After a year of AI

I’ve been dabbling with Perplexity AI for nearly a year now and decision time is looming. Should I renew my subscription. Or should I look elsewhere (e.g. Halomate)? Or should I swear off AI altogether?

At the moment, I feel no need to look elsewhere. I try to be circumspect in my use of AI, so I have not attempted to exploit the full potential of Perplexity. Therefore, in spite of occasionally being tempted by the latest bells and whistles offered elsewhere, I see no point in starting again with something else.

The question of whether I should abandon AI is less straightforward to answer. There is a real case to be made against its use. As far as I can see, that case boils down to two arguments:

• AI encourages mental laziness. We are tempted to accept what it tells us as true without critical engagement. Often, the output is so polished (at least superficially) that we are tempted to submit it as our own work – hence the deluge of AI slop on the Internet.
• The environmental argument. AI data centres put extreme demands on power and water supplies. They run so hot that they raise temperatures in their locales measurably above what would be expected (at the same time, overheating rivers with waste cooling water). Some have massive backup diesel generators which produce great quantities of air pollution. And these ills are growing exponentially with the AI bubble. On top of this, there is the psychological harm to the humans who are employed (often on low wages in developing countries) to monitor and censor inappropriate outputs.

I’m not terribly bothered about the threat of mental laziness. The crucial point is always to treat the output of AI in the same way as you treat any other secondary source – always insist on references (and always check them) and never plagiarize. In any case, unlike many chatbots, Perplexity AI is essentially an AI-powered search engine and that is how I use it (as a Google search on crystal meth).

But I remain conflicted on the environmental and wider social issues. Yes, AI speeds up my research at a time of life when I may not have very much time left. But does the improved efficiency of my research justify my implicit support for the damage that AI is doing on a global scale? If I were a rugged individualist like so many tech bros, the answer would be an unequivocal ‘yes’. But I’m an Orthodox Christian, so I have to balance the goods of AI (not just my vanishingly small contribution to the sum of human knowledge buts its role in pushing forward the bounds of our knowledge in so many fields) against the environmental and social ills. I’m unable to come to a clear view on this, so I suspect that I will continue to use Perplexity for the time being.

All Creation Luminous

Having Perplexity AI prepare an Orthodox critique of my PhD thesis provided me with food for thought while I contemplated the not inconsiderable task of revising the thesis from an Orthodox perspective. So far, the fruit of that contemplation had amounted to the following chapter outline:

Introduction: Our Compromised Environment – an introductory examination of the environmental crisis and its nature as a spiritual problem.

1. Creation and the Patristic Mindset – an exploration of how Orthodox theological methodology applies to the doctrine of creation (including the Orthodox view of Scripture; Georges Florovsky’s call to “acquire the patristic mind”; the emergence of  Orthodox theology from liturgical experience; and the role of apophaticism in Orthodox theology).

2. The Triune Creator – the grounding of environmental theology in the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (the Cappadocian vision; perichoresis and relational ontology; creation and the divine energies; creation as a triune act).

3. The Word Through Whom All Things Were Made – an exploration of patristic cosmic Christology (the Logos, the logoi, and creation; the Incarnation and the material creation; the cosmic Christ; recapitulation and the restoration of the cosmos).

4. The Lord, the Giver of Life – outlining the pneumatological foundations of environmental theology (the Spirit as Life-Giver; the Spirit in Orthodox liturgical theology; deification and cosmic transformation; eschatological pneumatology).

5. Priests of Creation – replacing an anthropology focused on dominion/ stewardship with Orthodox priestly anthropology (the image and likeness of God; the priestly vocation; Adam and the cosmic temple; deification and ecological responsibility).

6. The Eucharistic Vision of Creation – examination of John Zizioulas’s suggestion that creation is eucharistic and its implications for environmental theology (creation as divine gift; the eucharistic offering of creation; the implications for our worship; the Eucharist and environmental ethics).

7. Nature in Orthodox Worship and Spirituality (the sanctification of time; the blessing of creation; iconographic ecology; ascetic environmentalism).

8. All Things Made New – examining the eschatological destiny of creation (Orthodox affirmation of matter and bodily resurrection; the cosmic dimension of salvation; the transfiguration of the cosmos; the kingdom of God and ecological hope).

9. Towards an Orthodox Environmental Ethics (ascetic principles and sustainable living; the Church as ecological community;  the global challenge of the crisis and Orthodox witness; political responses to the crisis and Orthodox action).

At the moment, one major element is still missing. Somewhere I have to work in a chapter on human sinfulness and the notion of ecological sin. I feel it should go fairly early in the text, but I’m not sure how to do that without anticipating material that I want to develop later on.

And the title of this revised study of environmental theology? At the moment, I am calling it All Creation Luminous: An Orthodox Vision of the Natural World. According to St Gregory of Sinai, the perfect hesychast ‘sees the entire creation luminous as in a kind of mirror’.

Eugenics 2.0?

Yesterday, the assisted dying bill was passed by the House of Commons. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, chose the same day to announce a major investment in genomics. He hopes that within a decade every newborn in England Wales will undergo comprehensive DNA screening with a view to predicting and preventing illness rather than diagnosing and treating it. It would also reduce pressure on the National Health Service and reduce costs.

My immediate reaction was that our Labour government seems to be clueless when it comes to the optics of its announcements. Whatever their intentions (and I have no doubt about the good intentions being shown here), if this bill and this proposal were both to become reality, they will have put in place the main building blocks for a new eugenics policy.

The advocates of assisted dying assure us that there is no possibility of a slide towards euthanasia. But the example of other democracies that have gone down this route suggests that once public opinion becomes accustomed to assisted dying for the terminally ill, it becomes easier to propose the same for those who have little or no quality of life. A less well-intentioned future government might well then take the additional step of extending it to the euthanasia of those who are deemed to be a burden on society because of their low quality of life.

Thought and action

In a recent Expressive Photography newsletter, Alister Benn makes the following comment:

If you don’t think about something at all, it has no value to you.
If all you do is think about something and then do nothing about it, you are of no value to it.

Alister was talking about photography, but I feel this has much wider application. For example, you cannot honestly say you value the natural world if you never give it a second thought. Conversely, if all you do is talk about caring for nature while continuing to live a typical modern Western lifestyle, you are certainly of no value to it.

Climate Justice

A review of James B. Martin-Schramm, Climate Justice: Ethics, Energy, and Public Policy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010)

Climate change is now very well documented, and its apparent connection with the combustion of fossil fuels and certain land use practices raises important ethical questions. Martin-Schramm grapples with these issues at a public policy level, looking particularly at the ethical responsibility of industrialized countries, especially the United States.

In his opening chapter, he proposes an ethic of ecological justice based on the moral norms of sustainability, sufficiency, participation, and solidarity. These norms are complemented by a series of twelve guidelines – equity, efficiency, adequacy, renewability, appropriateness, risk, peace, cost, employment, flexibility, timely decision-making, and aesthetics – to create a toolbox of ethical resources that he applies to the issue of climate justice in the subsequent chapters.

Chapters 2 and 3 offer an optimistic survey of the range of energy options currently available to the United States. The first deals with so-called conventional energy options – coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power – and the second with alternative/renewable sources of energy – solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, marine. He mentions the concept of peak oil but does not dwell on its implications, opting for the relatively optimistic view that global oil production will not peak until about 2026. He is similarly optimistic about uranium supplies. However, he proposes that we should shift from conventional to renewable energy for environmental (and security) reasons and seems to believe this is a feasible (if difficult) way forward.

Chapter 4 explores international climate policy just prior to the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009. Viewed in the light of the ethical toolbox developed in chapter 1, he commends the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework proposed by the Stockholm Environmental Institute.

His fifth chapter focusing on US climate policy paints a bleak picture of fine words unmatched by effective action. He concludes that ‘Failure to take aggressive action now to reduce emissions will perpetuate current rates of GHG emissions and condemn future generations to a rate and degree of warming unprecedented in human civilization’ (p. 158).

The final chapter consists of a case study, examining greenhouse gas reduction strategies implemented by Luther College, Decorah, Iowa. He uses this to show how individual institutions and communities can implement energy policies that meet the ethical criteria spelled out at the beginning of the book.

As indicated above, my main reservation is that I think he is unduly optimistic about continuing conventional energy supplies and our capacity to move seamlessly from conventional to renewables. But, that reservation apart, Martin-Schramm has produced a very helpful practical survey of climate justice issues for anyone involved in the development of energy policies whether at community, company, or national government level.