Saturday, March 16, 2024

Friday, February 16, 2024

AI: The Hype and Challenge of Critical Thinking

Generative AI is here to stay.  In light of this, there are all sorts of voices telling us to use and adapt to this new intellectual terrain.  My goal is this post is to not add to the discussion in regards to how to use the various AI tools.  Rather, my modest goal is to express reservations about the alleged unending glories of the seemingly unalterable “singularity” which is the eschatological dream of some.

My thinking was recently stimulated in this direction by reading Robert J. Marks’ book, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will.  Dr. Marks is Distinguished Professor of Engineering in the Depart of Engineering and Computer Science at Baylor University.  Furthermore, he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transaction on Neural Networks, one of the most prestigious technical journals for peer-reviewed AI research.  In other words, he is well-qualified to offer an assessment of the current state of AI research.  



Marks argues that, though AI is powerful in computing power and does offer some surprises, there is a fundamental gap in terms of true creativity.  In place of the well-known Turing Test, Marks draws attention to the “Lovelace Test” as more effective test for software creativity.  Named after Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), who is considered by many to be the first computer programmer, the Lovelace Test defines software creativity as the ability of a program to do something “that cannot be explained by the programmer or an expert in computer code.”[1]  Marks claims, along with others, that the Lovelace Test has not been met by current AI systems.

In spite of the failure of AI systems to generate true creativity there are all sorts of claims regarding the future of an AI-enhanced humanity.  As Marks notes, “Many worship at the feet of the exciting new technology and without foundation predict all sorts of new miraculous applications; others preach unavoidable doom and gloom.”[2]  In light of this, chapters five and six of Non-Computable You (which by themselves are worth the price of the book!) are taken up with mitigating the “hype.”  Chapter five is entitled, “The Hype Curve” and Marks graphs the dynamic in the following manner:



Marks explains the details:

·      The launch phase.  In the beginning of the hype curve, newly introduced technology spurs expectations above and beyond reality.  Poorly thought-out forecasts are made.

·      The peak-of-hype phase.  The sky’s the limit.  Imagination runs amok.  Whether negative or positive, hype is born from unbridled speculation.

·      The overreaction-to-immature-technology phase.  As the new technology is vetted and further explored, the realization sets in that some of its early promises can’t be kept.  Rather than calmly adjusting expectations and realizing that immature technology must be given time to ripen, many people become overly disillusioned.

·      The depth-of-cynicism phase. Once the shine is off the apple, limitations are recognized.  Some initial supporters jump ship.  They sell their stock and go looking for a new hype to criticize, believe in, or profit from.

·      The true-user-benefits phase. The faithful—often those whose initial expectations included the realistic possibility of failed promise—carry on and find ways to turn the new technology to useful practice.

·      The asymptote-of-reality phase. The technology lives on in accordance with its true contributions.

A number of examples of the hype curve are given by Marks, including the Segway, cold fusion, and String Theory.  Even in the realm of artificial intelligence it seems as those the hype curve begins to resurface again and again.  What to do?

This is where chapter six, “Twelve Filters for AI Hype Detection,” is so instructive and helpful.  This chapter contains a brief, but masterful, demonstration of the teaching of critical thinking.  And it is precisely this virtue of critical thinking that ought to the mainstay of higher education instruction.  This chapter, although devoted to the topic of AI, has a much broader application.  I cannot reproduce Marks’ entire presentation so I will simply quote his summation provided at the end of the chapter.

The Hype List

In a nutshell, here is the list of twelve things to consider when reading AI news:

1.     Outrageous Claims: If it sounds outrageous, maybe it is.  Recognize that AI is riding high on the hype curve and that exaggerated reporting will be more hyperbolic than for more established technologies.

2.     Hedgings: Look for hedge words like “promising,” “developing,” and “potentially,” which implicitly avoid saying anything definite.

3.     Scrutiny Avoidance: Any claim that such-and-such an AI advancement is a few years away may be made with sincerity but avoids immediate scrutiny.  Short attention spans mean that when the sell date on the promise rolls around, few people are likely to notice.  Remember the old proverb often attributed to quantum physicist Niels Bohr: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

4.     Consensus: Beware of claims of consensus.  Remember Michael Crichton’s claim that consensus regarding new technology and science is the “first refuge of scoundrels.”

5.     Entrenched Ideology: Many AI claims conform to the writer’s ideology.  AI claims from those adherents to materialism are constrained to exclude a wide range of rational reasoning that is external to their materialistic silos.

6.     Seductive Silos: Claiming AI is conscious or self-aware without term definition can paint the AI as being more than it is.  Seductive semantics is the stuff of marketing.  In the extreme, it can misrepresent.

7.     Seductive Optics and the Frankenstein Complex: AI can be wrapped in a package that tries to increase the perception of its significance.  Unrecognized, the psychological impact of the Frankenstein Complex and the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis can amplify perception far beyond technical reality.  The human-appearing body in which a chatbot resides is secondary to its driving AI.

8.     True-ish: Beware of those tricky headlines and claims that are almost true but intended to deceive.

9.     Citation Bluffing: Web articles and even scholarly journal papers can exaggerate or blatantly misrepresent the findings of others they cite.  Checking primary sources can ferret out this form of deception.

10. Small-Silo Ignorance: The source of news and opinion always requires consideration, but those speaking outside of their silo of expertise need to be scrutinized with particular care, especially when the speakers are widely admired for their success in their silo.  Don’t be dazzled by celebrity.  This caution applies to famous actors speaking about politics but also to celebrated physicists speaking about computer science.

11. Assess the Source: I trust content more from the Wall Street Journal than from politically motivated sites like the Huffington Post or yellow journalism sites like the National Enquirer.  But even if the article appears at a site or periodical that has earned a measure of trust, it’s wise to assess the writer of the article.

12. Who Benefits?: Remember financial greed, relational desires, and the pursuit of power.  These are the three factors used by police detectives in their investigation of crimes.  They are also good points to remember when considering whether a report on AI is true or hype.  Is there a hidden agenda or emotional blind spot?

As mentioned, this hype-detection list is applicable to a wide range of claims and our students can only be strengthened by inculcating these elements of critical thinking.

AI technologies are here to stay and we must navigate this techno-terrain with wisdom.  Educating students about the hype curve as well as the principles of hype detection will equip them to responsibly interact with the new and emerging technologies. 



     [1] Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2022), 42.  A more rigorous formulation of the Lovelace Test (LT) is found on page 359 in the endnotes: “Artificial agent A, designed by H, passes LT if and only if (1) A outputs o; (2) A’s outputting o is not the result of a fluke hardware error, but rather the result of processes A can repeat; (3) H (or someone who knows what H knows, and has H’s resources) cannot explain how A produced o.”

     [2] Marks, 102.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Missional Professors: The Need for Theological and Philosophical Maturity

 * From Paul Gould's The Outrageous Idea of the Missional Professor...



    "Finally, while experts within their own particular fields of study, Christian professors often possess a Sunday school level of education when it comes to matters theological and philosophical.  A missional professor, however, must be competent, even well-versed, in such matters.  Sadly, this is rarely the case, and the result is a patchwork attempt to integrate one's faith with one's scholarly work and an inability to fit the pieces of one's life into God's larger story.  Christian professors who are seeking to be faithful witnesses for Christ within the secular academy face immense challenges." (p. 7)

    Friday, January 19, 2024

    Christian Academics and the Temptation of Compartmentalization

    Paul Gould on Christian academics and the temptation of compartmentalization.



     “The impulse of modern society is to compartmentalize our lives.  Public/private, sacred/secular, work/play, and so on.  Modern man and modern society has lost its spiritual center, becoming fragmented and hurried—but only God know what for!  In this cultural milieu, the Christian scholar who bravely resists this impulse toward fragmentation finds the situation exacerbated due to two countervailing pressures that often pull in opposite directions.  On the one hand, the secular ethos of the university presses Christian scholars to conduct their research and teaching in purely secular terms and motifs.  If Christian scholars want a place at the table, they must play by the rules of the academic game.  A strict wall of separation between church and states exists, and any effort to tear down the wall is looked on with either suspicion or outright incredulity.  On the other hand, the Christian scholar is committed to a particular view of the world that is often quite antithetical to the established secular ethos.  The Christian universe is a God-centered universe.  If Jesus is Lord, he is Lord of all areas of thought and life.  In fact, the Bible claims that in Jesus ‘are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. 2:3).  Thus, the Christian scholar himself often becomes disintegrated, compartmentalizing his ‘scholarly life’ from his ‘spiritual life’ as he attempts to navigate between the Scylla of religious fundamentalism and the Charybdis of accommodationism.  Any attempts to invoke a Christian perspective to science (for example) in the university are quickly labeled as fundamentalist attempts to promote religion masquerading as science.  Any attempts to utilize non-biblical conceptual schemes erected by thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, or Kant in order to shape and guide research and teaching are (sometimes) viewed by the church as selling out to accommodationism.  The net result of these opposing pressures is that the Christian scholar is left in a sort of ‘no-mans land’—viewed with suspicion by both the church and the university.  And within the secular academy, religion is relegated to the sidelines.  Religion is reserved for the scholar’s personal life: meaningful to either the individual or one’s own religious community only.

     

    “It is possible to live an integrated life within secular academia today?  Can a Christian scholar integrate his faith with his chosen discipline in such a way as to avoid the charge of either fundamentalism or accommodationism?”  --Paul Gould

     

    ·      Paul Gould, “The Two Tasks Introduced: The Fully Integrated Life of the Christian Scholar,” in The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar: Redeeming the Soul, Redeeming the Mind (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2007), 17-18.

    Monday, December 11, 2023

    Boldness in Standing for Christ on the Campus: Challenging Stereotypes by Standing Out

     * Part of an email I sent to fellow Christian professors.

    For your consideration....

    I was looking again at an article by Baylor sociologist, George Yancey, "How Academics View Conservative Protestants" Sociology of Religion (June 2015).  Yancey's specialization (one among many) is the anti-conservative Christian bias found in the educational arena.  Here are a few quotations from the essay:
    • "A sizable body of research has demonstrated an anti-conservative Christian perspective among academics." (First sentence of essay)
    • "Professors in universities and colleges rate political conservatives negatively, and religious conservatives--particularly conservative Protestants like evangelicals and fundamentalists--even more negatively.  For example, Tobin and Weinberg's (2007) survey of 1,200 college professors found that 53% admitted negative feelings about evangelicals.  Yancey (2011) found that about 40% of professors surveyed said that they would be less likely to hire a prospective employee for their department if that candidate was an evangelical, and about 50% would be less likely to hire a prospective employee if the candidate is a fundamentalist.  This negative bias has ramifications.  One study indicates that conservative Protestant students claim everyday experiences of discrimination in academia similar to the levels of discrimination reported by traditionally targeted groups, like women and blacks (Hyers 2008).  Other research shows that this antipathy affects hiring decisions (Yancey 2011) and graduate school admission (Gunn and Zenner Jr. 1996)." (p. 2--note my page numbers are from a pre-print version)
    • "We argue that there are two possible reasons for the rejection of conservative Protestants by academics: symbolic boundaries and lack of contact." (p. 2)
    • "This propensity to envision themselves [the progressive critics of conservative Christians] in a culture war helps explain some of our respondents' critique of evangelicals proselytizing.  This proselytizing may be a threat to these scholars since religious conversion may generate more opponents to their political and social goals.  Thus it is not surprising that several respondents make negative comments about the evangelical desire to convert others... (p. 13)
    • "Certain respondents view conservative Protestants as a threat to societal well-being... They fear that evangelicals will win support for an agenda these academics perceive as dangerous." (p. 13)
    • "Academics are unlikely to personally identify with conservative Protestants or have many conservative Protestant friends.  This may lead to an ignorance of conservative Protestants that feeds into negative stereotypes toward that out-group.  Those with closer ties to conservative Protestants gave the most academic definitions and also have the most positive attitudes toward conservative Protestants." (p. 17)
    •  "Conservative Protestants are disliked to the degree that they are perceived as oppressors both now and in the past which helps explain why evangelicals are rated lower by academics than other proselytizing groups, like Muslims (Tobin and Weinberg 2007; Yancey 2011)." (p. 17)
    • Yancey speaks of a "silencing effect which keeps conservative Protestants 'in the closet.'" (p. 18)
    • The final paragraph of the article (and this, if I may interject, may be where the "money is" for us in terms of practical application):
      • "This silence reduces the potential of conservative Protestant academics to use intergroup contact to challenge common religious stereotypes in academia.  The detached, guarded manner in which they discuss their religious beliefs may create social comfort for other academics, but also helps those scholars maintain symbolic barriers toward conservative Protestants.  Thus, even when conservative Protestant academics act in ways that defy anti-religious stereotypes, their hesitation to openly embrace a conservative Protestant identity makes it harder for other academics to tie those actions to conservative Protestantism, which might create a cognitive dissonance about that stereotype.  Conservative Protestant academics' strategy for dealing with possible stigmatization may unintentionally reinforce a social atmosphere that perpetuates academic marginalization of conservative Protestantism." (p. 19)
    I post these quotations, not to create a sense of fear, but, rather, to move us to greater boldness in expressing ourselves and our academic work as explicitly Christian.  This obviously requires wisdom and winsomeness but failure to do this ("openly embrace a conservative Protestant identity") may actually backfire and create a more negative effect in the long run (according to Yancey).  This is to start a conversation among us--not dictate a set of rules.  Toward that end, here are a few questions to ponder--and hopefully, we can ponder them together!  (Feel free to respond in this email thread)
    • Have you seen an anti-conservative Christian bias in your department or career?
    • In what ways (if any) do you see or sense your campus to have an environment which stigmatizes Christianity (or versions of Christianity)?
    • Have you ever self-censored your Christian identity at your campus out of a sense of fear?
    • In what ways could you manifest a greater boldness in self-consciously living out your Christian identity on your campus--before students, fellow faculty, and administration?

    Christian Professors: Showing Yourself to Be a Christian to Your Students

     From the book A Grander Story: An Invitation to Christian Professors giving perspective on when Christian professors should let their students and fellow faculty know they are Christians.









    Secular Thinkers on the Campus: Influencing Students

     A few quotations from secular thinkers showing the need for Christian professors to be salt and light on their campuses.