Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

AI and Christianity series

Science in Review: Decision-Making A Long Time Ago and in a Future Not Far Away

Rey faces a decision between light and dark in The Last Jedi (© Disney)

I introduced my reflections on the AI and Christianity essay series by J. Nathan Matias et al with a quote from Star Wars, so it is fitting (if thoroughly unplanned) to return to a galaxy far, far away to conclude my thoughts on the topic. The following will have some spoilers for The Last Jedi, but after I saw it I realized its themes were too relevant to pass up. While there is no AI per se in the film, the story is all about decisions, who gets to make them, and how they get made. In that sense, it overlaps strongly with the conversation about AI, which is often employed as a tool to either inform decision-making or even make decisions on its own, whether they be which stocks to buy and sell and at what price, which route to take from here to there, or which illness a patient suffers from. As we give responsibility to AIs for those decisions, it is worth thinking about what values should guide those decisions, and the stories we tell can help us recognize and reflect on those values.
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Science in Review: On the Couch with Dr. Know

Rendered 3D image of a psychiatric patient lying on a couch, speaking with a seated therapist.
Stray thought: As AI becomes too complex to understand how it works, will computer science morph into psychology? (Photo by 3dman_eu)

As a researcher for a public health software company, I have experimented a little with predictive models of health-related outcomes. Mainly I have focused on population-level predictions — e.g. how many flu cases to expect this winter in a given county — but on one occasion I tried to predict which individual patients would eventually experience a drug overdose necessitating a visit to an emergency department. Statistically, the results were encouraging, although on further inspection I realized that mainly my model was simply predicting patients with a prior history of drug overdoses or suicide attempts were most likely to have a future drug overdose. There may be a place for such a model, but most likely it wouldn’t tell physicians and public health officials anything they didn’t already know, in general or for specific patients.
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Science in Review: Meet the New Boss, v4.8.23 of the Old Boss

Photo of WALL-E toy
I knew this guy wasn’t going to pick up my trash, but I wouldn’t have minded. (Photo by 3888952 )

A few years ago, I received a letter informing me that I needed to get new, color-coded waste barrels because our township was implementing a new robotic waste collection program. My inner tech geek was excited, although I’m not really sure what I expected. I knew autonomous vehicle technology was not (and still is not) at the point where a driverless truck would just be let loose on the streets to collect trash and recycling. The high-tech scenario was such a vehicle with humans onboard to monitor and be a safety backup. I think the lowest-tech scenario I expected was still one where a robotic arm would use computer vision to decide which barrel to pick up and empty, hence the need for color-coding. In any case, I was mildly disappointed when all it turned out to be was a truck with a mechanical arm, not fundamentally different from the trucks that have been emptying dumpsters for years. The color lids are simply so the human driver knows where to stop the truck.
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Science Corner: More Machine Now Than Man

minsky mann photo
Marvin Minsky freely giving a lecture with the aid of a machine which presumably is not capable of having a say in the matter. (Photo by jeanbaptisteparis )

ESN contributor and friend of the blog J. Nathan Matias and some colleagues are writing a series of articles on artificial intelligence to introduce Christian audiences to important topics and themes. They have an introductory essay which will link to additional articles as they appear in the weeks to come. Some of those are already available; for now I wanted to bring the series to your attention, and later this month we’ll discuss the specifics. I’m particularly keen on “Relating to Artificial Persons” as I’m very interested in how our relationships with our simulated human agents interact and influence our relationships with actual humans.
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