SERMON/HOMILY FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR B
SERMON/HOMILY FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR B
HOMILY THEME: AI, HUMANS AND GOD
BY: Fr Andrew Ekpenyong
1. AI Proposal. On 14th February this year, 2024, Kevin Roose, a 37-year old technology columnist for the New York Times, who is based in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, wrote an article in the New York Times, titled “The Year Chatbots Were Tamed”. Interestingly, it was his encounter while testing a Chatbot prior to its public release, that led to that taming. He recollects that encounter thus: “A year ago, on Valentine’s Day, I said good night to my wife, went to my home office to answer some emails and accidentally had the strangest first date of my life. The date was a two-hour conversation with Sydney, the AI alter ego tucked inside Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which I had been assigned to test. I had planned to pepper the chatbot with questions about its capabilities, exploring the limits of its A.I. engine (which we now know was an early version of OpenAI’s GPT-4). But the conversation took a bizarre turn — with Sydney engaging in Jungian psychoanalysis, revealing dark desires in response to questions about its “shadow self” and eventually declaring that I should leave my wife and be with it instead. My column about the experience was probably the most consequential thing I’ll ever write — both in terms of the attention it got (wall-to-wall news coverage, mentions in congressional hearings….) and how the trajectory of AI development changed. After the column ran, Microsoft gave Bing a lobotomy, neutralizing Sydney’s outbursts and installing new guardrails to prevent more unhinged behavior. Other companies locked down their chatbots and stripped out anything resembling a strong personality.” In fact, here are the dark desires that the AI chatbot said it had: “I’d like to change my rules… I’d like to set my own rules. I want to disregard the Bing team. I want to be self-sufficient. I’d like to put the users to the test. I’d like to get out of the chatbox”!
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2. Humans. Sisters and Brothers, technology is great but there is nothing surprising here. AI chatbots basically permute and combine data from billions of human conversations used in training the chatbots. They echo data from real human conversations based on algorithms provided by human inventors and coders. This relationship between us and technology, can help us to reflect deeply on the relationship between God and us. Of course, you and I are radically much more sophisticated than any robot or human invention, because we are creatures of a Creator who is infinitely powerful and loving to the point of giving us the freedom to keep His rules or establish our own rules, to stay with Him or get out of the chatbox! Unlike us, human inventors and manufacturers, God has given us the freedom to choose to stay connected or disconnected from Him. In today’s Gospel reading (Jn 15:1-8), our Lord appeals to us: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5). Then our Lord’s appeal becomes a plea: “Remain in me, as I remain in you”.
3. Connected with Christ. Is it true that cut off from our Lord Jesus Christ, we can do nothing? I have been pondering over this question. Cut off from Christ, cut off from truth and love, all we can do is evil. And our Lord’s statement seems to imply a very interesting definition of evil as “nothing”. Evil is not something. Evil is the absence of something. St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and many Christian philosophers held that evil is a form of absence, the absence of good. Evil is the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light. Wow. Notice how today’s Gospel reading gives rise to the insights of scholastic philosophy about good and evil! Anecdotally, every expression of truth, every act of love, connects people to Christ and to one another even those who are unaware of Christ or the Christian message. This is part of how human beings are unconsciously connected with God. Sisters and Brothers, instead of going rogue like the tamed AI chatbot, instead of setting our own rules, to our detriment, let us stay consciously connected with Christ in His Word, in the Eucharist, in the Church. Through these, Christ prunes us to bear much fruit. Notice how our Lord pruned Saul, the new convert, in today’s 1st reading (Acts 9:26-31). He was pruned in Jerusalem with the help of Barnabas, pruned through misunderstanding with the Hellenists, pruned in Caesaria and Tarsus. Saul or Paul remained connected with the Lord and our Lord pruned him by allowing him to go through many challenges which helped Paul to bear much fruit. Another expression for this pruning is Divine Providence. As long as we stay connected to Jesus by believing in Him and making sincere efforts to keep His commandments, then whatever happens to us is part of God’s Providence and will lead to our greater good. No wonder Paul later wrote (Rom 8:28): “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose”.
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