King’s Speech
Lord Chartres Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Chartres (CB)
My Lords, research done by the House of Lords Appointments Commission points to the fact that your Lordships’ House still has some way to go in the fields of diversity—in particular, regional diversity. Therefore, it is particularly refreshing, and good, that we now have a fresh, eloquent, new voice from the north-east. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the right reverend Prelate on her maiden speech.
The other respect in which diversity could perhaps be developed is, of course, in age, and that brings me to the second maiden speech. I visited a primary school the other day and they said to me, “Can you remember anything from when you were at school?”. I said, “Yes, I was the ink monitor. I had this can and every day I filled up the little porcelain ink-wells, and we learned how to write with a steel nib, following the pattern of the great Renaissance calligraphers of the 15th century”. They looked totally bewildered, I have to say. The teacher came to my rescue and said, “Oh yes, we have done a project on the Victorians and we have one of those cans over there”.
On the subject of the extraordinary changes that will come upon the world through AI, I was glad to hear in the gracious Speech that the Government’s plan is to
“strengthen education for the long term”
through the enhancement of knowledge and skills among young people. I follow other noble Lords in congratulating the Government on their timely action to ensure the safe development of AI and all those efforts to encourage innovation in technology and machine learning. We do indeed live in a time of technological exhilaration. Let us hope that it is not increasingly accompanied by cultural exhaustion. Education for the long term has to recognise that the great question for the 21st century centres on the meaning and value of human life—here I very much resonate with the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth—and to encounter the already powerful current of thought that sees human beings as little different from machines, or, even worse, as rapacious bipeds bent on consuming the planet.
I can understand this desire to enhance skills and knowledge, because that translates into power. We also need the wisdom and humility that translate into service, as well as love. Failure to grasp this elementary point will lead to a new ice age for humanity. Technical knowledge enables us to know how to do something, but humane wisdom enables us to know why it is good for this thing to be done. We already see how the technological environment, conceived in the beginning as a useful tool, begins to shape those who use it. As we flick from screen to screen, constantly diverted by what is presented as new—but is in reality just more of the same—there are trends, spasms of the hive mind and gusts of indignation, but nothing accumulates. Cultivation, which is essential to culture, becomes impossible.
If the Government’s ambition is really to
“strengthen education for the long term”,
then, alongside the acquisition of skills and knowledge, there needs to be at every level a fresh and profound attention and investment in the creative arts—music, for example, which unites numbers and harmony. Music should not, at any level of education, be just a divertissement.
At the same time, we must be very serious about translating and transmitting the texts of the great wisdom traditions of world culture, all of which teach that humility—being close to the humus as human beings —is the beginning of wisdom. We grow by connecting with one another in humility. We grow by self-giving, not by performing on platforms. We cannot genuinely grow up online; we grow up in communities, where we can make one another our work of art and learn profoundly what it is to be human. Any education for the long term must ponder the practical implications of this truth. It is a way in which we shall recover our confidence in the future of the human species.
Advanced Artificial Intelligence
Lord Chartres Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Lord Chartres (CB)
The noble Baroness has illustrated very eloquently the extent to which we already live in and are totally embraced by a technological system. I add my congratulations to my noble friend on securing this debate at a time when we stand on the brink of a transformation in human affairs every bit as momentous as the beginning of the nuclear age.
The technological system that the noble Baroness talked about has even intervened in matters spiritual. If vicars are scarce, you can get answers to questions from a new generation of IT resources. There is Robo Rabbi; a Polish Catholic competitor called SanTO, the Sanctified Theomorphic Operator; and a feeble Protestant version called BlessU-2. Confronted by technologies beyond the comprehension of the non-expert, some have even been tempted to treat Al pronouncements as semi-divine. Anthony Levandowski, a Silicon Valley engineer, established perhaps the first church of artificial intelligence, called Way of the Future. It may be some consolation to noble Lords to know that the sect has quietly closed down and liquidated its funds.
AI bots are in a totally different league from the technologies we have used in the past. Generative AI can simulate human emotions but cannot reflect on its actions; it has no empathy. Recently, the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave was sent a lyric composed by ChatGPT in the style of Nick Cave. His response was very significant; he said that his
“songs arise out of suffering”—
he is a man who has suffered the grievous death of two of his sons. He went on to say:
“Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing”.
AI can simulate human emotions, but it has no spirit. Its advent raises very deep questions. Is there a form of logic, that human beings have not or cannot access, that explores aspects of reality that we have never known or cannot directly know? It seems to me that we can regard it as a tool, a partner or a competitor, and seek to confine it, co-operate with it or possibly even defer to it.
The speed of innovation, to which other noble Lords have alluded, makes a reconsideration of the kind of society we wish to inhabit very urgent. We are close to being able to manipulate human beings exactly as we want them to be—genetically, chemically, electrically —but we do not really know what we want them to be. There is an immense time lag between the advance of AI and our capacity to control it. The educational curriculum is increasingly dominated by technical subjects designed to serve the economy with a certain view of efficiency. That is not wrong, but unless we are careful and if educational opportunities and landscapes are narrowed excessively, human beings in our society will have fewer and fewer places from which to mount a critique of the technological system, which as the noble Baroness says embraces us all.