July 6, 2023: Joe Rogan and Marc Andreessen engaged in an illuminating discussion, some of which thoroughly dissected their concerns about Artificial Intelligence. You can review it here if you wish:
My father the rocket scientist – who in the early 1960s programmed a computer that took up all the wall space in a very large room but had less power than the original Macintosh, much less the ones we now hold in our hands – told me correctly back then that computers will never be able to do anything humans can’t do, because computers are just human-designed and human-programmed machines that can only do what humans design them to do, with one solitary advantage: they can do it much faster. Everything a computer can do, human beings are already capable of doing. Therefore, everything negative we can imagine that Artificial Intelligence might do to us we are already capable of doing to each other; it might take longer, but it’s all within our wheelhouses.
If we can’t do it, there’s no reason to fear that robots are going to figure out how to do it. In fact, we can do everything they can do, but they most certainly can’t and never will be able to do everything we can do. Hell, we don’t even understand how we can do everything we can do, so how could we possibly program a computer to become our equals?
We have no more reason to fear that Artificial Intelligence will somehow surpass its creators to the point of being able to dominate and subdue those creators than we have for suspecting that refrigerators will start purposefully manufacturing tornadoes.
My suspicion is that a strong positive correlation exists between lack of belief in a higher power and fear that science fiction will become reality in the form of computers or their software dominating and/or extinguishing the human race.
Computers or AI or calculators or even slide rules may be used by human beings to very purposefully oppress, enslave or even exterminate other human beings, but our fear should not be of the machines that are developed; it should be of the evil among us.
And our confidence should remain in knowing that, just as we have the ultimate control over Artificial Intelligence, so too does our Creator have such control over us and the rest of the world He created. I get it that those who only observe the actions and trajectories of evil without the peace that passes all understanding one gets from unshakeable faith would worry about nebulous forces that we may lack the capacity to curtail, but no amount of denial of God puts a dent in His actual Existence – any more than speaking words declaring carbon dioxide our enemy negates the fact that, by Design, we’re absolutely dependent on its existence.
In the end, He will win. Not robots nor mad scientists nor even would-be tin-pot dictators. God will win, and thus we will win right along with Him.
Even those who don’t believe in Him will ultimately see it.