Intelligence

2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

In the wake of my issues with my host website last weekend, I had several excellent conversations with some of you.  First, let me give a huge thank you to Finn Caspersen, who pointed me to Mail Chimp, allowing me to circumvent the Artificial Intelligence features on my host website.  Finn was kind enough to call me and spend a good bit of time walking me through how to set things up.  So I’m “back on the air”!  

What do we make of AI?  My first reaction was to think of Art.  Not Garfunkel.  But music.  And painting, poetry and the like.  In the last part of the 19th century, the Realism school popped up, creating paintings so lifelike some

could be mistaken for photographs.  Conversely, my son recently took this photo, taken with such artistry as to have many people think it was a painting!  One of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs, D’yer Maker, features a drumline that has been called “sloppy” and “perfect”.  And impossible for a machine to do anything but copy with envy, if that makes sense.

In most areas of society, especially in Service areas, the Human Touch is essential.  Even if I could call a help desk and not be able to tell whether the voice on the other end was human, and even if that voice had the exact answer I was looking for, I would feel cheated to find out it was a machine.  

Think of apologies.  We have all given insincere ones and we’ve all gotten them. How meaningful would you find it to have a service desk responder give a programmed reply, “I am so sorry for what happened!”  Even if Meryl Streep recorded the voice (or more likely, a copy of her voice), and even if the company made all reparations, when the president of the company takes his outsized bonus for having laid off all the call center employees, how good would you feel about the apology they offered?  And I grant you, a human on the other end of the phone rarely, if ever, offers a satisfactory response.  But that, too, is part of the problem - people so far removed from ownership of the company that they simply do not care about the customer experience. Think back to 200-plus years ago and further back, when every shoe store sold shoes hand-made by the owner, sold by the owner or his family. You want good customer service? You would not get better.

I can appreciate that some industries require mechanical precision.  Building a bridge.  Making a car or a rocketship or an artificial heart.  These are things that must work properly or people will die.  However, a self-driving car must be programmed to make choices: the road ahead is suddenly blocked by a truck popping out of a driveway.  Will the car veer into a tree and damage itself and possibly its driver and passengers?  Or into the playground on the roadside, where the car will be undamaged, but twenty children are playing?  Cars today are programmed to turn into the playground.

I read that AI can create puns now.  And a number one hit song.  And, it seems, a reinsurance company.  And I am afraid.  Yes, we can and should strive for perfection, and in some places, every millimeter or fraction thereof is critical. But there are many places that our quest for perfection needs to start by humbly admitting we cannot do it and asking, daily, hourly, every minute, for the help of God’s Holy Spirit.  But I think we need to work on accepting less than perfection in others and in ourselves.  Forgiveness.  Love.  Being made in the Image of God.  Being human beings.