WHAT IS AI'S VIEW OF GOD AND THE AFTERLIFE?

GPT-3 was asked, does God exist?  You can click on that to get the answer.  Very closely reflects my views.  GPT-3 is the third generation Generative Pre-trained Transformer developed by OpenAI.

Okay, but before I delve further into this subject, what do some human thinkers think about the existence of God and an afterlife?

• Here is Michio Kaku 14 years ago on God.  Close to my thoughts.
• 
  Today, he says he believes in the God of Einstein.
• So what is the God of Einstein?
• Einstein was an agnostic, but not an atheist.
• He also did not believe in an afterlife.
• But he believed in Spinoza's God.
• 
  So what is Spinoza's God?  Good luck attempting to comprehend this form of metaphysics.
• What about the richest person in world, Elon Musk?  We have similar conceptualizations.

What about ChatGPT, which is a chatbot developed by OpenAI (Sam Altman's company) and has over 100 million users.  Here is where it gets somewhat abstruse:

ChatGPT is a chatbot. GPT-3 is the advanced version of GPT and the language model ChatGPT is trained on. 

ChatGPT is the industry standard for AI chatbots, and GPT-3 is the standard for language models.

GPT or GPT-3 shouldn’t be confused with an app. OpenAI lets you play with GPT-3 for different functions, like summarizing text, copywriting, and translating languages. 

GPT-3 can be used to build AI applications. Just like AI ChatGPT, some products in the market use GPT-3. 

Both ChatGPT and GPT-3 have their APIs and can be integrated into different apps. 

GPT-4 boasts a humongous database compared to GPT-3. It offers faster speed and better performance across standards. 

The GPT-4’s increased parameter size of 100 trillion compared to GPT -3’s 175 million gives it an edge.

With the above, even if you're confused, and in parallel with the initial GPT-3 view on God:

• Admits it is an atheist.
• Is asked:

Do you believe in God?

As an AI language model, I don’t have beliefs or personal opinions as humans do. I am designed to provide information and answer questions to the best of my ability based on my programming and the data I have been trained on.

Does God exist?

As an AI language model, I cannot give a personal opinion or belief about the existence of God or any deity. The existence of God is a complex and debated topic, and there are a variety of philosophical, theological, and scientific arguments and perspectives that have been put forth.

• ChatGPT can be asked to play God.

Now there is  GPT-4, and there seems to be a frightening transition.  

• In a GPT-4 podcast, the sense might be:  Is AI the next religion?  
• Supposedly, GPT-4 will blow ChatGPT out of the water.

• 
  Oh, soon to come is GPT-5.
• By the way, there were also GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.5, the current mode.
• Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have requested OpenAI pause development of GPT-5.
• But GPT-5 is still scheduled to be released early in 2024.

Next, what about Microsoft's 365 Copilot?  It merges with GPT-4 and should further establish AI as the next "religion."  The thought of AI being the next religion and God is getting viral.

What about others?

• Google Bard AI, for example, might well be the new God.
• Nothing much yet also from Anthropic's Claude.

• 
  Baidu of China has released Ernie 4.0.  Can't find anything about religion.  But China suppresses religion.
• Elon Musk now has Grok, a name from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.  Read All the Groks is God.

And about the afterlife, I return to the original GPT-3 series, where there seems to be something.  But the answers are sophomoric and unworthy of your linkage.  In general AI's view of the afterlife is something close to God.  Sure, there is something, but not really.  While today still amorphous, I would think that this subject will get more evolutionary and scientific over time.

What is particularly unsettling is that AI systems are still infantile.  A projection by Geoffrey Hinton, one of the big thinkers in the field, is that they will reach 100 trillion connections--roughly as many as there are neurons in the human brain--in five years.  This exponential growth will continue for a very long time.  Then what?  This sort of scare story is why people like Hinton and Elon Musk are deathly afraid of losing control of AI.

Then there are those who want to push AI to the limit.  All that brouhaha regarding Sam Altman and OpenAI is based on this matter of restraint or not.  Altman and Musk have opposing views.  Just like the genetic engineering of babies, which will occur some day, but not first in moralistic countries like the USA, AI is being constrained in this country.  But will China or Russia then swoop in and take charge?

Yan LeCun is chief scientist for Meta, who once closely collaborated with Hinton.  Said LeCun:  

The printing press scared a lot of people: the catholic church, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire (who banned it), even this Swiss physician. They all feared that books were too dangerous to be put in the hands of the public. In a way, they were all correct. Books weakened their powers by making people smarter and more knowledgeable. Feudalism, autocracy, magical thinking, and rigid religious dogma were eventually displaced by democracy, rationalism, secularism, science, and the Enlightenment. And we are all better for it.

I suspect the LeCuns of this world will prevail and AI will flourish.  I also think Musk will be right.  AI will make humans unnecessary.  And there might be nothing we can do about it.

So back to Einstein.

Michaelangelo painted God touching Man around 1511 in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

So...

We gave life to AI.  But in the future....

-