennigraph, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Inserman broadcast with another Hank Unplug Short.
0:22.9	Not long ago, I was listening to an interview by Elon Musk, or at least he was being
0:28.6	interviewed, and it precipitated this necessity to do a Hank Unplug Short on the subject of
0:35.1	artificial intelligence. And not only that, but it reminded me of a book written by Jay Richards, a great little book I read a long time ago that was titled the, or is titled, The Human Advantage, The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines.
0:58.0	And rereading that book, I immediately thought I have to do a Hank unplugged, a podcast with him in the near future.
1:07.0	And we're going to do that. But for now, let me say that one of the points that Jay Richards underscores so well is that
1:17.6	we so often swallow the skin of the truth stuffed with a big lie, or we imbibe mythology.
1:31.2	In this case, the myth that machines will soon replace us.
1:38.1	And that is sheer mythology.
1:42.9	AI has its challenges, but it also has its opportunities.
1:50.3	The age of AI is very much like the agrarian age or the industrial age or the information age.
1:59.0	It's an age of opportunity. It's an age ripe for doing what only
2:06.8	human beings can bring you to the table. It's an age in which creativity and mind trumps matter.
2:23.6	What I mean is that machines cannot and will not ever be able to do what human beings can do. They can't parent, they can't heal the brokenhearted, they can't
2:32.6	produce homilies empowered by the spirit of God.
2:37.5	Machines are not aspirational. Machines cannot exhibit such human faculties as emotion.
2:47.1	In short, AI cannot do what body, soul, unities can do.
2:55.6	So why the hysteria?
2:58.6	Why the hyperbole?
3:02.1	Because we in the West have swallowed the myth of materialism.
3:09.2	In the interview with Elon Musk, he indicated that he wasn't even sure that there was such a thing as consciousness.
3:19.1	He is emblematic of people swallowing a huge myth of our age. The myth that our minds are simply
	...

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