Wisdom in the Age of AI
AI is able to understand information-gathering requests and provide, in return, human-readable summaries of information. ChatGPT is like a chat front-end to Google, and it applies NLP to return something understandable.
That something understandable may normally require reading multiple websites to gather the information returned.
This makes information gathering even more efficient that it had been with Google search.
Generative AI has also been able to take human input and, based on training upon millions of images, return an image. Soon it will take on animated images or videos.
This begs the question: can AI not only dispense information, but also wisdom?
What is wisdom?
Is it the synthesis of known information?
Or is it something else? And if it is something else, can it remain the distinguishing feature of humans? Or will wisdom be dispensed from AI?
If we treat wisdom as a collection of sayings and the synthesis of knowledge, then AI will soon overtake it. It can ingest the wise sayings of the wisest of people throughout history, and provide concise summaries.
But is that wisdom?
I don't fully know the answer, but I suspect that wisdom -- however we derive it -- may need to be the distinguishing feature between AI and us.
In fact, it makes me think about the nature of wisdom that cannot be touched, by its nature, by AI. And that is wisdom which comes from God.
Worldy wisdom is foolishness to God. And godly wisdom is foolishness to the world.
By this definition, the two types of wisdom will always be in opposition.
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