The Aliens Have Landed and AI Is No Longer a Distant Promise

TOMORROW'S AI

Artificial intelligence has spent decades hovering on the horizon. With ChatGPT, the future suddenly became present—and the old questions became urgent.

By David Rolston  |  Dogwood Creek Institute  |  Tomorrow's AI

Artificial intelligence. AI. Two small letters carrying some very large possibilities.

Stephen Hawking once warned that success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of civilization—but that it could also be the last. Other experts have offered similarly dire predictions, including the possible extinction of humanity.

Elon Musk has staked out a peculiar middle ground: he has suggested that AI will probably be good, while also warning that it could wipe out humanity. At the other end of the spectrum are those who see AI as the key to a remarkable future—one that could expand prosperity, accelerate scientific discovery, improve medicine, and solve problems that have resisted us for generations.

The range of predictions is enormous. The only thing we know for certain is how little we know for certain.

Why This Matters

We are watching the opening act of a story whose ending no one can see. But this is a play that had rehearsals. The ambitions behind artificial intelligence, and many of the arguments surrounding it, have been developing for more than seventy years. Understanding that history can help us think more clearly about what is happening now—and what may come next.

AI Did Not Arrive Yesterday

I am always surprised when expert commentators refer to AI as a new technology. I attended my first AI conference in the late 1960s, and AI was no spring chicken even then.

The field's famous Dartmouth summer workshop took place in 1956, and many of the ideas that were discussed there reach back much further.

I began working full time in AI in the mid-1980s. I had the opportunity to work with pioneers including Dr. Marvin Minsky and his daughter Margaret at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and with Dr. Doug Lenat at MCC, a research consortium associated with UT in Austin. I became Honeywell's first senior fellow in AI in 1984, wrote an early textbook on artificial intelligence published by McGraw-Hill in 1988, and completed a PhD in 1993. My doctoral work involved building a computer system that reasoned using formal logic. In the years since, I have worked with many forms of AI across many applications.

Looking back across that half-century, I am struck by how little the central ambition has changed. From the beginning, many researchers hoped to create a synthetic intelligence that could rival or surpass human intelligence. Many believed that AI would eventually achieve general intelligence: broad, flexible, human-like competence rather than expertise confined to one narrow domain.

The Twenty Year Mirage

There were plenty of advances, disappointments, and reversals along the way. Today's accounts often refer to the AI winter, when enthusiasm and funding collapsed. In truth, there was more than one winter. Each followed a familiar pattern: sweeping promises, stubborn technical obstacles, public disappointment, and diminished investment.

Yet the community persisted, driven in large part by the dream of general intelligence. The dream remained visible, but always on the horizon. Like a desert mirage, it seemed to recede as researchers moved toward it.

I once gave a talk called Twenty Years. I had collected prediction after prediction about how long it would take before machines reached general intelligence. The answer was remarkably consistent: about twenty years—from whenever the prediction happened to be made.

“For decades, general intelligence was always twenty years away—no matter when you asked.”

Living through those years sometimes felt like belonging to the small minority of Americans who believe shape-shifting reptilian aliens occupy senior positions in government and business. For years, believers warned everyone that the creatures were among us and would soon reveal themselves. The AI community probably sounded rather similar: urging the world to pay attention and predicting astonishing developments that would arrive in—of course—another twenty years.

Then the Aliens Landed

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. It was as if the AI version of an alien spacecraft had landed on the White House lawn and the reptilians had stepped out in full view.

It turned out that many of those extravagant claims were not entirely imaginary after all. Who knew?

ChatGPT did not create artificial intelligence, nor did it suddenly deliver everything the field had promised. But it changed public awareness almost overnight. Capabilities that had been discussed inside laboratories and technical conferences were now available to anyone with an internet connection. Once the cage opened, adoption spread with extraordinary speed.

The aliens have landed. What now?

The Old Questions Now Have New Urgency

The age-old questions have returned, now wrapped in urgency. Do these new arrivals come in peace, or do they mean us harm?

What will AI mean for humanity over the long run, and how should we respond in the short run? Is it simply another powerful tool, comparable to earlier technological revolutions? Will it eliminate vast numbers of jobs, or create occupations we cannot yet imagine? Could it power autonomous weapons—or help cure diseases, expand education, and raise standards of living?

Could AI make humanity more capable, or merely make human beings feel less significant? Will it lead toward a new hybrid species in which people and machines increasingly merge? Will it strengthen the materialist claim that human beings are only biological machines—or cause more people to reconsider whether intelligence, consciousness, dignity, and meaning can be explained so easily?

These questions cannot be separated neatly into technical and philosophical categories. The systems we build will reflect assumptions about human nature, responsibility, freedom, truth, and value. What we believe about people will shape what we permit machines to do.

Questions Worth Considering

·       Is today's AI the beginning of general intelligence, or are we again mistaking impressive progress for a destination still far away?

·       Which human roles and decisions should never be handed entirely to machines?

·       Will AI strengthen human dignity and freedom—or gradually make people less necessary and less significant?

·       What view of human nature should guide the systems we create?

An Invitation to the Conversation

No one yet knows how these questions will be answered. But the answers will shape our families, communities, institutions, and understanding of ourselves.

In Tomorrow's AI, we will examine both the practical and philosophical dimensions of this unfolding story. We will consider the benefits and the dangers, separate realistic developments from overheated predictions, and offer useful guidance wherever we can.

Most of all, we want to encourage conversation.

Dogwood Creek Institute approaches these questions from a Christian worldview, and at times we will explain how that perspective shapes our conclusions. At the same time, we welcome thoughtful and sincere engagement from people who see the world differently.

The aliens have landed. Please join us as we consider what comes next.