Oxford Professor: AI Is Humanity's Attempt to Make God (John Lennox Interview)

Well, the thing I want to talk about, I want to talk about AI later. But what I want to start off with is John 1:1 about the word where in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And we live in this word-based universe. I want to obviously talk about words, talk about writing, but I think that's a good jumping off point of why why is that such a profound idea? The idea that this is a word-based universe has been profoundly important in my own life because of the pressure of naturalism or materialism trying to argue the exact opposite.

Because words that carry meaning are a very high level thing in human experience. And uh the very fact that in two main areas we find that word base I think poses a fatal threat to the materialistic interpretation of the universe. The first is in mathematics which is my field. >> Mhm. >> That we can in the language of mathematics so it is a language. It's the most precise language we've got in a way. we can encapsulate some of the ways in which the universe behaves notably going back to Kepler and Newton and Todd Maxwell and so on and it's proved to be a brilliant tool for understanding part of the way in which the universe is and works and then secondly research in biology has brought us to the longest word of any kind that we've ever discovered which is the human genome, the genetic code. 3.4 billion letters long. They're chemical letters of course, but they function precisely as a word with

meaning because they code for various proteins and all the rest of it. So there those two major disciplines, physics, chemistry, we got mathematics underpinning them. And in biology, we've got this fundamental word. And it is the fact that in all our human experience, words come from minds. So you only have to say the word e x i t above a door. It's only four letters. But if you ask for the origin of that, people will explain it in terms of well this sign had to be made and may have been made by automated machinery. But somewhere there's a mind that is chosen to put a word that means exit uh up there. So if we will attribute mind to words of four letters long, it's rather curious when we come to a word of 3.4 billion letters long that we say it happens by chance and necessity. That to my mind is nonsense. And I prefer an explanation that makes sense to one that doesn't make any sense.

>> Right. And as you've as you've gone about reading scripture, spending time in the poetry of the Psalms, the literature of the Old Testament, how do you feel like that has rubbed off on your own writing? >> That's very hard to measure. We are influenced by many things in our own writing. But what I probably need to explain is I had a genius of a mentor. >> Yeah. >> I'm publicly trained in the sciences but privately trained in the humanities.

And my mentor for 50 years was the late professor David Gooding who was a classicist but he was a world authority in the Septuagent which is the Greek version of the Old Testament. And he it was who showed me how biblical literature worked and how it worked actually in common with some of the classical writings >> and that fascinated me. I mean I've always been interested in grammar. I was very keen on Latin at school and I've always been keen in languages of any kind starting with mathematics and modern languages. But the way in which ideas are communicated in literature, getting some of the clues of the methodology that the ancient writers used was hugely important and then seeing it in scripture. So I actually did many studies with him including the ideas and thoughts that for many years that led to my most recent book on revelation.

So a lot of it rubbed off. It must have rubbed off. What did he see about ancient literature? And you were talking about the ways that it was almost in conversation with other literature. What did he see that you were missing? Well, what I had not come across before was probably two things. One was structure, >> huh? >> And the other is thought flow. >> H >> in other words, if we take any book like the book I've just written, it's split into chapters. And that's to help people to know when they can stop and go to sleep. And usually those chapters are arranged around some kind of scheme.

They might be geographical. They might be the way in which history moves or they might be any kind of thing that gives you a coherent joining together of ideas. Now we do it the simple way to help people who are simple minded. We label our chapters 1 2 3 and four. But in the ancient world, they didn't do that. They were more sophisticated and therefore much more interesting in that they divided their writing up often by using a repeated phrase. And the classic example in New Testament is in the Gospel of Matthew where Matthew at intervals uses a phrase that is a variation on the following theme. And it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went into the villages of Galilee. And it came to pass when Jesus had finished this teaching, he came down the mountain.

That kind of thing. And it's repeated four or five times. And what he taught be was when you seize something like that, you should seize on it because it's highly likely that that is a major division marker. There will be minor ones. But then the way to approach something like Matthew's gospel is take two of those markers and look at the material in between and look in it for two things initially. One is the repetition of ideas because if this is a section you might expect so that one uh section in Matthew for example keeps repeating the concept of authority and illustrates it from different perspectives.

So that proved to be something really important. So within the section you then look for the thought flow. So you don't simply ask what does this parable mean? You ask a prior question. What does it say? >> And he contended quite rightly. I believe that most of the failure to to understand what scripture means is not taking enough time to see what it says. >> Right? So you take time to see what it says and then you can ask the meaning question and that will involve asking why is this bit of scripture or that parable or that incident there and not there?

Why is it in the place it is >> right? >> What part of a cumulative argument if there is one is that contributing? Now the moment I saw that I was hooked. I was 18 years old in Cambridge. She invited me to do a Bible study. And that one evening being shown that completely blew away all my preconceptions really, I think. And I got going. Yeah. I It's funny. Something very similar. I I feel like I'm in the process of having that revelation that you had many years ago. And there's a few things that have really struck me.

So the way that we talk about it is observation, interpretation, application of so often when people read the scriptures, they jump to what should I do? >> Oh, sure. >> And so often it's just what words are repeated, why is this book being written? And it's very, it's funny, the reading of scripture for me has been very elementary in terms of the methodology, but very intense in terms of the depth and intensity with which

we've done it. And it gets me to ask, and I guess I'm going to play kind of a devil's advocate here, even though I'm a believer, but how do we know that something is God breathed when it's written? Right? I think of se 2 Timothy 3:16. All scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, training, and correcting in in in in righteousness. But how do we know that? Can we actually examine the text and know that it's God breathed? Or is there another way that we can validate that?

>> I think that that question has many aspects to it. What constitutes knowledge? Is it that one is asking to feel that it's God breathed or to have some inner sense that it's God breathed? I'll give you my take on it. >> Yeah, >> I understand from scripture that God is prepared to speak through his word to those that take it seriously. >> Huh? And Christ promised his disciples that he would reveal himself to them. Now, one of the actual cases of revealing himself to them was in that upper room.

>> And it's very interesting because it has to do with words because they kept asking him all sorts of questions. And suddenly it came to a point where Philillip said to him, "Show us the father." And Jesus quietly said, "Phillip, don't you realize that he that has seen me has seen the father?" >> The words that I'm speaking, they are the father speaking. And there comes over I suspect Philillip and the others that awesome sense that they're sensing God is a way out there something somewhere. But now he's right they're right up against they've reached the father as near as they're going to get and the words that Jesus is saying is authenticating that fact. So that it seems to me indicates how we should approach scripture.

I remember if I can tell it in terms of an anecdote. >> Yeah. >> My mentor asked me once, "Why do you study scripture?" Well, I said, "At the moment, I got several Bible studies to do and I'm preaching here and there." Oh, he said, "Well, that's all right, I suppose, but that's not why I study scripture." And I was quite taken aback. So, I said, "Why do you study scripture?" And he said, "To get to know God. Now, that's a completely different level of attitude.

And it shook me at the time. I I learned a very big lesson through that that if this really is God's word, then logically you would expect God to authenticate himself through it, not by arguments about it or details of its authenticity from the perspective of documentary evidence. and all of that which is important and very useful, but that God actually speaks through it. That's a level above everything else. And it seems to me that in the end, that's the only level worthwhile.

And it's been critical for my life as a Christian that sensing God speaking. Now, how to define that is a bit like trying to define the beauty of a countryside scene. It's almost impossible, but you know it when it happens. Now, of course, we could deceive ourselves and the psychoanalyst will make hay with all this kind of thing. But in the end, it is up to our own maturity and judgment whether we really sense God speaking in such a way that we know it's true and know what he expects us to do on the basis of it. Yeah.

>> So I think that's quite it's complicated obviously because reality is always complicated but nevertheless it's what I expect and therefore if you go to scripture not so much because you're under pressure to produce a talk or an article but actually you want to get to know God. That to my mind is is the key answer to your question. >> You know, you use the word awesome and that's to be aruck and it's related to words like mystery and wonder. Yep. And as I think of my own thinking of like what is the core discipline of my thinking life that exists now that didn't exist 5 years ago. I think it's the cultivation of wonder of I think I used to very much feel that the world ended with my ability to explain something.

>> Oh >> and now I don't feel that way. >> Good. And I have more questions there than answers. But I think a belief in God has opened me up to new portals of wonder. Well, that's that runs parallel to what CS Lewis said years ago. I believe in God. Something like I believe in the sun not because I see its light. It's dangerous to look at directly, but because in its light I see everything else. In other words, faith in God instead of closing inquiry down, opens it up and introduces a dimension of wonder. And one of the very sad things I find about the media today, there are some wonderful television documentaries about the world, the universe done by people like David Atenburgh.

Yeah. And yet, just when you would hope they would say, "What an awesome God to be responsible for this," there's nothing. >> Yeah. >> And they see it, but yet they don't see it. There's a blindness. And the blindness comes at the level that you mentioned fleetingly, which is people being content with some level of explanation without realizing that explanation has many different levels. >> H what do you mean? Well, what I mean by that is if you want to explain a motor car engine or an automobile engine as you say in your country, you could resort to physics and automobile engineering and all of that and you'd have a scientific explanation.

But you could also talk about Henry Ford, >> but that's a different kind of explanation. It's in terms of an agent with a purpose. And I often say to people when they ask me, does science conflict with God as an explanation? I say absolutely not. Science no more conflicts with God as an explanation for the universe than Henry Ford conflicts with physics, chemistry, and automobile engineering as an explanation for the automobile.

They're complimementaryary. And the thing about explanation, and I'm fascinated about it, and I've written quite a bit about it, is it's often less complete than you think. Let me give an

example of that from science. I wasn't very well taught physics as a young person and I thought that the law of gravity explained gravity, but it doesn't. Even Newton realized that. He uttered a famous Latin phrase about a nonfingo hupotes. I don't make hypothesis. In other words, I don't know what gravity is. >> But I can give you a mathematical formulation that will enable you to calculate its effect. >> Sure, >> but that is not to say what it is. In fact, no one even now and you can ask your own Nobel Prize winner Richard Friedman, although he's dead. He was one of the best in California. Nobody knows what gravity is. And so even a scientific explanation apparently isn't complete in itself. Explanation has many many different levels. And there there's a huge literature devoted to explanation which is sufficient certainly for me to be very leery from someone says, "Oh, I've got the explanation of that." H and

the notion that their level explanation excludes the God explanation is in fact stupid. What do you think happened in the world to where we've closed the this window into wonder and awe and this the invitation that we all have to sort of stare and ask what's going on there? Maybe there's something more going on there that we don't know. Because it feels like by embracing this myopia, we've constrained ourselves in terms of ideas, stories, whatever it is that we can actually access.

>> I'm sure that's the case. Uh but it's very complex to explain it. Historically, it has to do with the enlightenment >> and the elevation of reason >> and the bad behavior of professing Christians who brought the God hypothesis into disrepute and were anti-science to a certain extent. There are all kinds of things involved in it. But I like actually the explanation that Ian McGillchrist is giving of this in his books uh notably his most recent one the matter with things and he points out that what we've actually done in his terms as a neuroscientist is we've got two halves to our brain and one roughly speaking is the science side finding out what things are.

And then there's the other half, the right side of the brain that looks at what things mean. And he said, if you look at us now, we've ended up in a universe where we know how almost everything works, but we know the meaning of nothing. Hm. >> And wow, >> the reason for that, it's a very powerful point and it was picked up by our late >> chief rabbi uh Lord Saxs who's always worth reading very much worth reading and he he wrote a little book on science and religion and he put McGill's idea this way.

Science takes things apart to see how they work. religion puts them together to see what they mean. >> Now, McGill's thesis is that for 500 years or so, we have put such emphasis on the left side of the brain that we've omitted the right side and therefore we live in a universe where we understand how almost everything works and the meaning of nothing. And he therefore calls for space for the transcendent, for the wonderful, for the beautiful, and for God.

I understand where he's coming from this attitude of a little bit less of the left brain means that he's a bit skeptical about biblical doctrine. And he told me that himself. >> Skeptical about biblical doctrine. >> Yes. because it's it seems too leftrained. But of course, so is his research that's led to that book, which shouldn't make him all that skeptical. >> But I like Ian's thinking because I think that analysis and there's a lot of push back on it these days obviously because it is a scientific argument against materialism and people don't like that. a religious argument against materialism. Well, they just laugh at that. But coming from within neuroscience, that's a very different matter. But it seems to me it's almost easier to puncture that balloon because we live in the information age.

>> And information, whatever it is, and that's difficult, is not material. It's usually carried on a material substrate. The information on those pages is carried on a material substrate or paper and ink, but it itself is not material. >> So that means there are non-material entities in the universe. Well, that's the end of materialism as a philosophy as far as I'm concerned. >> As simple as that. >> Yeah. >> But that gets obfiscated in a lot of the discussion.

>> You know, my pastor a few months ago, he asked me, why does God speak to us in poetry? I was stupified by the question. I still am. It's it's one of the things I'm trying to grapple with. And as I was reading your new book on Revelation, you're talking about literature that how something is said is as important as what is said. And I think that there's a real writing lesson in here that the style is as important as the substance. Well, relative importance we can talk about, sure, but the fact of both being very important is clear because some parts of scripture are written deliberately to be imagined.

And the imagination is a hugely important part of human life. And that's where poetry and music come in and supply something to feed the right side of our brain. Let's put it in McGill terms. and open up our minds to having stepping stones of imaginative words and metaphors and simileies and all kinds of figures of speech that lead us along into a world pointed to by those things but represented by those things in an imaginative way. The sad tragedy is I find that young people don't learn the grammar of their own language and they don't understand metaphors and simileies. So they make huge mistakes about them especially when it comes to the book of revelation. A typical attitude is oh that book's full of symbols. Therefore it is essentially fantastical and fantasy and meaningless. And Lewis I learned a lot of about the English language from CS Lewis pointed out that similes and metaphors are used to stand

for realities >> and point to realities and we can illustrate that easily. There are people on a very extreme edge of not understanding literature and they say that there are no metaphors in scripture. You must take it literally. This is possibly the best way to explain this. And I say, "Oh, really? Jesus said, "I am the door." >> Right? >> Do you take that literally, >> right? >> Well, it it uh just combobulates some people. They don't know what to say.

Jesus is not a literal door. And here's the point that is hugely important. He's not a literal door made of wood or metal. He's a real door. He's a real doorway into a spiritual experience of God. And the difference between literal is a useless word, almost useless because the base literal level is not used all that much. It is used in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Well, they're the actual heavens and earth, the literal heavens and earth that physicists study. But then, and God said, "Let there be light." What do you mean? and be and God said, "Has he got a voice box and lungs?" Well, no. He's spirit. So immediately there, you're in the realm of the metaphorical. But God said is not fantasy. God communicates in ways with which we don't understand. We have no idea what it means to utter what is in some sense a word and a world is created. We have no notion of how that

works. But metaphorical language enriches and provides a stepping stone. And the same is true in the book of Revelation. Very true. Because there are masses of symbols and metaphors, but all of them stand for realities without exception. >> And that is one of the basic things I'm talking about in my book. Well, >> help me get specific when you say stand for realities. Like the one that I've sort of been captivated by is that Jesus comes back with a sword, but the sword isn't in his mouth.

>> Yes. So what's going on there when you say stands for reality? That's clearly very surreal as you watch that sword. >> But scripture helps you to interpret it. The word of God is like a two-edged sword. >> And the sword at his mouth is seen in the vision in chapter one. and he is dressed as a judge. And the sword is not the only it's the most surreal item, but eyes like a flame of fire. Pretty surreal. And what subsequently happens is that in the letters to the seven churches, you have one of the items in the description of Christ applied to that church. these things says he with eyes like a flame of fire. And when you read, what is in the letter to that church, it is a critique of the way they're behaving. In other words, these eyes are seeing what's going on and they need to repent. And it's the same with the sword. If you don't repent to another church, I will come and war against you with a sword of

my mouth. And if you interpret that in terms of the biblical language itself, he's going to come and apply the sword of his word and deal with them. Very much as Paul said to Corinth, if you don't repent, I'm going to come >> and sort this out. So I don't think there's any difficulty in understanding all of those things stand for realities. >> Sure.

>> Tell me about this. as you're writing, how you think about both making an argument and criticizing yourself. I know you like the Fineman line where he says, "Always bend over backwards to understand and criticize your own work because the easiest person to fool is yourself." >> That's right. >> So, how do you go about doing this in the writing process? >> Well, there are several basic principles. I think there's the Fineman principle, but there's another principle and that is I ask myself when I'm writing how can this be understood?

>> How can this be understood? >> And the next question is how could it be misunderstood? >> And that is a hugely helpful thing. Far more helpful than the first question. Usually you know what you mean to convey by writing. But if you say how could this be misunderstood? Let me give you a very simple example. You want to talk about God as father. You don't realize that in your audience is a young woman whose concept of father is someone who comes home drunk every night and abuses her mother and possibly herself. And therefore her concept of father won't relate. So you will have to go into that how could I be misunderstood and correct it by being open with the fact that not everybody's experience of father is the same. And I find that hugely important. The next thing is don't be so proud as not to allow people to read what you've written. Hm.

>> What do you mean? >> Well, allow people to read your stuff >> before you publish it >> and ask for the best criticism. So, for example, I'm doing at the moment an autobiography. An autobiography is tricky because it's got the word auto in it. Self, >> right? >> And one of the great difficulties is of course that you're writing about yourself. How do you avoid um pitfalls connected with that? So I speak to the publishing company and say I want your very best editor >> who's going to be really critical and come in and I've got the ve very best editor which has been very painful but very useful.

>> What have they told you? >> Oh all kinds of things. >> What have you learned about autobiography now that you didn't know? >> Simple things. The danger of being episodical. If you're a person that has done a lot of speaking, the danger is you get tired of trying to construct the story and you say, "Well, I went to Leipzig and I spoke on X and then I went to Berlin and I spoke on Y and then I went to Kenets and I spoke on Zed and it becomes episodical and there's no depth. There's only length." Huh. and uh simple things like that and it's difficult of course sometimes you mentioned the veritas forum uh earlier and I've done a lot of talks to the veritas forum so I could say when I went to Texas on Tuesday and I spoke at Austin and then I went to Denver on Wednesday etc etc and that becomes boring in the end unless there are some individual specific things that happened during those times that fleshed this out

into something interesting. >> So my particular editor in chief is ruthless with that kind of stuff and just points it out to me, leave this out or put it in an appendix or something like this. >> Right? So, I've learned a lot from from critics and I have friends that will read and will criticize uh what I'm going to do.

Let's move into uh Revelation. I mean, you've just written a new book about the book of Revelation, but also how it intersects with AI. And I guess I'll just start off with a very base level question which is are you scared of what's happening with AI? >> Yes and no. I think there are many things. I'm scared of knives. >> H >> a good knife, a sharp knife can be used for surgery. It can also be used for murder. And in this country at the moment, we've got an epidemic of knife crime. Young kids, 14, 15, killing their mates in class. So, one could say, "Yes, I'm scared of knives because many people are are being uh damaged and maimed for life or killed." But I know that's not the actual thrust of your question. It's whether there's a a degree of fundamental anxiety about the future that is raised by AI and that is certainly the case. I'm grateful for some of the things that AI can do and do brilliantly.

The solution of the protein folding problem by Deusabis of Open AI is a work of utter genius. Uh it used to take a PhD five years to work out how one protein folded. His open AI his program for deep mind deal with 200,000 in a a day or two. It's a completely new game. But I think there are two kinds of AI and we got to separate them. There's the ordinary stuff that's actually working at the moment which is narrow AI. An AI narrow AI system does one thing and one thing alone that normally requires human intelligence like spotting disease in X-rays and is brilliant at it. It's now much better than your average doctor recognizing diseases from X-ray photographs and so on. And that's wonderful. And there are all kinds of examples because AI is not just one thing, >> right?

>> There are millions of different AI systems is probably the best way to put it. And most the ones operating at the moment are narrow AI. Even chap GPT with all its successes. But what I notice is among the thought leaders, some of them seem to be running scared. M >> and they're highly intelligent people and they are scared particularly of what is called the control problem that we lose control that something's going on in some of these very advanced systems that we don't quite understand and haven't quite tamed. And therefore you get lots of hype and speculation. Can we build an AI that will refuse to be turned off and all this kind of stuff?

Is AI going to destroy us in the end? And you get seriousminded physicists like Max Tegmark. Is he in Princeton or MIT? I can't remember which. But Max Tegmark has written a book called Life 3.0. >> Okay. >> And he has a dozen different scenarios for the future. Benevolent AI, despotic AI, all this. and it's the big scale. But the thing that he pays closest attention to is AI managing to leverage some of Amazon's systems and turn into a totalitarian world economic government that has the whole world under its control.

And he mentions this, describes it in detail. And then he says that this sort of government could insist on all its citizens wearing a bracelet with the functionality of an Apple Watch and a lot more that would listen to everything that the wearer said, >> watch everything they did. And if they stepped out of line, out of the party line, it could inject the wearer with a lethal toxin and kill them. Now what is fascinating to me about that when I read that and it's not only Tedmar's writing about it and he's a seriously good physicist is that parallels almost exactly some of the predictions of the book of revelation particularly about what I call the monster it's often called the beast I think monster is a better word >> where no one can buy or sell unless they have the mark and the marks got to be in the right hand or their forehead. Doesn't say exactly what it is. And they're killed if they uh go out of line. Well,

that's identical with what some of these people are predicting. I went to a lecture by Peter Teal recently. >> Yeah. >> And I asked him the following question. I said, "Peter, do I understand you correctly that as you look at technology, you see it moving towards totalitarianism in terms of uh surveillance techniques which I haven't mentioned yet but are all rolled out all over China and so on." He said, "Yes." And I said, secondly, as you look at the biblical scriptures, do you detect something that parallels that and therefore gives it added credence? And he said he did. So that was interesting because sometimes he's not the easiest to understand. Mhm.

>> And it seems to me a number of people right at the top, Jeffrey Hinton for example, who's the godfather of AI, >> he stepped out of Google so that he could criticize and he has revised his opinions uh to a much shorter time scale until AI could put us into real danger. Elon Musk of course is famous for doing the same thing. And some of these people who actually are quite knowledgeable about technology are scared of what will happen. I spoke to a leading player in this field not long ago and I said, "Do you think something's going on that they're not telling us?"

>> And he thought a while and he said, "I think you may well be right from what I observe and hear." And you see the scary thing is >> wait, what's sort of something going on? Well, he he couldn't say, of course, because he didn't know, but there's something going on that leads to these people being scared. >> And of course, then you have the parallel thing that the idea of building God. >> Yeah. >> You see, and the notion of data religion and AI religion and Harrari saying, if you want to know about religion, go to Silicon Valley, not to the church. Well, I was thinking of Psalm 115:8, which says, "Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them."

That we're making these this AI in the image of humans, not in the image of God. >> Oh, that's absolutely right. >> And it's I mean, this is this is idolatry left and right.

>> Yes, it is. And that's another trajectory through it. I separate a whole lot of trajectories. The trouble is they get confused. The first is to make super intelligent humans who are like gods with a small G. That's hari. And that's to be done in one of two ways. First of all, to enhance existing humans, re-engineer their genetics and all the rest. The second way is to start with a nonbiological base like silicon and build some sort of entity that is created by human beings but will transcend them. Those are the two uh main avenues and some people are trying to do them together. So there's that but then there arises the question immediately is this playing God? Is this another tower of babel? Right? And it looks very much like it >> a towering desire to reach to heaven. And I've read quite a lot about skyscrapers in connection with my books in Genesis. It's very interesting.

>> I mean, it's literally the oldest story in the book. >> If you read some of the literature on skyscrapers, you'll come across this quote. Behind every skyscraper there's an even greater ego. >> That puts it very neatly. And there are all these trends. And what I see scripture giving us is not so much identifications that you can absolutely say with precision what this is, >> right? But you can say with some pre precision what it represents, what it stands for.

You see, people, let me give you an example of that. People have speculated through history as to what the beast or the monster is. And it's been almost everybody from the popes to Hitler to um Stalin to Mao, etc., etc. They're all interested in who it is. People don't seem to be interested in what scripture actually says. Scripture tells us what it is. H >> the number 666. It is the number of a man. That's the hideous thing about it. Scripture tells us exactly what it is. It's a human being. And that's what's utterly scary about it. If you like, this is a human being. And in the plain straightforward language of two Thessalonians, Paul told young Christians that there'd be a man of lawlessness who would claim to be God. That fits in perfectly with it seems to me the scenes in the book of Revelation. And when contemporary physicists and thinkers are talking about this, it's high time that we take seriously

the biblical insight into it. My argument is very simple and it's not it doesn't arise first in my book on revelation. And I wrote a book called 2084. >> And in that book I said look if we are prepared to take seriously the kind of argument that Tegmark makes, Harrari makes, and a whole host of other people make. Well, I'd like just to say why don't we go back and take seriously the biblical account which parallels them eerily closely. M >> and there's far more evidence for its truth.

>> And then just the final point there is to say that the irony of the whole thing is that this race for AI super intelligence is the race to make God and be God. The biblical message is God became human. It goes in the reverse direction. And I think that's a very powerful idea.

No kidding. And it leads me to my next question which is this has been watching the LLMs in many ways become smarter than me. I mean become smarter than me. Yes. >> Yeah. Yes. >> It's been in certain respects. >> In certain respects. Thank you. But it's been dejecting >> and it's made me ask like >> what does it mean to be a productive member of society? What does it mean to be a human being? >> And that's what I want to ask you about.

What is it? How has watching what has unfolded over the last many years changed your conception of what it means to be a human? Well, it's that question that got me into this whole field. I was asked some years ago to give a lecture on uh AI, an introduction to a conference of Christian leaders. >> Okay? >> And I said, "How don't an expert get an expert?" Or they say, "You misunderstand. We want you to talk about what Genesis says about what it means to be human.

and let that be the basis of our day's discussion. So I started preparing and very rapidly I saw this is going to need a lot of work. I did the talk because I do have some ideas on Genesis but that's what led to my first 2084. There are two 2084s >> four years apart. Uh one last year and one 2020. It's just going so fast. And it is that that concerns people, the redefinition of humanity. Now CS Lewis is one of the people that saw this very clearly. There are two books I say every believer ought to read. One is the abolition of man and the other is that hideous strength. The third one of his science fiction books. And he saw he saw preciently you know in 1940 he saw where all this philosophy was leading to human beings eventually producing not a human being but an artifact. And he has this chilling sentence. The final triumph of humanity will be the abolition of man.

Because what they produce is not a human. It's an artifact. they will have meddled with what we now call the germstream of humanity and altered them. And therefore, it seems to me that it's very important to get back to Genesis and fiddle Christian minds full of the early chapters of Genesis because from the point of view of our moral existence and status, Genesis 126 is undergirds all of Western civilization and we're still going on that capital >> and that's the idea of a go Yes, God made human beings in his image.

He didn't mean make the stars in his image. They show his glory, but they're not in his image. That's a very different thing. You are more important than a star actually. So that exploring that in mago dei I think is a very very important thing but not exploring it in a vacuum but exploring it in the context of these attempts because many of the drivers of this super intelligence creating God are atheists. You can't help noticing that. Mhm.

>> And so it is an attack in that sense on God, his uniqueness, his creatorial dignity, his glory and all of that. Of course, it is. And what scripture tells you from the beginning is that the biggest thing you're going to be up against is the original lie. Hm. >> You shall be as God if you deny God and his word. So, we're back to where we started. The word-based universe. In Genesis 1, you have the word as the base of creation. And God said, and God said.

But in Genesis 3, you have the denial of the word >> by the snake. by the snake as bringing catastrophe into the world. And it's the talking snake. It's amazing that people listen to talking snakes that suggested that you will rise. You shall be as God's knowing good and evil. And the mistakes that are made about that. There's a famous snake path in UC uh I think it's San Diego. I don't know whether you know about the snake path.

It's a big snake which is in the form of a path and it goes up the hill and its mouth stops at the entrance to the university library. >> Okay. >> And there's a little garden of Eden at the bottom and they shake snake coils around it. And the whole idea is the humans are encouraged to leave innocence and get knowledge the university library. And I was speaking there to Veritas world. And I took a big risk. I said to them, I have never seen such a blatant uh misunderstanding of one of the most important messages of the world. Shocked silence. I said, "This is the misunderstanding that God prevented them from eating a tree of knowledge of good and evil." And you've changed that to the tree of knowledge.

>> It wasn't a tree of knowledge. There was lots of knowledge in the garden. In fact, science started there. God said, "Name the animals." It was full of knowledge. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, that's a knowledge you don't want. Well, I nearly caused a riot, I think. But anyway, it's very interesting because that storytelling in terms of an artist's representation of this so-called snake path, and it's famous. You can look it up.

>> And that's an example to my mind how art can lie >> powerfully >> and get across the exact opposite message from what the original was meant to convey. >> Yeah.

So I guess there's two things going on here. One is the building of AI which we've spoken about. I'm curious to know, do you use AI? And if so, how do you think about this is how I would use it to think better, to write better versus no, I think that the whole thing is like a demonic force and I'm going to keep that away from me. Well, I've got a smartphone. And if you've got a smartphone, you can't help using AI because when you buy anything on Amazon, it's picking up the trail and it's suggesting new things to buy, right?

>> So, you can virtually not avoid it. And if you use a computer that's connected to the internet and use Microsoft Word, you get all sorts of popups that are explaining things and helping you. The days of not using it are long gone, >> but it can be a servant rather than a master. And that's the danger >> of it mastering you. Now take chap GPT. I find it quite useful for collecting ideas. >> Sure. >> Because it will bring to the screen knowledge that I don't have.

>> Yeah. But it may be hallucinating and inventing that knowledge because it wants to please me. So I'm forced to do a lot of checking. But that's okay. I think that just as we look up Google. We don't know much about the Babylonian Empire. So we Google it. And nobody thinks twice about that. >> Sure. even people who are a bit scared of AI and and in a sense GPT is just a very sophisticated form of that that is digested without permission often a lot more literature and I I say to people you can use it but beware beware for example if you're a pastor of a church and you watch the late night film on Saturday and then you get a sermon off chat GPT in 30 seconds before you go to bed.

>> That is not likely to have much spiritual power, >> right? >> Even though technically it could be accurate. If you ask Chhat GPT, for example, to tell you what the doctrine of the Trinity is, it would be hard to fault it. There's no spiritual power in a machine. And I get tired trying to tell people this is a machine. It doesn't think. When you say there's no spiritual power in a machine, what do you mean? >> Well, in the sense that it doesn't have a spirit. It's simply a machine. It's sheer computing power, predictive computing power, and it hasn't got, well, it hasn't got, let me put it another way, intelligence, it simulates.

>> It's not real intelligence. And what God has done with human beings is to put intelligence together with consciousness. >> These machines are not conscious. Nor are they ever likely to be for a very simple reason. Nobody knows what consciousness is. So it's silly when people start talking about oh it's conscious. >> Now there are huge questions here philosophical and and and moral and ethical. I mean, we haven't talked about the moral and ethical side of all of this, because the danger of AI, even the stuff that's being used now, is fearsome in terms of deep fakes and deception.

And again, that would lead you back to Jesus own statements about his coming. Be careful because of deception. It's the major problem. And now we have the five eyes, the top people in the world warning us that the deception created by uh deep fakes could lead to all kinds of chaos in the world. So it's a serious problem, but that's the world we're in. And my own feeling is that Christians who are scientifically minded, it'd be a good thing for them to go into AI so that they can sit at the ethics table, >> right?

>> Because there's one thing very clear. The technology moves much faster than the ethics. But the the technology is partly driven, I believe, by that we shall be as gods. In other words, if we can do it, we should do it. M >> and bother the consequences and that's a very dangerous attitude because somewhere in the world someone's going to try and do it. >> If you were to teach a semester long seminar on writing writing well thinking well how would you structure the curriculum?

>> I have no idea. That's the first time I've heard that question. You see I'm a great believer in you teach that kind of thing I expect by doing it >> writing >> you can't run a course I would say on what is writing and how you do it without actually writing it's the same it seems to me with studying scripture people say to me well tell me how to study scripture well the only way I can do that is by doing it with you and that's a big challenge which is why I'm not offering courses in writing >> right do the dang thing >> yes yes you're going to start >> how'd you improve as a writer >> well how one improves is by experience and allowing external criticism I think that's the main thing and reading other people's stuff that's hugely important and listening and talking to people. I I think we're at an age where we do too much talking and too little listening. And I was told I had two ears and one mouth. It's

better to use them in that proportion. But it's too reading good literature. I mean, if ever I think I've attained anything in writing, I just read a Lewis book and that brings me right down to size. is sheer genius at using words. I mean, you have those kind of standards out there that you can you should bring like a mirror up to your own writing. >> Well, yeah. You were talking about the grammar of his I think you said me met metaphor and illustration. Tell me about that with CS Lewis.

>> The most the simple and obvious thing Lewis taught me is that metaphors stand for reality. If I say my heart is broken, I'm not referring to this literal pump, but I'm referring to a very real experience or the car was flying down the road. It wasn't literally flying. I mean, it was going very fast. The metaphor is for going fast. So, it's for a real thing, not for a literal thing. And simple things like that, most people have never realized. So, they're very confused when the Bible does the same thing. John Lennox, thank you very much.

>> Well, thank you. I've actually enjoyed it very much. >> Good stuff.