Reflections on John Lennox: 2084 and the AI Revolution

To what extent has Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolutionised so many areas of life, not least medicine?

Reading the second chapter of Professor John Lennox’s book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity was a veritable tour de force — an eye-opening experience for me, at any rate.

For example:

"An AI system has been developed that can analyse an MRI scan of a human heart in just twenty seconds while the patient is still in the scanner—compared to the thirteen minutes a doctor would typically require. Not only does it dramatically speed up the process, but its accuracy is, on average, 40% better than that of human doctors. This technology will significantly accelerate diagnoses while also reducing costs.
Similarly, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary reports that AI is being used in adaptive radiotherapy for tumors, reducing two weeks of work to just five minutes". (p25)

Be prepared to be amazed by the capabilities of AI. Just a few days ago, I was in a Zoom meeting where someone suggested using Zoom’s AI tool to take minutes for us. We decided to give it a whirl. To my astonishment, the minutes were emailed to me just seconds after the meeting ended. The speed and efficiency were almost beyond comprehension. The minutes told me things about the meeting that no human being would ever have noted; actions may result from these minutes that would not otherwise have taken place.

And yet, I didn’t hesitate to edit those minutes before sending them out. I’d sooner step into a pilotless aeroplane.

High view of humanity

If we hold a high view of humanity — indeed, the highest possible view, as Scripture teaches: that we are uniquely created in the image of God — why would we ever imagine that machines, computers, or any man-made device could compare to human beings? Is it not almost blasphemous to suggest that comparing machines to man is as unthinkable as comparing man to God? (Isaiah 40:25, 46:5)

No less than the great Alan Turing "acknowledged the mystery of consciousness but did not believe it needed to be solved to construct an AI system. What mattered to him was not whether AI had consciousness but whether it could competently perform prescribed tasks." (p15)

Turing was right - if he assigned AI a very specific and restricted function. Because as he recognised, the fundamental gulf between man and machine lies in consciousness — awareness, experience, imagination, love; though simply listing characteristics such as these is inadequate — which is entirely unique to humanity and exists on an entirely different plane from anything artificial. This, I venture to suggest, will always be the case.

When we consider Artificial Intelligence, we immediately recognise that machine intelligence is a skewed and inadequate imitation of human intelligence. No matter how fast machines perform mathematical or algorithmic tasks — outpacing even a room full of Einsteins — their genuine intelligence remains a mere shadow of our own.

The capabilities of the most advanced computers are, indeed, staggering. As far back as 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. But modern AI has far surpassed even Deep Blue. Stockfish 8, a chess engine utilizing a vast database of past games, could calculate approximately 70 million chess positions per second in 2016. However, a year later Google’s AlphaZero stunned the world. Operating at a much slower calculation rate — only 80,000 positions per second — it was nevertheless far more effective. Why? Because AlphaZero was designed to learn by playing against itself rather than relying on past games. This ability to self-learn is the same principle that drives AI algorithms behind Facebook recommendations, Amazon suggestions, and much more.

But I come back to my main thesis: it is no surprise that the most advanced AI technologies are modelled after the human brain. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) mimic the structure of our own neurons, the 100 billion of them, with the 100 trillion connections between them, and the synapses thrown in for good measure. We only ever think God’s thoughts after Him.

The point is this: AI, no matter how advanced, will never rival — let alone surpass — the glory and sophistication of humanity, the crowning handiwork of God the Creator. So we are called upon to subdue the earth, and subdue AI with it.`


This article was first published on Paul Yeulett's Substack @paulyeulett.