January 2024 New Horizons

Demystifying ChatGPT

by Thomas VanDrunen

About a year ago, the research firm OpenAI made a version of its text-generation tools available for free use from its website. The chatbot, called ChatGPT, accepts a prompt from the user, such as a question or a request for a piece of writing, and responds with a seemingly original composition. If you have experimented with this tool, you may be impressed with its ability to produce natural-sounding English paragraphs—or perhaps you find it eerie and wonder what changes tools like this will bring. To demystify what language tools like ChatGPT are doing, here’s a game you can try at home. To play, you’ll need to select a book and pick a letter of the alphabet. I’ll play along while I write: I have a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress handy, and I choose the letter m . Open your book at random and find the first word on that page that contains your letter. For me, the word is mind . In the word that you found, what letter occurs immediately after the letter you were looking for, just as i comes next ... Read more

AI in the Pastor’s Study

by Jonathan Landry Cruse

In an era defined by rapid technological advancement, the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has captivated our imaginations and transformed our daily lives in profound ways. From autonomous vehicles and virtual personal assistants to medical diagnostics and financial predictions, AI systems are becoming increasingly integrated into our society. While these advancements hold the promise of enhancing efficiency, productivity, and convenience, they also bring forth a shadow of uncertainty and concern. The dangers of AI loom large on the horizon, casting doubts about the potential risks it poses to privacy, security, employment, ethics, and even the very fabric of our humanity. As just one example of the eerie capabilities of AI, consider that the previous paragraph was completely generated by the online program ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) in response to this prompt I gave it: “Can you write an opening essay paragraph for me about the dangers of AI?” “Certainly!” came the ... Read more

A Christian’s Take on Deepfakes

by Jack VanDrunen

As technology advances, it is only becoming easier to lie. That statement might be surprising at first glance. With the advent of photography, audio, and video recording, we have gained access to more truth than ever before. We are now able to hear and see events that we were never present at—events that happened decades ago and thousands of miles away. Surely this should only make it more difficult to lie! AI Advances Photos and videos, however, are the perfect media for communicating half-truths. First, they can be altered. And even if they haven’t been altered, they are still only a narrow perspective, a sliver of “what really happened.” They’re an outline from which our mind colors in further details. We are more easily swayed by visuals than by text, because we are used to having other people lie to us, but we are not used to having our own senses lie to us. That is the power of manipulated media. With better technology, our lies have become more convincing. For almost as long as ... Read more

AI: The Latest Idol?

by Jan Frederic Dudt

The rapid rate of artificial intelligence’s development is sure to produce almost unimaginable outcomes. Presently, artificial intelligence is recognized in two forms, “soft” (or “weak”) AI and “strong” AI. Soft AI solves problems like voice recognition (think Alexa and Siri), self-driven cars, identifying plants or insects from a photo, or compiling and synthesizing a patient’s symptoms to offer a diagnosis. Strong AI takes everything to the next level. It can do math, communicate with you, offer advice, write a poem or a novel, create a sermon, write emails for marketers, and pass the MCAT, all while creating the impression that it is consciously self-aware, as is the case with ChatGPT bots. In short, soft AI focuses on specific tasks. Strong AI is capable of learning and processing in a more humanlike way. People have been responding to the ethical challenges that strong AI presents. For example, the organization AI and Faith is tapping into a broad spectrum of religions and values ... Read more