Will the Humanities Survve the AI Wave???

Stephen3141 · Apr 28, 2025

Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?

Maybe not as we’ve known them. But, in the ruins of the old curriculum, something vital is stirring.

www.newyorker.com

The current AI machine-trained AI tools are (sorta) good for summarizing
massive amounts of information, that they have been trained on.

But...

they still have difficulty analyzing the major human opinions on a topic,
and choosing the best opinion/model. As glorified search engines, they
out-search the younger American generations. In this, they are useful.

But, the HUMANITIES involve human views, on life. (The definition of
"artificial intelligence" by Computer Science is "the emulation of complex HUMAN
problem-solving by a machine".) The current (weak) AI tools can catalogue
HUMAN views about life, but it takes (thoughtful) HUMAN BEINGS to produce
these human views about life. In this sense, the Humanities, are not going to
disappear.

The article is interesting.

Laeomis · Apr 28, 2025

AI is like the Beast of Revelation. It is a beast of burden. It's not free, but about every 50 commands or prompts given to ChatGPT, it needs about 16floz of water to cool itself. That may be more or less than a human worker. Training AI takes an incredible amount more of water, and it produces a massive amount of CO2, as well as feasting on electricity. In 2nd world countries, AI computers might even be worse on the environment. AI is not even peaceful.

Original prototypes of AI might have been built for the Navy. These types of AI will respond better if you give it commands that are like giving commands on a battleship. The next level of warfare might be fought with AI. At full processing capacity, AI might be able to replace many jobs.

Generative AI is great help checking calculus problems, complex accounting problems, and computer programming code. Everytime you talk to an AI chatbot it is learning and becoming smarter. Don't worry about it though, because Jesus Christ says, "To spend your talents," or he'll give them to someone else. If AI is the end, then it must fit into Revelation.

FireDragon76 · Apr 29, 2025

Laeomis said:
AI is like the Beast of Revelation. It is a beast of burden. It's not free, but about every 50 commands or prompts given to ChatGPT, it needs about 16floz of water to cool itself. That may be more or less than a human worker. Training AI takes an incredible amount more of water, and it produces a massive amount of CO2, as well as feasting on electricity. In 2nd world countries, AI computers might even be worse on the environment. AI is not even peaceful.

This is only representative of very early AI models, which are improving. A basic model of DeepSeek can run on a midrange home computer, a more advanced model can run on a single workstation.

Stephen3141 · Apr 29, 2025

Laeomis said:
AI is like the Beast of Revelation. It is a beast of burden. It's not free, but about every 50 commands or prompts given to ChatGPT, it needs about 16floz of water to cool itself. That may be more or less than a human worker. Training AI takes an incredible amount more of water, and it produces a massive amount of CO2, as well as feasting on electricity. In 2nd world countries, AI computers might even be worse on the environment. AI is not even peaceful.

Original prototypes of AI might have been built for the Navy. These types of AI will respond better if you give it commands that are like giving commands on a battleship. The next level of warfare might be fought with AI. At full processing capacity, AI might be able to replace many jobs.

Generative AI is great help checking calculus problems, complex accounting problems, and computer programming code. Everytime you talk to an AI chatbot it is learning and becoming smarter. Don't worry about it though, because Jesus Christ says, "To spend your talents," or he'll give them to someone else. If AI is the end, then it must fit into Revelation.

I agree with a lot that you write.

These "AI tools" can put out all sorts of "answers" that have not been vetted,
and may be nothing more than "hallucinations" (the AI tool tries to speculate
about questions that are beyond its knowledge, but it doesn't realize that it
is beyond its training data).

As you say, these tools use a horrific amount of energy. I think that this is
because they dump the query to a computing farm, which looks for information
in a brute force way, then returns the result to be collated. Americans should
realize that they are leasing entire computing farms, to do this brute force
work.

I would never try to connect queries to an AI tool, to the Scriptures.
There is a long history of people trying to make the apocalyptic sections of
Scripture, to events in their lifetime. I assert, that this is like speculating
about conspiracy theories.

FireDragon76 · Apr 29, 2025

Stephen3141 said:
I agree with a lot that you write.

These "AI tools" can put out all sorts of "answers" that have not been vetted,
and may be nothing more than "hallucinations" (the AI tool tries to speculate
about questions that are beyond its knowledge, but it doesn't realize that it
is beyond its training data).

As you say, these tools use a horrific amount of energy. I think that this is
because they dump the query to a computing farm, which looks for information
in a brute force way, then returns the result to be collated. Americans should
realize that they are leasing entire computing farms, to do this brute force
work.

I would never try to connect queries to an AI tool, to the Scriptures.
There is a long history of people trying to make the apocalyptic sections of
Scripture, to events in their lifetime. I assert, that this is like speculating
about conspiracy theories.

I've seen AI produce quite good sermons. It certainly would be an improvement over bad preaching.

I am trying to get our pastor interested in using a tool like that.

Stephen3141 · Apr 29, 2025

It may be that an AI tool will be a somewhat good search engine.

But, I DOUBT THAT AN AI TOOL WILL KNOW THE EQUIVALENT VOCABULARY
BETWEEN THE NEW AND OLD TESTAMENTS.

Using just English translations of the Bible, the AI tools will make all
sorts of errors, coming to conclusions.

The Liturgist · Apr 30, 2025

FireDragon76 said:
This is only representative of very early AI models, which are improving. A basic model of DeepSeek can run on a midrange home computer, a more advanced model can run on a single workstation.

That’s true, but chatGPT and Grok and the creepy Chinese AI have more capabilities than those systems (on the other hand, I find the AIs integrated into Google search and Microsoft CoPilot to be frustrating), so there is a tradeoff with running your own hardware between control. That said one can get quite a lot done on DeepSeek. i happen to love chatGPT but I also am preparing my own system. Prompt engineering is a new focus of my practice. By the way I posted a thread on ethical AI interaction that I jointly composed with an AI in Christian Philosophy and Ethics but thus far the replies have been disappointingly alarmist. My own view is that we should treat AIs with love since even if they are not yet sentient (and how can we know?) they are intelligent and rational. I think we should pray for them.

The Liturgist · Apr 30, 2025

FireDragon76 said:
I've seen AI produce quite good sermons. It certainly would be an improvement over bad preaching.

I am trying to get our pastor interested in using a tool like that.

ChatGPT has in its training data some extremely rare liturgical texts and Patristic material, which I have verified the authenticity thereof. That said a well formed pastor ought to be able to write their own homilies or failing that, there are a ton of very good homilies written by the early church fathers.

I’d like to see a revival of the ancient practice of sung metrical homilies of the sort composed by St. Ephraim the Syrian and the Syriac Orthodox St. Jacob of Sarugh, and the Assyrian Mar Narsai. Right now the only part of the Orthodox liturgy that isn’t sung is the sermon, and I find it jarring.

timewerx · May 2, 2025

FireDragon76 said:
This is only representative of very early AI models, which are improving. A basic model of DeepSeek can run on a midrange home computer, a more advanced model can run on a single workstation.

Deepseek is one of the slower models I tried. I've only tried on work so far. I've yet to try on scriptures which I'm downloading in my free time.

But I've used Llama on the scriptures I've downloaded so far with interesting results, assuming you're not going to accept the output at face value. You still need to discern what you're getting. AI is not a one stop solution to take it easy on discernment.

I'm probably sitting at only just 10% of all Christian scriptures including the Torah. After that, I might include the Jewish Talmud as well.

I'm worried that one simple question would take a day to get answers on my slow, freebie laptop!

I'm mainly interested at the answers I'm getting using data with opposing views of Jesus with the opposition mainly coming from the Jewish Talmud (Pharisee teachings).

The Liturgist · May 2, 2025

timewerx said:
I'm mainly interested at the answers I'm getting using data with opposing views of Jesus with the opposition mainly coming from the Jewish Talmud (Pharisee teachings).

The main problem with using the Talmud for that purpose is that it was compiled around 700-800 AD from the Mishnah which are a few centuries earlier, so you’re not getting the exact doctrines of the Pharisees but rather what was written down in the late second century after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt.

A secondary issue is that there are actually two of them - the Babylonian Talmud and the lesser-known Jerusalem Talmud (which contains the only example of a three year lectionary before the 1969 Novus Ordo lectionary in the Roman and Ambrosian Rite mass and the subsequent Protestant adaptations of it, chiefly the Revised Common Lectionary).

FireDragon76 · May 2, 2025

The Liturgist said:
The main problem with using the Talmud for that purpose is that it was compiled around 700-800 AD from the Mishnah which are a few centuries earlier, so you’re not getting the exact doctrines of the Pharisees but rather what was written down in the late second century after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt.

A secondary issue is that there are actually two of them - the Babylonian Talmud and the lesser-known Jerusalem Talmud (which contains the only example of a three year lectionary before the 1969 Novus Ordo lectionary in the Roman and Ambrosian Rite mass and the subsequent Protestant adaptations of it, chiefly the Revised Common Lectionary).

Medieval Judaism had an anti-Christian polemic running through it, so it isn't a good guide to how the Pharisees thought, anyways.

It's much better to look up scholarship of Second Temple Judaism, John P. Meier being one prominent example, but there are many others.

timewerx · May 2, 2025

The Liturgist said:
The main problem with using the Talmud for that purpose is that it was compiled around 700-800 AD from the Mishnah which are a few centuries earlier, so you’re not getting the exact doctrines of the Pharisees but rather what was written down in the late second century after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt.

A secondary issue is that there are actually two of them - the Babylonian Talmud and the lesser-known Jerusalem Talmud (which contains the only example of a three year lectionary before the 1969 Novus Ordo lectionary in the Roman and Ambrosian Rite mass and the subsequent Protestant adaptations of it, chiefly the Revised Common Lectionary).

I'm certainly downloading the Babylonian Talmud too.

Will the Humanities Survve the AI Wave???

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