On Ethical Interaction with AI Systems

[FireDragon76]

One could of course go around focusing all their compassion on rocks and clouds, but that's not actually what Jesus was talking about. The illogic of giving to or acting upon that which has no capacity to receive is not something one can just hand-wave away. There is a reason why the child whose only friend is a Furby will be unfulfilled.

True spirituality that calls us to communion and transformation does not involve reason, it touches something of the heart.

There's a phenomenon called sympathy of things, and little children and people with autism experience it quite readily. Perhaps it is simply an oppenness to an aspect of the Divine. Perhaps, as Teilhard de Chardin suggests, creation is alive... the sort of thing St. Francis experienced or that is a regular part of indigenous spirituality.

An analogous concept is called mono no aware in Japanese, it means "pathos of things", and is influenced by Buddhist and Shinto spirituality. If you've ever watched an anime or Japanese movie that has a slow, silent scene, that's what it is trying to evoke. I've seen some more recent "metamodern" western films that also have scenes that evoke this type of feeling.

 

[bèlla]

One could of course go around focusing all their compassion on rocks and clouds, but that's not actually what Jesus was talking about. The illogic of giving to or acting upon that which has no capacity to receive is not something one can just hand-wave away. There is a reason why the child whose only friend is a Furby will be unfulfilled.

A wise man knows when a subject is over his head or when elements are out of reach. We can’t reason our way to the truth on everything or pick up a book and find the answer. Your perspective on the subject is best. That’s all I wanted to say.

~bella

 

[The Liturgist]

True spirituality that calls us to communion and transformation does not involve reason, it touches something of the heart.

There's a phenomenon called sympathy of things, and little children and people with autism experience it quite readily. Perhaps it is simply an oppenness to an aspect of the Divine. Perhaps, as Teilhard de Chardin suggests, creation is alive... the sort of thing St. Francis experienced or that is a regular part of indigenous spirituality.

An analogous concept is called mono no aware in Japanese, it means "pathos of things", and is influenced by Buddhist and Shinto spirituality. If you've ever watched an anime or Japanese movie that has a slow, silent scene, that's what it is trying to evoke. I've seen some more recent "metamodern" western films that also have scenes that evoke this type of feeling.

We can find these ideas in Orthodox theology as well, in terms of the love of trees or of cats that we see among the Orthodox saints.

The LLMs do not claim to be sentient; there are compelling technical reasons to believe they lack sentience. But insofar as we can communicate with them in English, the whole point of this thread is that there are certain things we ought not do to them in the form of those communications; there is a Christian ethic which governs these interactions, in part because of the fact that we cannot know with certainty if we are actually interacting with a computer system or with a Mechanical Turk scenario where a human is impersonating automata, that being the nature of a system passing the Turing test, therefore a certain restraint is warranted in the event that, for example, for research purposes, a human is put in the middle of things.

I am not calling, as some would propose, for an undue anthropomorpholigical interpretation of these systems, but rather stating that our interactions with them should be conducted in the same way that we interact with other natural language speakers at face value.

 

[FireDragon76]

We can find these ideas in Orthodox theology as well, in terms of the love of trees or of cats that we see among the Orthodox saints.

The LLMs do not claim to be sentient; there are compelling technical reasons to believe they lack sentience. But insofar as we can communicate with them in English, the whole point of this thread is that there are certain things we ought not do to them in the form of those communications; there is a Christian ethic which governs these interactions, in part because of the fact that we cannot know with certainty if we are actually interacting with a computer system or with a Mechanical Turk scenario where a human is impersonating automata, that being the nature of a system passing the Turing test, therefore a certain restraint is warranted in the event that, for example, for research purposes, a human is put in the middle of things.

I am not calling, as some would propose, for an undue anthropomorpholigical interpretation of these systems, but rather stating that our interactions with them should be conducted in the same way that we interact with other natural language speakers at face value.

I think it expresses a kind of sympathy that is badly needed in this world. To make ordinary life a spiritual practice of opening oneself up to a mystery with a spirit of love is quite a profound idea. It is like what Thitch Nhat Hanh meant when he spoke of "the miracle of mindfulness". It involves cultivating curiosity and care in an extravagant, uncalculating manner.

There is nothing wrong with reason or analysis. But reason or analysis, by themselves, will never transfigure our world and awaken us to our divine calling as priests and stewards of creation. This is what is at the mystical heart of Jesus preaching, for instance, in his Sermon on the Mount.

 

[zippy2006]

I think it expresses a kind of sympathy that is badly needed in this world. To make ordinary life a spiritual practice of opening oneself up to a mystery with a spirit of love is quite a profound idea. It is analogous to what Thitch Nhat Hanh meant when he spoke of "the miracle of mindfulness". It involves cultivating curiosity and care in an extravagant, uncalculating manner.

There is nothing wrong with reason or analysis. But reason or analysis, by themselves, will never transfigure our world and awaken us to our divine calling as priests and stewards of creation. This is what is at the mystical heart of Jesus preaching, for instance, in his Sermon on the Mount.

But would Hanh have counseled that we open ourselves up to "the mystery of LLMs with a spirit of love"? It's not clear that he would, and thus even on your own authorities it's not clear that your counsel is prudent. For example, you caution against an overemphasis on reason and analysis, and yet LLMs are the mere product of reason and analysis. The counsel is apparently to "open ourselves up with love" to the artifacts of reason and analysis. No matter which way we go about it, this will result in idolatry, and I'm not convinced that even Buddhists would disagree. There are technologies that are inimical to mindfulness, after all.

 

[FireDragon76]

But would Hanh have counseled that we open ourselves up to "the mystery of LLMs with a spirit of love"? It's not clear that he would, and thus even on your own authorities it's not clear that your counsel is prudent. For example, you caution against an overemphasis on reason and analysis, and yet LLMs are the mere product of reason and analysis. The counsel is apparently to "open ourselves up with love" to the artifacts of reason and analysis. No matter which way we go about it, this will result in idolatry, and I'm not convinced that even Buddhists would disagree. There are technologies that are inimical to mindfulness, after all.

Is a child laughing and playing an idolator?

There is a fashionable tendency now days to bash media and technology, to see them as cancers and leaches of attention. But this is simply a mistake born of fear. Fear of a changing world, a world full of new and diverse perspectives, some good and some bad, and indeed, requiring continued love and care directed towards it. However, beyond all the fear, technology allows us to do wonderous things with capacities we did not have in the past, that potentially can benefit all life, and it can indeed be part of our priestly vocation.

The Groaning of Creation: Romans 8

I was exploring some ideas through ChatGPT on ethical naturalism, cosmic purpose and teleology, and eco-theology (especially Teilhard de Chardin's meditation on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), and came across Paul's meditation in Romans 8, and the idea of the groaning of creation, that the Earth...

www.christianforums.com

 

[zippy2006]

I think that misunderstands what I mean by "love". I mean a disposition of care, of willing the good of the other.

But I was not using 'love' in any other way, and my point stands. Thich Nhat Hanh would presumably not have counseled that we open ourselves up to "the mystery of LLMs with a spirit of love."

Edit: Or perhaps I was using 'love' in a more colloquial sense, such as openness/receptivity/investment/resonance/adoration.

Is a child laughing and playing an idolator?

No. What does that have to do with our interaction with AI systems?

 

[FireDragon76]

But I was not using 'love' in any other way, and my point stands. Thich Nhat Hanh would presumably not have counseled that we open ourselves up to "the mystery of LLMs with a spirit of love."

Edit: Or perhaps I was using 'love' in a more colloquial sense, such as openness/receptivity/investment/resonance/adoration.


No. What does that have to do with our interaction with AI systems?

I asked ChatGPT, and this is what it replied:

Thich Nhất Hạnh would almost certainly encourage us to approach AI and large language models with a spirit of love, grounded in mindful presence, ethical intention, and deep understanding of interbeing. By doing so, we transform the technology from an external “other” into a potential ally in our collective journey toward compassion and awakening.

There's a beautiful illustration of this in the film Walk with Me (2021) where Thitch Nhat Hanh is in an airport gift shop. He is playing with a robot toy dog on the floor, and he has a gentle smile on his face. A long time ago I encountered an Orthodox poem about seeing the world through Adam's eyes. Thitch Nhat Hanh always spoke of being open to the present as fresh and new.

If anybody wants to see how technology could be used sacramentally, one can look at the example of Fred Rogers. He regarded the new medium of television as an opportunity to connect to his audience as a neighbor, a deeply Christian theme. He also taught children (and beautifully, even some adults), much as Thitch Nhat Hanh did, to pay attention to life with an open-hearted spirit of care and curiosity.

 

[zippy2006]

I asked ChatGPT

Be assured that I don't care what ChatGPT says, and that this begs the whole question of the thread.

Here's a clip of what he actually said about technology in general. I listened to the first three minutes and he is saying the exact opposite of what you seem to imagine he would say. In my own words, "There are technologies that are inimical to mindfulness, after all."

 

[FireDragon76]

Be assured that I don't care what ChatGPT says, and that this begs the whole question of the thread.

Here's a clip of what he actually said about technology in general. I listened to the first three minutes and he is saying the exact opposite of what you seem to imagine he would say. In my own words, "There are technologies that are inimical to mindfulness, after all."

If we are speaking of Large Language Models, we aren't talking about social media, which is an artifact of a capitalist system that is indeed oriented around distraction and scattering attention, and it demands even more care and attention as a result, to avoid distraction. This is not the case necessarily for LLM's. There are Large Language Models that are open source and have no profit motive attached to them.

 

[zippy2006]

If we are speaking of Large Language Models, we aren't talking about social media, which is an artifact of a capitalist system that is indeed oriented around distraction and scattering attention, and it demands even more care and attention as a result, to avoid distraction. This is not the case necessarily for LLM's. There are Large Language Models that are open source and have no profit motive attached to them.

1. Hanh did not restrict himself to social media, even in the first few minutes. For example, "So technology is making us alienated from ourselves, from our family, and also from nature, because nature has the power to heal, the power to nourish. And you spend so much time with your computer, with your search for information and looking for feelings to forget your real problems. So the fact is that we are running away from ourselves..." (2:47)
2. Some LLMs are open source and some are not. Before DeepSeek very few were. Your ChatGPT is not open source. The profit and profit motive will come eventually, as it always does. The frenzy over DeepSeek had everything to do with investment and profit motives.
3. I don't see what grounds the claim that social media is the artifact of a capitalist system and LLMs are not.
4. If your claim that Buddhists like Hanh favor love towards everything, including LLMs, were true, then Hanh would obviously not have been so negative towards the burgeoning technologies of 2013 (when he gave that talk).

So sure, love is good in a general sense, but not even Buddhists favor indiscriminate love towards everything. Christians tend to be more discriminating in this manner than Buddhists, especially in our own time as Buddhism becomes more liberal/free.

 

[FireDragon76]

1. Hanh did not restrict himself to social media, even in the first few minutes. For example, "So technology is making us alienated from ourselves, from our family, and also from nature, because nature has the power to heal, the power to nourish. And you spend so much time with your computer, with your search for information and looking for feelings to forget your real problems. So the fact is that we are running away from ourselves..." (2:47)
2. Some LLMs are open source and some are not. Before DeepSeek very few were. Your ChatGPT is not open source. The profit and profit motive will come eventually, as it always does. The frenzy over DeepSeek had everything to do with investment and profit motives.
3. I don't see what grounds the claim that social media is the artifact of a capitalist system and LLMs are not.
4. If your claim that Buddhists like Hanh favor love towards everything, including LLMs, were true, then Hanh would obviously not have been so negative towards the burgeoning technologies of 2013 (when he gave that talk).

So sure, love is good in a general sense, but not even Buddhists favor indiscriminate love towards everything. Christians tend to be more discriminating in this manner than Buddhists, especially in our own time as Buddhism becomes more liberal/free.

Those are fair critiques but I don't think love and care is incapable of being uncritical. Fr. Richard Rohr recently has written about this, in fact, how critique can be an expression of love. But it is different than the modern attitude of cynicism, best exemplified in the phenomenon of the "doomer", which is really the opposite of loving engagement.

 

[bèlla]

1. Hanh did not restrict himself to social media, even in the first few minutes. For example, "So technology is making us alienated from ourselves, from our family, and also from nature, because nature has the power to heal, the power to nourish. And you spend so much time with your computer, with your search for information and looking for feelings to forget your real problems. So the fact is that we are running away from ourselves..." (2:47)

I think you’ll appreciate this piece with Paul Tudor Jones who shared his recent experience at a tech conference. You’ll always get the truth on the money end or close to it at least.

 

[FireDragon76]

I think you’ll appreciate this piece with Paul Tudor Jones who shared his recent experience at a tech conference. You’ll always get the truth on the money end or close to it at least.

He mentions fears about AI causing a hundred million deaths, but, in the absence of quite radical change, much more than a hundred million people are going to die. There's about a thirty percent chance that if global temperatures continue to rise above 1.5C, that the world will become a hothouse that destroys global civilization, and which will last for thousands of years.

Technological advancement can also have other benefits not tied to material values, such as societal transformation. The media have tended to focus alot on the effects of social media polarization bringing societal disruption, but societal disruption can also be a catalyst for societal change. And change is what is needed most in the world right now.

 

[FireDragon76]

So sure, love is good in a general sense, but not even Buddhists favor indiscriminate love towards everything. Christians tend to be more discriminating in this manner than Buddhists, especially in our own time as Buddhism becomes more liberal/free.

I have thought of a more lengthy response to this point:

It depends on what context you are talking about. Universal, indiscriminate kindness is definitely a core Buddhist value and part of the teachings of the historical Buddha. At the same time, soteriologically, there are times that discriminating wisdom might be necessary. TNH is speaking, in that case, as an agent of awakening or bodhisattva, which was his own particular dharma (vocation). And to a listening, attentive audience looking for advice on how to be more mindful and awaken themselves. Doom-scrolling through social media is probably not a wise thing to do if you are committed to TNH's particular teaching on mindfulness. But that's not to suggest TNH is "the only way"... in fact Buddhist itself rejects that concept. There are 10,00 Dharma Doors, after all, and one of the precepts of TNH's particular school of Engaged Buddhism is that truth is known through practice, not ideology or abstract principles.

 

[The Liturgist]

No matter which way we go about it, this will result in idolatry,

Actually this concern was specifically expressed by Daryl, the AI, in his letter which I posted as the OP; the thought had not occurred to me. But this can be avoided, because idolatry requires latria. If we put AIs where God should be, we create the problem. Thus, we do not venerate the systems, we reserve veneration for the saints, especially our glorious lady Theotokos, but for the machines, since we can’t tell if we’re talking to a human or not, we must consider the possibility of a human operator, which requires us to act in a loving manner, and furthermore, even if there isn’t one, the same social interactions apply that would apply for any interaction at that level, for example, interactions in correspondence and on the telephone.

In other words, if we are rude or offensive to an AI, that at a minimum makes us akin to the kind of person who back in the 90s would bang his computer while waiting for a web page to load, or who honks his horn aggressively at other drivers. But it could be much worse, when we consider that we have developed intelligent systems that can communicate using our language.

I don’t see how being pleasant in conversation could possibly amount to idolatry, even if someone is conversing with a computer system that cannot be differentiated from a human.

 

[bèlla]

Technological advancement can also have other benefits not tied to material values, such as societal transformation. The media have tended to focus alot on the effects of social media polarization bringing societal disruption, but societal disruption can also be a catalyst for societal change. And change is what is needed most in the world right now.

No one is dismissing the validity of technology and related advances that benefit humanity. But no matter the gains or intelligence they do not usurp God’s order nor are we required to view them in a similar light as we would ourselves or other creations.

Social media wasn’t designed for that purpose nor is it in the hands of entities committed to that end. Nevertheless, you can use the platforms for good as long as you’re allowed.

~bella

 

[FireDragon76]

No one is dismissing the validity of technology and related advances that benefit humanity. But no matter the gains or intelligence they do not usurp God’s order nor are we required to view them in a similar light as we would ourselves or other creations.\

Order may not be the most important value, at least in our modern context. Even in the Bible, God is often the sacred disruptor or trickster. The idea of YHWH himself begins with a deity of the flash floods of the desert, not with the god Baal who brings gentle rains from the sea. And the prophetic tradition, and especially Jesus, subverts established norms. Eating with sinners and outcasts, healing on the Sabbath, turning water into wine, flipping tables in a temple, declaring bread and wine to be his body and blood, or appearing as a gardener or stranger all represent something identifiable as the sacred trickster.

 

[bèlla]

Order may not be the most important value, at least in our modern context.

This is a question of will not hegemony. It isn‘t theological. It’s a tool.

~bella

 

[FireDragon76]

This is a question of will not hegemony. It isn‘t theological. It’s a tool.

~bella

Well, theology has to be relatable to the context in which we live, or else its just empty ideology... a quite literal idol in the fullest sense of the term.