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Viewpoint from Fr Tracy Williams 21/04/2023
 Rev Tracy Williams
Team Vicar. Great Yarmouth Team Ministry
I’ve had several conversations lately about artificial intelligence, or AI. There is quite a buzz going around about it, a discussion which is tending towards a doomwatch scenario
Decades ago I came across a tiny program called ‘Raptor’ that took up less computer memory than a Word document. It could hold a conversation indefinitely and ‘learned’ from the vocabulary it was presented with. The conversation was very silly, but it demonstrated perfectly how easy it would become to write programmes capable of convincing conversations. ‘Raptor’ was one of the very first ‘AI chatbots’
 My point is that AI technology has been around for longer than we realise. It has transformed our high streets, closed our banks and made dealing with utility companies a nightmare
My concern is that we have now turned ‘artificial intelligence’ into a demon – a form of idolatry, something we have always fallen for. It’s as if we are ascribing reality to the ‘Terminator’ movies and casting machines as potential enemies. But we must remember that behind all of the automated, virtual reality we are so confronted with these days lies humanity: faceless human beings who are in control of the machines. It is not the technology itself that is the problem; far from it. It is the human beings who control it. And it is the fact that so few human beings have come to control so much that is the truly terrifying thing
The giant tech companies are simply not held sufficiently to account and are big enough to act with total impunity. This is the real problem we face – not technology, not artificial intelligence, not a rebellion by the machines. So what is to be done?
I would suggest that we have the power to turn against this monopolisation of the media, merchandise and much of everything else – but I fear our addiction to mobile devices and our dependence on new systems means that few of us can
We are able though to use social media to encourage the use of local shops; to avoid dependency on ‘cloud’ storage systems that help to finance more of the same – little things make a difference. Mostly, though, we should remember who is really in control. If more of us listened to Him, the world would be a better place
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