Oh. One more thing: I have been heavily involved in computers and electronics, beginning in 1956 or so, and I don't trust AI further than...nothing. It has been developed by a human or some humans and as such is deeply flawed. I see it as allowing men to become lazy, for one thing. No thanks.
Dehumanizing is the point at a more increased speed. Just like social media w/ instant messaging apps have reduced a large percentage of people incapable of having face to face communication. When people relegate their capabilities to technology it results in an even further slide away from the ability to even want to decipher the difference. It's also a step away from organic human creation. The more you think about it the more orchestrated it sounds.
That is PRECISELY the point I have been making, and it relates DIRECTLY to my comments on the Industrial Revolution and the Protestant “work ethic”, which would be better described as the “dehumanising work ethic”.
Read more on it and wow. I never realized how the protestant work ethic got used against the working class for material gain of govt/corpocracy. As a self aligning Catholic, the Sede way, I was not very familiar with Protestants and their religion. Just what watered down information I barely remember in grade school. Man it's so sad how much access to truth and history that we have but are continually choosing to be willfully sinful.
I have to admit that when Vox calls the AI his "new best friend," I am sure he is being ironic, but somehow it jolts me each time I see it.
AI is not just not human with no soul - it's demonstrably dangerous. I put some links to research from the 90s that proved that mere birds could influence random-number directed robots in a room. What do you suppose that human or demonic intelligence can do to influence it? Is it really a good idea to give everyone their own personal, ego-stroking hyper-powerful Ouija boards?
I know that the Kurgan may not agree with Bruce on a lot of things, but he did have a pretty interesting take on AI recently (citation below). Here are a few excerpts:
Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism?
To ask is to answer.
---
I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics.
I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable.
One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!
---
The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions...
The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over; the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them".
AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.
If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.
The term Artificial intelligence seems to be an oxygen moron. But what scares me about AI, is it's potential to tamper with information and messaging. Like you type one thing and it sends another. Basically it will lie and manipulate info. I think there may be much use for pen and paper in the future.
I seriously think Vox is the right person to test AI. If anyone can hijack it for a good cause, trolling or moral it would be Vox.
I think you having this debate is necessary and interesting. But maybe better left behind closed doors.
Why behind closed doors? It is a necessary counterpoint. Vox is smart enough to not be unduly disturbed by any rhetoric I might use to make a point stick more with readers, and it goes the same way with me. The point is not that I am criticising him personally, the issue is how the average person will take what he is saying or doing and misapply it broadly in their own lives.
Of course, I DO think using AI is mostly a dehumanising effort by the usual suspects, and it is not a coincidence it rolled out during and post covid scamdemic, and ultimately, Vox’s approach is steeped in Protestant secularisation of actual Christianity, as all errors ultimately reduce to our errors in seeing through a glass darkly. Because of it, I doubt Vox would change his stance on this topic, hence the need for a public counterpoint, since he is making his own position public too.
I just thought too many annoying comments etc and unwarrented ears from the powers that be... But I'm sure either way is fine with you guys doing it.
I'm of the impression that Vox is testing it, from different angles, and making points of utility. I'm not sure about Protestant anything regarding AI. Just a writing tool, and more.
He already laid bare the vanity it can induce. I think he can expose more if it's nature. Sort of a hunter prey relationship, and not a religious issue.
If you have been marinated in Protestant Zeitgeist all your life, of course you will not see the dehumanising issue anywhere near as clear as a Catholic (not a Novus Orco version, an actual Catholic). In fact you will be almost certainly oblivious to it as a fish is to water. But after understanding and appreciating Catholicism for a while you become aware of how subtle yet penetrating the devil’s work operates through the secularisation of Christianity, which is the entire purpose of Protestantism. It touches every aspect of life, as logic dictates it would.
I must be innately Catholic, perhaps from a previous existence (I'm only half jesting), because I've been anti-AI and against the obvious dehumanizing effects of technology of many sorts(computers, biotechnology, genetic engineering, etc.) for many decades. I just don't see how people can't see/feel it. But I guess if your unstated metaphysics and basic outlook can't see it, it can't see it. A form of blindness. As far as debates, has anyone ever convinced someone else that their metaphysics are wrong? Perhaps... once in a blue moon, but not likely.
I will say that I interpreted the first Vox comment you critiqued as not saying all authors imitate but that even top authors throughout history have imitated.
My point is: do you see an imitation being as valid as an original? The best example I can think of other than Zacharia Mason’s 50 different odysseys in one small book is K.W.Jeter’s Bladerunner II book, which was a very well done continuation of the film.
Since the film bladerunner was an adaptation of PKD’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Jeter was I suppose really doing a continuation of Ridley Scott’s film more than PKD’s book, but he did it very well, and in a different medium (book instead of film). And since no one was going to do that (the film sequel to bladerunner was actually terrible) he certainly added to the existing body of work in a welcome way. But that’s a fairly specific circumstance.
The interesting thing about AI is that without skillful prompts it produces pure garbage. With a human guiding the AI, it can produce something that is interesting and worthwhile. I tried using it for a short story and it was hilariously bad, but as I kept re-doing my prompt, it got better. It wasn’t great, but better. But AI will never do that on it’s own. It can only mimic but in sometimes interesting and new ways by virtue of it’s huge word associations. One does not have to have AI write something “in the style of” an author. But ultimately, the words it spits out are trained off of somebody’s writing, to be sure.
Well for starters, the LLMs have exposure to vastly more and different writings than any person (& certainly me) could ever have so the word associations it comes up with can different/interesting.
When playing with my short story, I definitely had moments where I thought that something was an interesting idea or take on the scene and used it as a seed for manual writing.
Great movie! I need to rewatch it again soon with the kiddos. But this was written by humans and I am dense, so I am not sure where you’re going with that recommendation.
I guess my fundamental thought is that while LLMs are not “creative” in an existential sense, they can help the creative process. Others have called LLM super-powered auto-complete which I tend to agree with.
IMHO, VOX is a good man, and has much that is valuable to say, BUT....as I understand it, he is a protestant and as such he cannot truly understand the depths of the meaning of what he himself says. For that, he must be a practicing 1958 sede-variety Catholic who receives the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist regularly.
Oh. One more thing: I have been heavily involved in computers and electronics, beginning in 1956 or so, and I don't trust AI further than...nothing. It has been developed by a human or some humans and as such is deeply flawed. I see it as allowing men to become lazy, for one thing. No thanks.
Dehumanizing is the point at a more increased speed. Just like social media w/ instant messaging apps have reduced a large percentage of people incapable of having face to face communication. When people relegate their capabilities to technology it results in an even further slide away from the ability to even want to decipher the difference. It's also a step away from organic human creation. The more you think about it the more orchestrated it sounds.
That is PRECISELY the point I have been making, and it relates DIRECTLY to my comments on the Industrial Revolution and the Protestant “work ethic”, which would be better described as the “dehumanising work ethic”.
Read more on it and wow. I never realized how the protestant work ethic got used against the working class for material gain of govt/corpocracy. As a self aligning Catholic, the Sede way, I was not very familiar with Protestants and their religion. Just what watered down information I barely remember in grade school. Man it's so sad how much access to truth and history that we have but are continually choosing to be willfully sinful.
I have to admit that when Vox calls the AI his "new best friend," I am sure he is being ironic, but somehow it jolts me each time I see it.
AI is not just not human with no soul - it's demonstrably dangerous. I put some links to research from the 90s that proved that mere birds could influence random-number directed robots in a room. What do you suppose that human or demonic intelligence can do to influence it? Is it really a good idea to give everyone their own personal, ego-stroking hyper-powerful Ouija boards?
But you are SUCH a good commenter! Everyone LOVES your comments!
Please never stop!
[this response is a simulation of AI response]
When anyone over 45 says new best friend, I think drinking buddy.
Relying on AI for ego boosts may not be exactly akin to alcoholism, but… yeah…
I know that the Kurgan may not agree with Bruce on a lot of things, but he did have a pretty interesting take on AI recently (citation below). Here are a few excerpts:
Does the spread of AI technologies lead towards a more spiritual and creative, personal, loving and Christian perspective - or towards ever-more this-worldly manipulative materialism?
To ask is to answer.
---
I discern that some of the most vocal advocates of AI themselves actually fear AI; AI makes them afraid - and they respond by trying to make friends with AI - they take the side of AI, defend it against its critics.
I think this befriending, like the Stockholm Syndrome it so much resembles, is fear induced - a response to a threat they perceive to be potentially deadly, and inescapable.
One reason I think pro-AI advocacy is often fear-induced, is that such people project their fear onto others - inappropriately, wrongly. They taunt that those who do not embrace AI are afraid of AI!
---
The managerial way of dealing with dissent is that real world (and spiritual) problem is reframed into emotions...
The problem is not the global Establishment-driven mandatory AI take-over; the "real" problem is those who criticize or resist AI, or who decline to engage with it. "They must have something wrong with them".
AI-resisters are assumed to be ignorant, weak, or frightened - and the managerial answer is they need to be educated, soothed, or mocked and shamed - until they fall in line, and do what is good for them.
If you regard yourself as a Christian, and are currently an advocate of AI - you are Missing The Obvious; and it is time to take a step back. It's never too late to repent, and all spiritual learning from experience is a positive gain. It's what we are here for, after all.
--- Bruce Charlton April 11, 2025
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-ai-litmus-test-fail-is-it-caused-by.html
The term Artificial intelligence seems to be an oxygen moron. But what scares me about AI, is it's potential to tamper with information and messaging. Like you type one thing and it sends another. Basically it will lie and manipulate info. I think there may be much use for pen and paper in the future.
I seriously think Vox is the right person to test AI. If anyone can hijack it for a good cause, trolling or moral it would be Vox.
I think you having this debate is necessary and interesting. But maybe better left behind closed doors.
Why behind closed doors? It is a necessary counterpoint. Vox is smart enough to not be unduly disturbed by any rhetoric I might use to make a point stick more with readers, and it goes the same way with me. The point is not that I am criticising him personally, the issue is how the average person will take what he is saying or doing and misapply it broadly in their own lives.
Of course, I DO think using AI is mostly a dehumanising effort by the usual suspects, and it is not a coincidence it rolled out during and post covid scamdemic, and ultimately, Vox’s approach is steeped in Protestant secularisation of actual Christianity, as all errors ultimately reduce to our errors in seeing through a glass darkly. Because of it, I doubt Vox would change his stance on this topic, hence the need for a public counterpoint, since he is making his own position public too.
I just thought too many annoying comments etc and unwarrented ears from the powers that be... But I'm sure either way is fine with you guys doing it.
I'm of the impression that Vox is testing it, from different angles, and making points of utility. I'm not sure about Protestant anything regarding AI. Just a writing tool, and more.
He already laid bare the vanity it can induce. I think he can expose more if it's nature. Sort of a hunter prey relationship, and not a religious issue.
That is all I got
If you have been marinated in Protestant Zeitgeist all your life, of course you will not see the dehumanising issue anywhere near as clear as a Catholic (not a Novus Orco version, an actual Catholic). In fact you will be almost certainly oblivious to it as a fish is to water. But after understanding and appreciating Catholicism for a while you become aware of how subtle yet penetrating the devil’s work operates through the secularisation of Christianity, which is the entire purpose of Protestantism. It touches every aspect of life, as logic dictates it would.
I must be innately Catholic, perhaps from a previous existence (I'm only half jesting), because I've been anti-AI and against the obvious dehumanizing effects of technology of many sorts(computers, biotechnology, genetic engineering, etc.) for many decades. I just don't see how people can't see/feel it. But I guess if your unstated metaphysics and basic outlook can't see it, it can't see it. A form of blindness. As far as debates, has anyone ever convinced someone else that their metaphysics are wrong? Perhaps... once in a blue moon, but not likely.
We fight not the fool in the arena, but the minds of the spectators.
I really would love to hear this debate. And I'm not taking anything away from your point of view.
If the ends don't justify the means, what does? ( just a bit of humor on this serious subject )
Interesting thoughts! Thank you for sharing them.
I will say that I interpreted the first Vox comment you critiqued as not saying all authors imitate but that even top authors throughout history have imitated.
My point is: do you see an imitation being as valid as an original? The best example I can think of other than Zacharia Mason’s 50 different odysseys in one small book is K.W.Jeter’s Bladerunner II book, which was a very well done continuation of the film.
Since the film bladerunner was an adaptation of PKD’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Jeter was I suppose really doing a continuation of Ridley Scott’s film more than PKD’s book, but he did it very well, and in a different medium (book instead of film). And since no one was going to do that (the film sequel to bladerunner was actually terrible) he certainly added to the existing body of work in a welcome way. But that’s a fairly specific circumstance.
The interesting thing about AI is that without skillful prompts it produces pure garbage. With a human guiding the AI, it can produce something that is interesting and worthwhile. I tried using it for a short story and it was hilariously bad, but as I kept re-doing my prompt, it got better. It wasn’t great, but better. But AI will never do that on it’s own. It can only mimic but in sometimes interesting and new ways by virtue of it’s huge word associations. One does not have to have AI write something “in the style of” an author. But ultimately, the words it spits out are trained off of somebody’s writing, to be sure.
How is this “interesting” in any positive way?
Well for starters, the LLMs have exposure to vastly more and different writings than any person (& certainly me) could ever have so the word associations it comes up with can different/interesting.
When playing with my short story, I definitely had moments where I thought that something was an interesting idea or take on the scene and used it as a seed for manual writing.
You need to watch the cartoon Wall-E. And see if it sparks any further "interesting" ideas.
Great movie! I need to rewatch it again soon with the kiddos. But this was written by humans and I am dense, so I am not sure where you’re going with that recommendation.
I guess my fundamental thought is that while LLMs are not “creative” in an existential sense, they can help the creative process. Others have called LLM super-powered auto-complete which I tend to agree with.
IMHO, VOX is a good man, and has much that is valuable to say, BUT....as I understand it, he is a protestant and as such he cannot truly understand the depths of the meaning of what he himself says. For that, he must be a practicing 1958 sede-variety Catholic who receives the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist regularly.