Page 372 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
Algorithm and Artificial Intelligence
Between the first astonishment before the internet and the
unease it awakens, a decisive shift occurs. What began as com-
munication becomes something more determinative. Beneath
the flow of information emerges a new logic: the algorithm—and
with it, the question of how thought itself is formed and perhaps
even replaced. It is here that the technological age reveals one of
its most radical horizons—what we now call artificial intelli-
gence.
In its early phase, technology is the linking of logos (science)
with the extraction and isolation of nature’s energy through anal-
ysis, but later, logos itself becomes identified with nature’s poten-
tial and the methods of its extraction and use. Thus, technology
risks ceasing to be merely a means and tends to become an end
in itself, with the purpose of life centering on the reproduction
and improvement of technology. Informatics completes this pro-
cess by fully rationalizing (logifying) nature, showing that its lo-
gos can be dematerialized, detached from nature, and trans-
formed into information—that is, mathematical power. Human-
ity no longer extracts only energy from nature but also informa-
tion.
It has been observed by some that the development of artifi-
cial intelligence—what it may become—is truly frightening. The
human being is being altered; he is no longer simply the human
being we have known. This creates a great difficulty for theology.
The human being of tomorrow may be something entirely dif-
ferent. Yuval Noah Harari observes that the human being will no
longer be what he once was.
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