Technological Religions
One of the underlying assumptions of the modern world has been the association of science and technology with disenchantment. From this perspective, the advance of science and…
The Problem of AI and Churchill’s Scientific Optimism
In our time, people react to questions of the nature of consciousness and the factor of Artificial Intelligence in the same way that previous generations reacted to…
J.M.W. Turner, Victor Frankenstein, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness
In 1818 while visiting his friend and patron Walter Fawkes, artist J.M.W. Turner was requested to make a painting of a British war ship by Fawkes’ young…
Demons, Technology, and the Fall
Peter Thiel’s recent obsession with the Antichrist seems uncannily appropriate to our times. The ascription of demonic influence to things and people was once relegated to a…
Preserving our Authentic Humanity: The Vatican’s Meditation on Artificial Intelligence
The Vatican’s recent meditation on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Antiqua et Nova, brings a sense of measured calm to a subject that has caused strong and varying reactions,…
Artificial Intelligence Cannot Replace the Soul of Writing
A few years ago, I was employed as a U.S. economist on the Economics team at Bloomberg LP. One morning, in a team chat on the IB…
Artificial Super Intelligence and the AI Apocalypse
Apparently, there are competitions to see who is better at predicting the future. Normally, the answer is that no one is better at predicting the future. There…
We Are All Victor Frankenstein: Our Romantic Dream of Artificial Intelligence
Life Imitating Art If ever there were a time in which one would be justified in repeating the old saw that life imitates art, it might be…
AI-dolatry — Imitation by Any Other Name?
We bounced off the tree in the middle of the woods, and I knew right then our Humvee would come out of our practice nav session with…
Voegelin and our Technological Moment: “Don’t Immanetize the Eschaton—Technologically”
If Americans recognize the name Eric Voegelin, it is probably for his critique of utopian political visions, encapsulated in the phrase, “don’t let them immanentize the eschaton.”…
Reading as an Antidote to Technology
Concerning technology, we wonder with some impotence how to uphold human dignity and spirit amid the proliferation of AI and the increasingly intimate connection between people and…
The Real Battle of AI: Destined to Be Prometheus or to Rise Towards the Peaks of Olympus
The Stalemate in Understanding the Role of Technology Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a part of the human imagination for a long time. Both the potential dangers…
Responsibly and Realistically Sentient
“We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught return To plague the inventor.” ~ Macbeth The “mythology of technology” is…
The Irony of Modern Environmentalism
Do we still care about nature as a part of our existence or as a tool we use to satisfy our demand for morality and political agenda?…
Idealism Reborn?
As Thomas Kuhn rightly pointed out in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the progress of knowledge, the change of attitude of the scientific community towards certain concepts…