“We have met the enemy, and he is us.” (Pogo)

Have you heard the news stories about AI or Artificial Intelligence? Some people are worried.

Should we be worried?

AI can write for us, and soon we will have videos that seem real but are artificial creations of fake people speaking. Imagine if someone that you know sends you a video, with them asking you for money. If the voice and the appearance seem accurate, you might send the money, to help your friend. And then imagine that your actual friend contacts you.

So, who got your money?

Scenarios like this scare some people, as computer-generated technology becomes more sophisticated. How will we know what is real?

I remember, many years ago, one person in my circle of friends was a law student at a university, and he was about to graduate. I remember that he smiled and told us, quietly, that in his entire university career, he had never written a single assignment. I didn’t ask if he wrote any exams.

Of course, he turned in written assignments, but they were written by someone else. He paid people to do his work, and I think he graduated. He probably had a long career after that, with a high salary.

That bothered me then when I was working so hard to pass my courses and build a record that would help me in my adult life and career.

Imagine if someone now, using the latest AI technology, could generate their assignments with a computer, and eventually graduate. Even worse, if a computer app could somehow tap into, or hack, an official database, it might change someone’s grades, or record that their taxes were paid.

What other records could be altered …? Our imaginations only limit the possibilities. Apparently, one young woman is trying to sell created AI versions of herself, as someone’s computer-generated girlfriend.

This can get very strange, and that is the threat of AI, we can’t know the truth anymore.

Humans had something like AI in ancient times.

The Greeks and Romans had oracles, who apparently spoke with the voices of the gods. Oracles were usually women, and they were probably high on substances or toxic gases when they had visions and spoke.

That may be very different from computer-generated AI, but the human trust was the same. People believed in a voice that was not real.

A Lydian king named Croesus wasn’t sure about fighting a war against the Persians, but an oracle told him “If Croesus goes to war, he will destroy a great empire.” So, he went to war, and his great empire was destroyed. The Persians won.

That is a very old joke, and it is apparently true.

King Croesus did what all kings did, in those days. He looked for knowledge that was greater than himself, from an oracle. Humans have not changed since that time, and that is the threat of AI.

We are creating computer-generated intelligence, that might be able to learn, and become more intelligent over time.

That will be a problem when we start to rely on our new oracle for direction in our lives, our investments, and politics.

The threat of AI is us, and the gods we choose.

It is easy to see how AI scares some intelligent people. We will soon have a tool that makes our decisions and lies for us. If we are lazy and dishonest, that is a gold mine. And that is a concern because we have a long history of being lazy and dishonest.

Around the time of King Croesus, another man gave us some direction: “Call to me and I will answer you and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (Jeremiah 33: 3). That is a quotation from God, and the speaker was a prophet named Jeremiah. He lived in Jerusalem, where the God of the Bible was worshiped.

Imagine computer programs that magnify our worst behavior. Pogo was correct, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Jeremiah gave us the alternative “Give thanks to the LORD of hosts, for the LORD is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!’” (Jeremiah 33: 11)