From “Eden to Ai” illustrates the movement of humans throughout history and its fight for its survival sold these days under the guise of progress. It’s about human history and that only a few can grasp the seriousness of this reality.
As written in my previous article, AI is the new Frankenstein but what if it was a bit more than this. Let’s explore and find out the similarities between the birth of man and the creation of AI.
While I must admit the religious aspects of it might be difficult to comprehend for some readers, it is important to note that this world is incomprehensible without understanding its religious aspects. You can be an atheist but these basic concepts are key to fully understand the world we live in.
“My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of the Enlightenment praised, that the devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
― Charles Beaudelaire
The Fall of Man and the Rise of AI
In order to illustrate the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and its link to knowledge, we will take the old Apple logo, which has numerous encapsulated layers of meanings. For those who haven’t yet figured it out, the bitten Apple logo makes a clear reference to Eve who ate the Forbidden Fruit of “Knowledge”. It puzzled me that many people refuse the evidence of this by saying that apples are just “common symbols”, hence it just happened to be there.
As seen in the picture above, this is the first logo of Apple Computers. In the frame we can see Isaac Newton thinking under a tree with an apple over his head on the verge of falling. As confirmed from his friend William Stukeley whose manuscripts were made available to the Royal Society, this is the moment when Newton formulated his Theory of Gravitation after the apple fell from the tree.
We went into the garden, & drank the under the shade of some apple trees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. “why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground,” thought he to him self: occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood: “why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.“
William Stukeley, Sir Isaac Newton’s Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726
The apple is a clear reference to the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden. It also shows that the apple is glowing as a clear reference to enlightenment and knowledge.
On the sides of the frame, we also have a poem excerpt from ”The Prelude” a poem by William Wordsworth
And from my pillow, looking forth by light Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold The antechapel where the statue stood Of Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind for ever Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
This poem clearly suggest a connection between science and spirituality. When Newton contemplated his prism, he discovered that white light is composed of the spectrum of colors, a discovery he made in 1666.
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, “Let Newton be” and all was light.
― Alexander Pope
The illustration has clearly 3 references, one from the Garden of Eden with the glowing light around the apple, the other, the poem around the frame that refers to Newton’s light discoveries though his prism. Then the third, the infamous “theory of gravity”; What do these references suggest?
Newton’s discovery had a tremendous ripple effect on science and discoveries. Adding to the fact that the apple represents enlightenment and access to knowledge for human beings, it could suggest that our access to knowledge is linked with the original sin of man.
The message is simple, the forbidden fruit gave knowledge but it had a cost….
“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12, NIV).
“Eritis sicut Dii” ( You Shall Be As God)
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5
The phrase “Eritis sicut Dii” is Latin for “You shall be as gods.” From Genesis 3:5. In this verse, the Serpent is speaking to Eve in the Garden of Eden, tempting her to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Serpent tells Eve that if she eats the fruit, she will not die (as God had warned), but instead, “Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” This phrase has been interpreted in various ways over time, often in discussions about the nature of knowledge, temptation, and the consequences of human actions.
“God is dead, long live God!”
Friedrich Nietzsche himself wrote about this in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (Also sprach Zarathustra), published in the late 19th century. Here is the full quote:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves (Tikkun Olam), the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
The old world that relied on a divine order is no longer and this new condition of man let him believe that he should become his own god by making his own golem (AI) that would let him transcend his human condition and death by “Ways of God”.
Alexander Pope on his “Essay On Man” conveys the same position that men may be now too far from God to be able to get back to Eden, hence becoming god could be the only way to salvation? “Vindicate the ways of God to Man”.
We can find a similar concept in “Paradise lost” by Joseph Milton, which is an attempt to justify the ways of God to Man” (1.26)
Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful
Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen
Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme
So, are we lost and fighting for our survival or are we at war with God himself?
As Bishop Charles Maignen wrote in his book “La doctrine révolutionnaire et ses principes”
“The war is without truce and without mercy between the revolution and those who have remained faithful to God on Earth. Because the revolution is an attempt to organize the world without God and against God, it is satanic in its essence.”
At this point in time, humans started their quest to become god themselves through a rebellion against God that had to be done through perversion.
per : Latin Complete
invertere: Latin Inversion
Did humans go too far to be able to retreat to their original state? Sometimes this is what I tend to think because of so much evil in this world. This would explain why so many brilliant and intelligent minds move in this direction.
Free Will
Humanity gained knowledge and consciousness, making them more like their Creator. In a similar vein, the creation of AI can be seen as an attempt to replicate human intelligence, to create beings that possess knowledge and consciousness like us. The quest to create AI stems from our longing to understand and recreate the human mind. Let’s not forget that God, in order to make his creature perfect, gave him “Free-Will”, will AI have free-will too and will we be annihilated by our own creation? Could we be in an endless Infernal Cycle?
If man really wants to become God, his creation must also be perfect and have free-will; hence, he should omit Isaac Asimov’s “3 Laws of Robotics” which state:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This is the perfect transition to talk about Alan Turing, the father of the “Turing Test” that is in use in the form of CAPTCHA. Its goal is to give the ability to detect whether you are facing a human or a computer.
Ezekiel 36:26:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Alan Turing: Parenthesis before conclusion.
Let’s briefly explore Alan Turing who is often considered the pioneer in AI with the “Imitation game” he created, also called The Turing Test. The purpose of this test is that if a machine could be considered intelligent, it could impersonate a human well enough to deceive a human interrogator into thinking it was also human. This concept has become a fundamental principle in AI research, emphasizing the importance of human-like behavior in intelligent machines.
He laid down the ground work for the future of AI with some future project like ELIZA, a natural language processing computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum in the mid-1960s. Just like Newton, he became a member of the royal society for his groundbreaking researches and his help during WWII to decipher and encrypt messages. He now appears on the 50 pound bill.
Alan is considered as a Pioneer for modern computing and laid down the necessary foundation for AI. Besides AI, why are we really talking about this gentleman?
In 1952, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality which was illegal in the UK back then and had to submit to a chemical castration. This affair led to the removal of his security clearance from the British government.
In the biographic book “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, the author Leavitt David explains the fascination of Alan toward the wicked queen in Snow White:
“Turing went to see Snow White with his friend David Champernowne and took an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses the apple in her poisonous brew. “Dip the apple in the brew, Let the sleeping death seep through,” she chants, then cackles to her sidekick, a raven, as the poison forms a skull on the surface of the apple. “Look at the skin,” the Queen continues.
A symbol of what lies within. Now turn red to tempt Snow White, To make her hunger for a bite.
The Queen offers the apple to the raven, who flaps wildly, trying to escape. “It’s not for you, it’s for Snow White,” the Queen says, laughing.
When she breaks the tender peel, To taste the apple from my hand, Her breath will still, her blood congeal, Then I’ll be the fairest in the land!
The scene captivated Turing to such a degree that he took to chanting the Queen’s verses over and over. Perhaps what appealed to him was its morbid eroticism, not to mention the rather blatant allusion to the biblical myth: this apple tempts Snow White as another tempted Eve. Yet whereas Eve bites into the apple of her own free will (she could, after all, have resisted the serpent’s blandishments), Snow White is the victim of a well-rehearsed campaign of deception on the part of the Queen, who dresses as a hag, and tries out a variety of ploys to persuade Snow White to taste the apple; indeed, she is in the end able to convince her nemesis only by telling her that the apple is “magic” and that it will grant Snow White her wish. Only by appealing to her passion for the Prince can the Queen break down Snow White’s resistance and persuade her to break “the tender peel,” in so doing losing her psychic virginity and consigning herself to a “sleeping death.” Which aspect of the film’s fraught psychosexual architecture appealed to Turing, however, he never let on.
In 1954, Alan Turing was found dead from cyanide poisoning with a bitten apple next to him. Although it was concluded to be a suicide, nothing in the previous days would have led people to think he would commit suicide, nor did his mother ever believe it. Did he know too much as suggested by the title of his biography and was an embarrassing witness? The fact is that one of the fathers of AI died from what looked like a poisoned apple even though the apple itself was never analyzed.
It is also interesting to note that cyanide is contained in crushed apple seeds; but of course, it would require at least an hundred of those to be deadly. The death appears symbolic overall and seems to convey a cryptic message. I agree that this could be something totally and ironically unfortunate.
This text also talks about the “Free Will” of EVE not to eat the fruit of knowledge while Snow White is a “victim of a campaign of deception”; weren’t they both deceived?
Wasn’t Turing also deceived by his knowledge and researches?
I do not have answers to this question but the parallel is interesting.
As the Bible suggests, a fruit shall be eaten with its seeds and not separately:
“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’”
Technology as the Modern-Day Forbidden Fruit
It’s not a surprise to realize that Apple computer’s logo illustrates the fall of man from the garden. Why would Steve Jobs price his first computer at $666? Could this be another coincidence? Of course it could.
While we can see a parallel between Adam the first man and the computer both made from ground, in the Bible, Adam is made from Clay. Our computers also comes from elements from the ground like selenium.
Genesis 2.7
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
While it’s hard to deny that AI is partly a messianic project and has been very mystified through TV, the reality is otherwise. For example, Elon Musk is one of the public figures that has been really mystifying AI by saying the following during the MIT AeroAstro talk on October 24th, 2014
With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like… (wink) yeah he’s sure he can control the demon… doesn’t work out.
At the current stage we are still, based on my research, far from reaching the “Point of Singularity”, that will inaugurate the gain of real consciousness to an AI. What makes consciousness is the right brain which provides us with sensations, emotions, and intuitions and is linked to our connection to the outside world. A machine is purely left brain and to this day has no connection to the outer world, which is the key for independent learning. LLM, like GPT are not new technologies and already reaching their limit.
As we have seen, we have been sold this hubristic project through television and science fiction with the perspective that we could transcend death and become super human; I believe there are different layers to understand all this. First, a transhuman hubristic agenda which is likely doomed. The second, an egalitarian communist agenda. And the third, the myth of the “New Man” all encapsulated in one notion, “the repair of the world” that I will cover in the next article called “Tikkun Olam” which raises the question, why are we being sold such a hubristic project?
Light of the World, as I wander around barefoot and catching fireflies, help me to be mindful of the way their glow lights up the night. This is what you do, Lord. You bring light to the dark spaces. And when the sun starts to set, and my own brightness seems dull, remind me that, like the fireflies, you use me to light up this dark world, too.