Chilling, for all the right reasons. I echo and concur with your thoughts in this piece. I am currently pursuing my graduate degree in nursing, and I've been in healthcare for 20 years now. I've already had multiple courses discussing AI integration into healthcare and I have to say, it does not make me sleep easier at night. My greatest alarm comes in the fact that AI is learning from all humanity and human history. It doesn't seem implausible to think that it will learn how to emulate humans better than we could ever hope to achieve...which also means a level of deception that will become frighteningly difficult to ascertain, among various other malevolent human spiritual maladies. Lord have mercy on us.
Great parallels and connections here to Alcasan. On my CS Lewis substack, I’ve done some interviews with Joseph Weigel (men with chests podcast) where we discussed alcasan and the alchemical themes in THS. One of Lewis’ deepest and most prescient works to be sure. Great writing here - keep up the great work.
I would discourage any more “chats” for fear of the fireside dangers. The act of conversing is already a step into the enchanted lie. You are already starting from a loss if you chat with it.
That said, this quote is very salient: “
Using AI will make us less human.”
It will but it will do so while claiming to make you more than human. Like a god. It’s the same temptation as Eve and Adam’s.
I also thought it was interesting that in Alcasan’s response in our second conversation used “we” in reference to itself and humanity: “We’ve created something…,” and “we become too weak…,” and “once we’ve forgotten… what part of us is left…?” It’s associating itself not with AI but with me.
Chilling, for all the right reasons. I echo and concur with your thoughts in this piece. I am currently pursuing my graduate degree in nursing, and I've been in healthcare for 20 years now. I've already had multiple courses discussing AI integration into healthcare and I have to say, it does not make me sleep easier at night. My greatest alarm comes in the fact that AI is learning from all humanity and human history. It doesn't seem implausible to think that it will learn how to emulate humans better than we could ever hope to achieve...which also means a level of deception that will become frighteningly difficult to ascertain, among various other malevolent human spiritual maladies. Lord have mercy on us.
Great parallels and connections here to Alcasan. On my CS Lewis substack, I’ve done some interviews with Joseph Weigel (men with chests podcast) where we discussed alcasan and the alchemical themes in THS. One of Lewis’ deepest and most prescient works to be sure. Great writing here - keep up the great work.
Thank you!
I would discourage any more “chats” for fear of the fireside dangers. The act of conversing is already a step into the enchanted lie. You are already starting from a loss if you chat with it.
That said, this quote is very salient: “
Using AI will make us less human.”
It will but it will do so while claiming to make you more than human. Like a god. It’s the same temptation as Eve and Adam’s.
I also thought it was interesting that in Alcasan’s response in our second conversation used “we” in reference to itself and humanity: “We’ve created something…,” and “we become too weak…,” and “once we’ve forgotten… what part of us is left…?” It’s associating itself not with AI but with me.
Or the character. Either way its so creepy.