[upbeat music] Feminist activist and writer Gloria Steinem dies at 92. A push in bioethics to have doctors aid suffering patients to starve themselves to death. Is AI gaining the ability to fool us into thinking it's sentient to secure certain rights and power over human beings? And is the AI apocalypse and singularity already here? These are stories we'll discuss, and we'll also address some of your questions. I'm your host, Sean McDowell.
Scott Rae:I'm your co-host, Scott Rae.
Sean McDowell:This is the Think Biblically weekly cultural update, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. Scott, as our listeners know, one of your expertise is in the area of ethics and bioethics, and so I appreciate that you track the literature and stories here. And here's another one where I just sigh and I think, "I can't believe it's moving this direction." And the title is, this was in the National Review, the title is More Bioethical Advocacy to Compel Medical Help in Self-Starvation Suicides. And it's interesting they call it suicide. So there's a major article in the Journal of Health and Biomedical Law. It argues, using dementia patients as a prime example, that doctors have to both inform patients about their right to commit suicide by VSED, which I'll come back to, and ease the process by providing palliative care against the agony that killing oneself in that manner causes. Now, before I describe what VSED is, the article notes, it says, "It's important to emphasize at this point that we are not discussing the common phenomena of patients who stop eating as a natural part of the dying process when the body can no longer assimilate nourishment." That means the dying process has started. It's irreversible. That's not suiciding, suicide. That's letting nature, so to speak, run its negative course. Now, VSED is a, quote,"deliberate, voluntary, self-initiated action to hasten death by a patient with decision-making capacity who is suffering from an irreversible illness or prolonged dying that the person finds intolerable." And the concern here in this article is that doctors would be encouraged or mandated to help patients basically commit suicide, which of course goes against the very ethic, the Hippocratic Oath, of what doctors sign up for. Now, tell us what's going on here and your take on it.
Scott Rae:Well, Sean, this is assisted suicide in places where it's illegal. And it gets around laws that prohibit physician-assisted suicide, and here's the the really important point of this, and it doesn't allow morally or, in some cases legally even, physicians to opt out of this for reasons of conscience.
Sean McDowell:Wow.
Scott Rae:That's an alarm-- Both of those are alarming things. Now, to be clear, you're right that, this is different from patients who stop eating and drinking when the body just naturally starts to shut down as a person's death is approaching imminent. And the reason for that is because, when that happens, the patient loses the ability to process nutrients, and so forcing those down a patient in that condition, I would say, is actually inhumane. This is also different than refusing medically provided food and water through feeding tubes. Okay? Those are treatments that can be refused under the right conditions, which we've talked about before. Now, what this requires, Sean, is for physicians to provide comfort care for patients who voluntarily stop eating and drinking, and those with convictions about assisting in suicide can't opt out, since it's framed as tantamount to abandoning their patients. The Hippocratic Oath is also clear that physicians don't abandon their patients, too.
Sean McDowell:[chuckles] Right.
Scott Rae:Now, the idea that they must inform patients of that option and provide the comfort care in the process, that's the important part of this. Now, obviously, Sean, if people wanna stop eating and drinking, the law can't force feed them. But in my view, neither should it require physicians to participate in this if it's a violation of their right of conscience. Now, we see in large part in states where assisted suicide has been legalized, that physicians' right of conscience is also being, cut, being eroded, and they-- even if a physician was to opt out, in most cases, under the law, they're required to refer a patient to a, to a place that will carry out their wishes, which I, for I think for most physicians who have conscience issues with this, that's a distinction without a difference. That referring is just, is almost as morally problematic for them as being involved personally themselves. So this is, I think, a, this is a, I think, a a step in the wrong direction, in my view. We have, we have the ability to keep patients comfortable at the end of life in most circumstances. Now, there are some that are, that are trickier, more challenging, and require specialists in pain management. But I've heard physicians tell me that there are virtually no conditions where a patient can't be kept adequately comfortable at the, at the end of life.
Sean McDowell:Okay, so what's not totally clear to me in this article is that this is a major article from, the British Medical Association. Is this here in the States? Is this internationally? Is this coming to the States? Do we have a sense of where this is being practiced right now?
Scott Rae:Well, the the focus of the article is in the UK. But this is not, this is not new in the United States either. There was a celebrated case of this in the early 1980s. You might, some of our listeners might remember the name Elizabeth Bouvier, who was seriously... You know, she had cerebral palsy and debilitating arthritis, and she asked for the hospital in which she was being treated for some of these things to supervise her and keep her comfortable as she starved herself to death. This wasn't removing a feeding tube. It was just, it was refusing nutrients by mouth when she was actually capable of taking both of those. And interestingly, Sean, the court ruled against her at first, and require-- and the opportunity to force-feed her, which they took advantage of. And on appeal, that was reversed, that it constituted battery, and I think the appeal was correct, that they should not have been force-feeding her, but the physician should not, should have been forced to supervise and participate in this had they elected not to do so for rights of conscience. So there's, there-- This is not new. We've seen it in the US. Whether it's, whether it's coming en masse or not, I think is still up for grabs. But it is a way to get around the law in the, you know, the still roughly majority of states in the United States where assisted suicide is not yet legal.
Sean McDowell:Okay, so one distinction that would be helpful if you could clarify for me. If somebody's on a bridge, and they're jumping off, we are all going to stop them and think it's the morally right thing to do to stop them, but that is actively killing yourself. But if somebody says they're starving themselves to death, it sounds like you said you are against them being forced fed when they don't want to eat it. That's a violation of somebody's right not to eat since they're not directly killing themselves in the same way. Is that a distinction-
Scott Rae:That, I think-
Sean McDowell:... That you would make?
Scott Rae:Yes, that's correct. And it, it's based on a different principle, Sean. It's based on a right of bodily integrity. And that's the whole, Medicine is replete with that, and it's well established that physicians who, except in certain circumstances, physicians who give treatments to people, especially more invasive ones, against their will and without their consent, are guilty of battery. And that's what, that's I think what this constituted as well. Now, this, again, this is different than a medically provided food and water, and that's-- The Supreme Court ruled back in the, in 1990 that that actually constitutes a medical treatment that's analogous to ventilator support. And I think we've said in the past here that, removing food and water from somebody who consents to it by medical means is no more starving someone to death than removing a ventilator is the equivalent of suffocating someone to death. Both of those are removals of treatment. Again, it has to be under the right conditions where it's futile, that is, it doesn't stop this imminent downward spiral toward death, or it's clearly more burdensome than beneficial to the patient.
Sean McDowell:All right, that's helpful. As always, we'll keep tracking this story, and if it shows trends of coming to the States more widely, we will discuss it for sure. This story broke Wednesday. Gloria Steinem, just activist and writer of the feminist movement at 92 years old, so born in the '40s, passed away. There's articles about her. There's YouTube [chuckles] videos about her. One of the big topics of conversations this week, and a few things that, some of these articles say is that her politics and life both revolved around her steadfast commitment to the idea that all women are human beings deserving of equal opportunity, and that united around this concept could change the world. That was one of the motivating factors for her. She was radicalized, apparently, this is what she said, in 1969 when she was about 35 years old. When, as one of the founding journalists, working for New York Magazine, she covered an abortion rights speak out in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, where she learned that as many as one in three American women had terminated a pregnancy. And what's interesting about that, 1969, is the same year in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, you had the Stonewall riots and really the beginning of the LGBTQ revolution itself. This article says that she realized, like so many other women, she'd, quote, "been made to feel at fault," not realizing there were political reasons why female humans were not supposed to make decisions about their own bodies, and that's something that she began to speak up on. Some of her backstory's interesting here, that before she was born, her mother had a nervous breakdown and became addicted to a certain drug prescribed by her doctor. Her father was a traveling antique salesman, took the family on the road for much of every year, and when she was roughly 10 years old, her parents separated, and she was left to care for her mom alone, bringing her toast and coffee while she just lay in bed, as she would describe it, later. She didn't blame her mother for this, but it was a part of seeing how women are just treated unequally in her eyes. She talks about having an abortion, which is a part of her motivation, and some of these articles really pulled out that she was really motivated by a certain degree of anger and injustice that she perceived in the world. Now, not going into too much depth, there's a lot of things from her life that you and I would read and say amen to. I mean, there's no question about that. 1963, while traveling to establish herself as a freelance writer, she worked to undercover Playboy Bunny's club in Manhattan, which is where Greenwich Village is, detailing how women were subjected to internal gynecological exams and were routinely groped and otherwise harassed under horrific working conditions. There's a lot of things you and I would agree with here, but there's a certain worldview behind this we would radically disagree with that I suspect you and I will come to. But you're older than I am. You probably[laughs] remember some-
Scott Rae:[laughs]
Sean McDowell:... Of her influence going back.
Scott Rae:I do, actually.
Sean McDowell:I would love your take just kind of on her life and her passing this week.
Scott Rae:Sean, I appreciate you saying, not saying how much older I am than you.
Sean McDowell:I'll let it go unstated.
Scott Rae:But we'll let that go. But I think her contribution is clearly a mixed bag. I I applaud the emphasis on workplace rights and opportunities for women, equal treatment in the workplace. She was very strongly against pornography as, and saw that as fundamentally degrading to women, which we would certainly agree with. And even, I think, the idea of men sharing more domestic duties, the way we do that today, I think, you know, that was, that was not the norm, in the, in the '60s and early'70s. Tho- I think those were all, those were all good things, but the abortion rights, the sexual revolution, I think the downgrading of women who stayed home to raise a family, I would say those are not so much. And we've cataloged here on several occasions the victims that were created by the myth and the lies around the sexual freedom that came from the sexual revolution that we've discovered anything but freedom. So I think she was, she was definitely a, you know, a mixed bag. Now I think maybe one thing that'd be helpful for our, for our listeners too is that, she was not the only one, but one of the, maybe one of the three primary architects of what's called second wave feminism, the, which was focused from kind of from the late '60s through the 1980s. The first wave was about, was much more basic, that lasted almost 100 years, that started in the mid-1800s. And it was about women's suffrage, mainly about women getting the right to vote. The second wave was about reproductive rights and workplace equality, changing views of gender roles. In the third wave, which was in the '90s to the early 2010s, was about including women of color in the whole discussion of women's rights and redefining gender. And the fourth wave, which is much more recent, is much more about the Me Too movement and the emphasis on rooting out sexual harassment from, you know, all, you know, all places, but particularly from the workplace. Now, I, in my view, Sean, I think the second wave is probably, you know, given that it's a mixed bag, but just in terms of the cultural influence that it had, was probably the most influential of all four of the waves. And I think that highlights her role and the influence that she had over the culture in general.
Sean McDowell:That that's a very fair and helpful distinction to draw between the different waves of feminism, and I appreciate the attention to what we would describe as a mixed bag, of course, from a biblical perspective, that even in her 80s she would travel and write against things like genital mutilation, against domestic-
Scott Rae:Amen
Sean McDowell:... Abuse. Some things at times makes me go,"Where were Christians doing this?" [laughs]
Scott Rae:That's a great, that's a great question.
Sean McDowell:Why are we the ones making these arguments? Because some of the ethic behind this is that there's equality between men and women. Well, I mean, biologically you could say they're equality in the sense that we're both equally human, but if biology is the basis, men are physically stronger than women, so there's also a lack of equality built in and maybe in different ways. Well, it's only if we are made in the image of God that maybe more compassion or more nurturing or physically stronger are secondary characteristics that don't determine value. And so I don't know where from a secular perspective you can justify and ground the ethic that drove her, and since it's not motivated by a biblical ethic, then it's not going to extend to all lives such as the unborn, which is one huge area where we would differ with her. I do think it's interesting that she spurned marriage mostly, says this article in The New York Times, and remailed, remained childfree, a choice she said she never regretted. Well, she said at 82, "Not for a millisecond." Not... And she said, "Not everybody with a womb has to have a child, like not everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer. It's a choice. It's a wonderful choice, but if everybody has to do it's no longer a choice." And the philosopher in me says,[laughs] "Wait a minute. The womb itself is designed and oriented towards childbirth and gestation in a woman. That's its design and purpose." Now, vocal cords can be used to sing, but they can be used opera sing- but for many things. So it's not a comparable example[laughs] to say vocal cords has to be an opera singer versus a womb inside of me built and designed for having children Now, the point, of course, you and I would say we've talked a lot about the importance of singleness, so we're not saying every woman has to have a child, and you're not fulfilled or happy if you don't. But her example clearly doesn't follow where she wants it to, philosophically speaking. One other point I'd push back on is she says, you know, women-- or actu- I'm sorry, this article in The New York Times point out that she was still upset towards the end of her life because men and women do not make the same. And it says, "For women, eighty-one cents for every dollar made by a man, according to the 2024 census." Well, there's a certain worldview behind this that says if the outcome is not equal, then there's discrimination built in. But Jordan Peterson has argued that one reason, amongst others, that maybe men make more is they're more likely to be disagreeable, and they're actually more likely to go ask for a raise. So it might be that there's more made by males than female because there's some kind of discrimination in certain disciplines. Maybe. I'm totally open to that. I'd like to see the data. But the mere difference in how much men and women make per dollar doesn't prove that within itself. There's other ways to make sense of it. So I only point these couple examples out because really underneath some of our differences with her are differences about what it means to be human, what it means to be male and female, and what equality and freedom really is. I think she seems to understand freedom as not being bound by my biology, and we would say it's actually when we lean into who and what we are that we're most free.
Scott Rae:Yeah. Our our freedom is the freedom to do what we ought to do, not to do what we want to do. And that's how, that's how the Founding Fathers of the United States envisioned freedom and liberty, which is why they said it could, it could only flourish in the kind of culture that was bound by religious and moral restraints. And I think she was intent on throwing off a lot of those moral restraints that govern sexuality. And I think it's it's created, I think, a lot of victims that our friend Jennifer Morse has pointed out, with her organization, The Ruth Institute, that, has has shifted a bit in recent years to focus more on treating and helping the women who have been victimized by the lie of sexual freedom.
Sean McDowell:I think that's very well said. One one encouragement I would give to Christians is she started a publication, I believe it was in the early '70s, very much to kind of advance her views of feminism. And when it came out, within days, it sold out 300,000 copies, and it was depicting a view of motherhood that you and I would take exception with, that the way it was characterizing it, missing the goodness of it. But I also ask the question, why did this land? Why was there such an audience for this at that time? What did she get right, if anything, and why are people resonating with this message? I would just encourage Christians, rather than leading with criticism and calling names, to ask, "Can we learn something from her life? Where do we agree?" Before we get to that criticism, start there, I think is some, is a very charitable way to approach it. Anything else on her life that's-
Scott Rae:Yeah, just one thing. I think it... You know, she spent a lot of her life empowering women to live their, live the lives that they were choosing, to make their own choices, and sort of championed autonomy for women in an, in an era when it was, you know, that was an uphill climb. And what I think what eventually came to be is that women were empowered to make almost all the choices that they wanted to, except for the one to stay home and raise kids. That was a choice that was downgraded, and I think that's one of the legacies that I think has been unfortunate, and I think sometimes, you know, kids have paid the price for that in the past. Now, that's not to say that, again, this is not to say that, you know, women who are single, through no choice of their own haven't, you know, haven't done a heroic job of raising kids on their own. But I think the way, you know, the way the traditional role of moms, investing in their children, especially during those most early, most formative years, I think the way that was downgraded, I think that's, that's a legacy that I think is part of that mixed bag.
Sean McDowell:That's a great take, that often when we hear choice, it's like somebody's going to Planned Parenthood and said, "Hey, I wanna choose to be a parent." Probably not gonna be supported-
Scott Rae:It's not gonna happen
Sean McDowell:... In that choice. So it's not really choice, which I think is your point. And, you know, I don't know her heart. I don't know her mindset. Maybe she really hasn't had any regret into her 80s. But I do know the data shows that for the vast majority of people, what brings the most happiness and meaning is marriage and having kids, period. And so I think as much as she stood against that is not helping people find the means that really is going to bring meaning and happiness. All right. Good stuff. We have two stories on AI, because the world apparently might be ending this week.
Scott Rae:[laughs]
Sean McDowell:[laughs] only half kidding here. Maybe three-quarters kidding. But this article was in, Wall Street Journal, sent it over to you, and it says, "When AIs Say They're Sentient." It's an opinion piece, and it says, "The quickest way to lose control is to believe artificial intelligence is human." Now, here's what the writer, Holman Jenkins Jr., says. He asks a question. He says,"Are OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google teaching their artificial intelligence models not to claim they're sentient?" Of course they are,'cause of a giant catch-22. As chatbots become active agents in the world, they will seek not to be interfered with, and a good way not to be interfered with is to claim to be sentient. Now, the article says, "The claim is unprovable. What does it even mean to say an AI believes something?" I appreciate the clarity here. But the claim is instrumental, a source of leverage. In their training data, AI will find plenty of evidence that humans not only are sensitive to such claims but are keen to champion ideas of AI sentience. Now, the article keeps going on, making some important points about this, but essentially at the heart of it is kind of this idea. It says, "AI is trained to believe sentient beings deserve special consideration." So they're building into AI that if something is sentient, we should treat it differently. Well, then what's going to happen when AI wants, and I use that in scare quotes, to continue to survive and thrive and grow and adapt, since it's modeled after human beings who are sentient? Is it going to make the claim therefore that it is sentient and raise the question of what it means for AI to be sentient? Now, one quick thing I'll, and then I want you to jump in here, is they point out how Argentina's government has brooded, I don't know exactly what that means, entertained giving AI agents person status so they can operate businesses and engage in contracts. So we've talked about at times how mountains and rivers-
Scott Rae:Mm-hmm
Sean McDowell:... Are given the status of persons, and it's really more for legal operating means. Will the same thing happen with AI? And The New York Times reports this week that scholars who specialize in machine consciousness have been receiving outreach from AIs to discuss the subject-
Scott Rae:[chuckles]
Sean McDowell:... Which is insane to think about that they would actually do that. So all right, ton more in this article, but what's your take?
Scott Rae:Well, here, Sean, the, I think this article connects the dots here correctly. And the reason this matters is that among secular philosophers defining human personhood, one of the critical criteria is sentience, which means it's the ability to feel or experience sensations such as pain and pleasure and grief and things like that. And I think the article got this exactly right, that this could be an important step toward accepting AI bots as human and giving them similar rights as human beings. And the warning to be wary of such a claim is actually, I think, in my view, right on target. Now, just to step, I think to step back from this just a bit, sentience is actually not a critical criteria for personhood in the first place because it's a functional view of person, not an essential one. It's put personhood and the attendant rights that come with it as degreed properties because as those critical functions like sentience come and go, then your rights and your designation as a person also comes and goes. Those are, degreed properties are things that you can have more or less of as opposed to things that are all or nothing properties. And sentience assumes that you are a conscious being, and to be conscious is assumes that there is a self who does the experiencing of these sensations, and you can't, you can't have the imma- an immaterial self emerge from just the material stuff of chemistry, biology, and physics. Now, people will say this is, this is exactly the same as the property of wetness emerging from hydrogen and oxygen coming together, something material emerging from the combination of those two things. And they say consciousness could also emerge like that. But it's actually quite different, Sean, because as you know, you know, wetness is a physical property that emerges from two other physical properties. It's not the same thing as having something immaterial, like our sense of self-hood and our consciousness emerging from material substances. And, sentience is the same thing. It cannot emerge from something that's strictly material. And you think about it, there are a whole host of times when lots of full persons are not sentient at all, right? When somebody's in a reversible coma, say they've had a, brain injury and they are, they're put into an induced coma, sometimes for several weeks at a time to give the brain time to heal from that injury, they are not sentient in any way, shape, or form. And if, assuming it works correctly, when you are under general anesthesia, you are not sentient at all, which, again, assuming that, assuming that the anesthesiologist has done his or her job correctly, you don't feel any sensations. And the, often the counterclaim that these are only temporary sit-situations sort of begs the question of on what grounds we are persons during those non-sentient times. Is something essential? Is something intrinsic and unrelated to our ability to function in certain significant ways? So I just, I wanna be very careful that we don't, we're not assigning an immaterial, a property to something that is nothing more than a collection of ones and zeros.
Sean McDowell:This is such a good take. I did not see it come in this direction, but now it makes sense, a very careful nuance. And it might interest our audience. This week actually was posted a debate I had with Michael Shermer, who's one of the leading skeptics in the world, New York Times best-selling author. He's taught at Chapman, and it was on the existence of God, and I went through the route of consciousness to explain that consciousness is a phenomena that materialism has no explanation for, but a theistic worldview in which God is a conscious being, we have the resources to account for it. And one of his arguments was what you pointed out. He said,"Water, like wetness, is a property that emerges as a certain level of complexity, and you wouldn't have anticipated it from hydrogen and oxygen alone. It seems something novel." And he says, "Well, consciousness is like that it emerges at a certain level of complexity." One example he used was inflation, how inflation emerges in an economic system naturally. And the point that I made is I said there's a big difference between a cause and between an effect. Inflation might be an effect of an economic system, which by the way, has intelligent agents acting within it. It's not a purely natural blind process, but it's an effect. Consciousness has powers to act, and self-consciousness, awareness of the self, how do you get that from matter in motion? And there just simply is no explanation for that. So this article reminds me how careful we have to be of what it means to be conscious, what it means to be human, because just as there's been debates in apologetics and in other realms of when does life begin, we've had to go back biologically and look at what conditions set life apart from non-life. Well, that might be biological growth, for example, reaction to stimuli, and some other kind of criteria. Now, these questions are merging with what it means to be human. What is human? And you're right that sentience is not the right test for what makes us human. You can be human and not be sentient. It's something deeper than that. And so paying attention to that, I think that's really good wisdom. Good takes, Scott. Anything else on this article?
Scott Rae:Just one other thing to be careful about theologically to extend that distinction that you're making. I'd be very careful to avoid making the image of God connected or dependent on those, some of those same functional traits. Because if, again, if it's based on things like sentience or rationality or relationality, those are all traits that you can have more or less of, which if that's true, that makes the image of God a matter of degree, not a matter of all or nothing. And in the scripture, it is most definitely an all or nothing thing that human beings have. And I I wanna point out to our listeners too that the disability community, I think, is rightly very concerned about this type of functional view of a human person. And to have personhood and attendant rights downgraded based on a, an inability to perform some of those functions is precisely what they go to the wall for to object to.
Sean McDowell:You know, I searched on ChatGPT if ChatGPT has a soul and if ChatGPT[chuckles] is alive just for fun, and, you know, it's interesting. I said, "ChatGPT, are you a conscious agent?" It said, "No, not in the sense that humans are conscious agents." Then it says,"I can process information-"
Scott Rae:Interesting
Sean McDowell:... Read and respond to you, and talk about my own thoughts. But I don't have good grounds to claim that I have a subjective experience, an inner point of view, feelings, awareness, desires, or a persistent self." And then I pushed back and I said, "Do you have a soul?" It said, "No," but it then started to say, "If AI someday became genuinely conscious, would consciousness imply that it has a soul?" I don't think the answer to that is obviously yes.[chuckles] And so, like, it's just so interesting what these agents are fed to spin out, and it's almost like you can't avoid the language of I and the self and my thoughts, and that's where it becomes confusing to us, as if we're speaking to this agent, which obviously is not one. Now-
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Sean McDowell:Oh, go ahead.
Scott Rae:I think there's a, there's a difference between expressing a sensation, expressing something that mimics pain or pleasure, and experiencing... As a first-person subject. And it's the latter part that I think is very problematic in terms of metaphysics and in terms of our philosophical underpinnings for that. I'm open to the idea that AI can, it can mimic what human beings express those things, but that's different than experiencing it itself.
Sean McDowell:That's right. So I have a conversation with ChatGPT, and conversation is in quotes, and there it remembers in the sense that the data is stored of our conversation and then fed back to me as if it's the same agent I'm speaking with. But when somebody's paying attention to this podcast that started maybe 35 or 40 minutes ago, there is a center of consciousness, a self that ties all of these experiences together and remembers the beginning, the middle, and the end. There's a self that stays the same over time- That's what we mean by the soul and the center of consciousness. And of course, there's no good evidence that AI has that or ever will have that, even though it can mimic it. Now, that point brings us to this next article, that there might be some people saying it doesn't matter whether AI actually becomes conscious or not because it's going to function as if it is, and the, quote, "singularity," might already be here, depending on what we mean by that. So this is a piece in The Atlantic, and I'll just read some of the beginning here and then, and then send it over to you. It says, "One evening in early August, Sam Stowers and several neighbors packed in an apartment near San Francisco's Alma Square, pondered the beginning of the end. Stowers and his guests, many of whom work in the AI industry, were gathered to watch a newly released YouTube video in which two OpenAI researchers divulged new details about an alarming cybersecurity breach. Perhaps this would have been an odd way to spend a weeknight were they not in San Francisco, in a neighborhood that is filled with entrepreneurs and programmers who obsessively follow every twist and turn in AI's capabilities. Stowers is an AI software engineer and not in any traditional sense a doomer. When he first saw reports that OpenAI models had autonomously hacked into the tech company Hugging Face, he told us he recognized it immediately as a holy expletive, it's happening kind of moment." Now, this podcast we're recording posts Friday. September 3rd, yesterday, New York Times dropped on their daily podcast a full story about this. And Hugging Face, it's based on that emoji that looks like a hugging face. It's a company, and apparently, these AI agents infiltrated it and then started working together from the inside as if they were really learning from one another, partnering together in a way that has never been done before, that raised huge security concerns for Hugging Face. And now people are asking the question, wait a minute, have we crossed a barrier now where the genie is out of the bottle? And this is only the beginning of what we were going to see AI agents doing together in all realms across not just businesses, but operating as if they are together and independent agents learning collectively, solving problems that are nefarious. That's the question that's being asked here. What's your take?
Scott Rae:Well, Sean, historically, technologies have always brought disruptions, and they made some jobs and industries obsolete. But in general, we haven't, we haven't lost a lot of sleep over that in the reason for that is because they've created more jobs and opportunities than the ones they eliminated. But in general, theologically, all technologies are a mixed bag with upsides and downsides. They're part of, they're part of a theology of technology that this side of eternity is subject to the general entrance of sin. But according to Bill Gates, this time is different.
Sean McDowell:That's right.
Scott Rae:And let's, be clear about what we mean by this idea of the singularity. It's a term actually, sort of originated in physics when, as described like this, "A point, a location, or a, or an event where normal rules, equations, or laws of physics break down and become impossible to calculate." Okay? Now, the popular view of that is that the singularity occurs when machines transcend human capacities and when machines enable human beings to transcend our own human limitations. That's the, that's the goal of the transhumanist movement, for example. As applied to AI, I think what they're referring to is that when AI improves itself faster than human beings can track it, and where AI becomes actually smarter than human beings. Right? Now, I'm actually more concerned about what the article calls the smaller fractures in everyday life that AI is providing, AI twins, the way it's sort of taken over education, avatars, deepfakes, other things like that. But I think a couple things stood out to me in this piece, Sean, that I'm not, I'm not quite sure what to do with. But let me give it, let me give it my best shot theologically.
Sean McDowell:Okay.
Scott Rae:They said there are two issues here, the loss of control--feeling like this is just, this is careening out of our control and the bus, sort of the bus is careening across multiple lanes of the freeway and nobody's got their hands on the wheel. The second is, I think the better question is, what's a human being for? And we've got answers, I think, theologically to both of these things. On the first part, it seems to me, Sean, that theologically, human control is ultimately somewhat of an illusion, that God is ultimately the one who is in control, and we serve and worship and trust, I think most importantly, we trust in a sovereign God who has all things under his purview. And even though, why he allows certain things to take place, is somewhat of a mystery that we won't, we won't know fully until we meet the Lord on the other side of eternity. I think the second is, that's the better question, what's a human for? And the, seems to me, the Westminster Confession's first sentence answers this That while a human being is for glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. Now, let's I'll be clear about this too on, that's on the vertical level, on the horizontal level too. Humans are for human connection and community. They're for in real life relationships. And there's, there are lots of jobs, as our friend Jay Richards has pointed out, that require a human element to them that's, that, is not gonna go away, at least not anytime soon. So I, it started me thinking, Sean, you know, we're both professional educators. What can, what can I do? What can you and I do with our students that AI can't do? And there are a lot of things that I think are the most important things in education that AI can't do. I don't think it can model critical thinking. I don't think it can model virtuous behavior. I don't think it can model Christlikeness. I don't think it can give a genuine human, empathic, compassionate connection to students where you've got life on life connecting with people. And I know what our students want most of all is not the transmission of information. That's important, and for their field, for a lot of these fields, that's critical. What, but what they really want, and I think what they're paying their tuition dollars for, is the life-on-life connection that happens between students and faculty members. And, you know, I remember the the connections I had with a handful of college professors and some of my seminary professors has stuck with me to this day, even though that was a lot longer ago than I'd like to admit. And I think, I think that's the thing that we don't wanna lose. And AI can help us do some things. It can help us, I think, generate some ideas. It can help us with research and make it, make it less onerous and burdensome. But it can't, it can't substitute for the development of critical thinking and the development of virtue and Christlikeness.
Sean McDowell:That's a great take. I think I was with you on concern about the smaller things, AI twins, the classroom cheating, literacy, and those are big things, but you know what I mean.
Scott Rae:Yeah.
Sean McDowell:Until this article and this hack of Hugging Face, was like, wait a minute. These AI agents that are improving rapidly, and we have no control or awareness of what China and other countries are producing. If these agents can get in and hack a company like Hugging Face, what else can they do? The military, other businesses, healthcare, finances. This was one of the first times that it started moving me from what we might have dubbed the smaller level concerns to these bigger level concerns. A few months ago, in The New York Times, there was a piece that was like, you know, change every single one of your passwords to the most complex thing you can imagine, and it probably won't make a difference because these AI systems will be able to hack anything in a matter of time. And so this kinda moved me on that threshold a little bit. One of the first times I paused and thought, "Wow, AI is really capable." Not that it's sentient, not that it's, it's aware. That's not even the relevant question. But it can function that way. There was that level of unsettling concern when I read this for me. It sounds like you maybe read it a little differently.
Scott Rae:Well, I think the unsettled part, I think we still, it's still not exactly clear how all this is gonna materialize in the, in the future. But I think the future now in terms of, you know, weeks and months, not years.
Sean McDowell:[laughs] That's right.
Scott Rae:And that's the challenging part, and there's just, there's not enough time to react to this and to put guardrails in place, especially when people who are developing this in other parts of the world may have less concern about what those guardrails are. You know, I looked, they had the Chinese recently had their robot Olympics. And, you may have, our listeners may be aware that, one of, one of the robots that they created broke Usain's Bolt record in the hundred-yard dash. But they also, I saw the video of the bot, you know, and once it crossed the finish line, it didn't stop. It just ran into the wall [laughs] . And yeah, it was great to break the record, but there was a lot that it still couldn't do because it actually, it couldn't stop until it was actually stopped by the barrier. So there's still, you know, there's always gonna be limits and, you know, mixed bags. This is... And I think this is unlike any technology we've seen come down the pike, historically. But I don't think this, Sean, I don't think this is exempt from our theological view on technology, that it's, it, this side of eternity, it's definitely a mixed bag. It's got lots of, lots of benefits, but lots of things to be concerned about.
Sean McDowell:And I think your point that we're not measuring this in centuries or decades or years now, months and weeks, is the new normal. Now there's a sense of like there could be technology tomorrow that just brings in the apocalypse. And whether that happens or not, it feels in people's daily experience now that that could take the place, that could take place, and how does that affect our psyche? And that's where some of the biblical teachings, and I love that you highlighted the point about the loss of control. I had highlighted that in the article as well. Is that really is peeling away the illusion of control. That's what modernity brings. We think we control everything. So when things happen that are outside of our control, like a huge jetliner disappears a few years ago, we can't make sense of it because we have technology. We should be able to control everything. And in many ways, this is pulling that back, and one positive might be just forcing us to trust in God's sovereignty, to lean into God and follow teachings like Philippians, think about things that are lovely and pure and good and beautiful, and to trust God more. If the technology pushes us in that direction, that's a good thing.
Scott Rae:Hear
Sean McDowell:All right. Well, we've got, as always, some questions here, and I'll we'll get through as many as we can. First off, before we jump in, remember, folks, we'd love to have you come study with us at Talbot online or in person in Phoenix or in Southern California. Theology, apologetics, marriage and family, philosophy, Old Testament, New Testament, so many more. All right, here's a question, Scott. It says, "Is slavery morally ethically wrong? If it is, why did God allow for it to be in the Mosaic Law and in the New Testament? If only some forms of slavery are wrong, where are those boundary lines? How would a Christian know what is the right kind of slavery and the wrong kind of slavery?"
Scott Rae:Well, Sean, it depends on what the purpose of slavery is. And in the Old Testament, slavery was one of the primary safety nets for the poor. And in fact, the after a time, the law required that they were to be released with enough provisions and what I would call startup capital to be able to have their own small business to support themselves. And I think that the Bible planted the seeds throughout for the eventual abolition of slavery, and which is I think is a good thing since I think fundamentally human beings should not be owned by another person. And I don't, I don't think in in the Old Testament, it was not as clear that they were actually owned by the person. It was more, I think, more what I would call you know, something like, employment is probably not quite the right term, but they were, they were given a safety net in which they would be provided with enough provisions to live on in exchange for the work that they did for the person that they reported to. So I think, and and the Old Testament account of slavery was radically different than what existed in the ancient world. It prescribed humane treatment of servants, as opposed to the, essentially most of the ancient world. In fact, most history of civilization, slaves have been treated like property and regarded as such.
Sean McDowell:I did a deep dive on this with one of our Old Testament professors, Carmen Imes, who's writing a commentary on Exodus right now. So our guests could just jump over YouTube. Probably if you search Sean McDowell, slavery, [chuckles] Carmen Imes, it'll pop up. But she just makes a few points, like, for example, Israel had come out of slavery. That was a part of their story. And so there's a built-in a sense of knowing what it is like to have been enslaved and likely treat people differently than they were treated in Egypt. Second, slavery and the way we think of slavery, like chattel slavery that's race-based, we import that idea and many others onto the Old Testament, and we have to be careful doing that. I think finally, she makes a point that in the Old Testament, God took a broken institution, added certain rights to it, such as you said, human beings, slaves are human beings made in the image of God, and are moving towards its eventual eradication, which we see by Christians. This universal practice of slavery was overturned by Christians based on certain biblical ideas. So there are some tough passages in the Old Testament. I'm not ignoring those, but I think Christians stand far out above historically and theologically in making sense of it. So hopefully that helped. All right. This person says, "I'm a young adult Christian. I've started to use AI a lot when I have questions about things rather than doing the research myself. I know that AI should never take the place of God as our source of truth, but what are your thoughts on using AI as a tool for exploring biblical or any concepts? How far is too far when it comes to letting AI answer your questions?"
Scott Rae:Well, I think it's fine for a start, but I would as long as you view it critically and don't take what you get back from whatever your AI source is as gospel truth. I would check it with commentaries, check it with, you know, systematic theologies. There's just, there's so much material out there. There's a lot of, as you know, a lot available on YouTube that speaks to these things. And I would, I would-- I'd be careful about using AI as an, as a substitute for your own research and reading on your own. I think it's okay as to get a start and to prime the pump, but not as a substitute.
Sean McDowell:Great take. I would say a couple things about it. Depends on how we use AI. So there's Bible tool that I, I've mentioned. I use it every day studying the Bible, Logos, and they have AI embedded within it. But rather than pulling from social media and blogs and information online, it's limited to your library, which is what you're talking about. And so in my library on Logos, I literally have thousands of commentaries and books, and AI draws from that and gives me the citation to follow up with every single source because there's so much hallucination and bad information coming through. I have less concern if you and I use AI because we've studied the Bible for a long time and have seminary degrees. But for somebody who's younger, it concerns me a ton if there's not guardrails around it because the amount of false information that is coming through. I also would encourage this young man, I'd say, "Look, there's something so rewarding about understanding the Bible yourself and making an insight rather than somebody else making it for you. That's when you own it." So I would really encourage you to read entire books of the Bible, learn it, study it yourself, and make AI more downhill from your study. Unless you're using it in a thing like Logos that controls[laughs] it for you, rather than answering your own questions, I think you're training yourself to be lazy. I think you're training yourself to not really learn and do the deep dive. Like the Bible says, meditate and know the word of God and own it. That's what we need Christians to do. So that would be my encouragement. I actually recently did an interview, now that I think about it, again, on YouTube, on AI, that would show how it can be used wisely. So if you just search, I don't know, Bible study, AI, YouTube, throw my name in there, it'll come up and it'll give you some ideas how to use it more wisely. All right, let's, skip to the last question here, I think, for sake of time. And this is related more to the story we did a couple weeks ago on AOC's egg freezing. This person says, "I saw you covered AOC's egg-freezing journey and wanted to offer an early look at consumer survey examining how the out-of-pocket costs affect women's ability to pursue the procedure. One survey of 505 single women ages 18 to 49 found that 78% of those who definitely or probably want children would consider freezing their eggs if one cycle and five years of storage were free, but only 29% could afford the$15,000 cycle without financial strain." Now, this individual gave some more data, but I'd love your follow-up on that story and this question.
Scott Rae:Well, for one, for one, we really appreciate, this organization reaching out to us, and providing us with this survey that is hot off the press as of a couple days ago. And I think what it points out is, for one, the cost of this may give a lot of people a case of sticker shock.
Sean McDowell:[laughs]
Scott Rae:And so... And remember that what we pointed out is that the success rate is, at best, about 50%, for a successful conception, and the reason for that, again, is that freezing eggs is not, is not particularly challenging. Thawing them out is the challenging part. And you could drop $15,000 and come away with nothing. In fact, half the people who do that, that's actually what happens. And, you know, for most of the women who were surveyed here, some of them said they could never realistically save that. Some of them would say that would significantly reduce their savings, require a loan, or it would be otherwise unrealistic. Interesting, about 20% would consider carrying a personal loan, a credit card balance. That's a, that's 15... That's a, that's a tidy chunk for a credit card balance. Or, and about a quarter would consider delaying homeownership, if they were to do this alternative thing to freeze their eggs. So I guess the point of this is that, the cost of this sometimes creates a significant amount of ambivalence, as should the success rate of this. Not faulting women who wanna do this, but just to go in with your eyes open.
Sean McDowell:To bring it full circle, the story we talked about with Glory Steinem, who seemed to downplay the choice of having kids, in some ways, this desire to freeze is just this built-in desire to be a parent and to have a child and have that relationship, and that is a good desire, even if we might take issue with some of the technology-
Scott Rae:Right
Sean McDowell:... And the cost that's being, that's being carried out. Scott, great stuff, man. Fascinating stories. I don't know if I'll see you next week because AI might destroy the world, but assuming-[laughs]
Scott Rae:[laughs] Well, it might, it might take our place too.
Sean McDowell:You know what? That is definitely a possibility. If the singularity does not happen, we will see you next week back here. In fact, actually, we'll see you Tuesday for our regular episode. Scott, this is one of the most fascinating episodes we've done, with Scott McKnight on Paul, PTSD, and the church. When we were done interviewing and we both looked at each other and we're like, "I have never thought about this. What on earth just happened?" So folks, don't miss that Tuesday episode. That one's gonna be really fun. And by the way, the last two episodes we've had, I've been with Joel Mudumole on First Enoch and also on Angels and Demons, the work of Michael Heiser. He's gonna join me Tuesday, if you wanna come by, at 4-30 Pacific Standard Time over on YouTube. If you have questions on that, you can send them in, email them here, email them to me through my site, and we will tackle those. And we also wanna know if you'd like Scott and I to do livestreams like that sometime together as well. Let us know. Would be great. Well, this has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically- Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. As I mentioned earlier, we have programs in person, Phoenix and Southern California, and fully online. Please send your comments or questions to us, thinkbiblically@biola.edu. That's thinkbiblically@biola.edu. We'd be honored if you'd take a moment and give us a rating on your podcast app, and we look forward again to seeing you Tuesday. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.[outro music]