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Good morning.

Fifty three years ago, a book was published by the American futurists Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell called FutureShock. They identified societal and individual distress and disorientation caused by what they described as the ‘premature arrival of the future’. What’s more, politics becomes about nostalgia, the dislocation of populations mean that attitudes harden towards anyone who is different, and they popularised the term now used frequently – Information Overload.

The publicity surrounding Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence model that can write poetry, draft scripts, not just follow instructions, but apologise for its mistakes, has generated a huge reaction, with even AI enthusiasts such as Elon Musk calling for a pause while the implications are figured out. Its name stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. And the pre -training is extraordinary. Chat GPT has absorbed millions of books, millions of websites, and is always hungry for more.

Some of the great benefits of this sort of AI were debated on this programme this week: such as the potential to transform access to education.
But in the development of this technology, ethical and moral questions are fundamental too. In the 18th and 19th century Industrial revolution, technology was developed that replicated the work of human bodies. Arms and legs that farmed, that made tools, and built buildings, were replaced with machines that could do the same jobs faster for longer. Christian and other social reformers of the time recognised the human cost and often worked hard to improve the conditions of the poorest.

In this 21st century revolution, it’s the brain that is being replicated by a bot that can do more, more quickly, more accurately and doesn’t tire.
But of course pre-trained AI will have been created by humans in the first place, and without thoughtful regulation, could simply replicate human failings as well: developing new ways to be unjust or reinforce inequality of opportunity and power, creating new ways to exclude or dominate.

In the Easter season, Christ risen from the dead appears to his friends. In their palpable confusion and alarm, the disciples experience their own version of Future Shock. But crucially, this new future is shaped by the past. The wounds of crucifixion are still there. Resurrection doesn’t mean erasure. The question arises then, how can this new AI revolution take account of the wounds of the past and not reinforce the inequalities that previous revolutions exposed? A fundamental moral question goes deeper still: Does humankind have the resilience and will to ensure that a generative AI future is open to all, resisting what sometimes seems the inevitable increase in the power of a few?

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