In The AI Ten Commandments, I describe how all of our religious and spiritual traditions have been enabled by and mediated through technology.
Controlling fire gave us the ability to process food outside of our bodies, freeing energy that would otherwise have gone to digestion to instead support our very demanding human brains. Without that, our ancestors would never have achieved the levels of cognitive and social development that gave rise to our various traditions for understanding the word.
Domesticating plants and animals allowed us to develop agricultural surpluses that made our civilizations and associated traditions possible. All of what we call “world religions” today are ultimately agricultural traditions. These traditions could be enshrined and more readily and reliably shared as a result of the writing systems that were the direct results of agriculture-based civilizational development (and, just to be clear, agriculture is the most aggressive form of human biotechnology in history).
It is not mere coincidence that the biblical Ten Commandments arrived not long after the advent of alphabetic writing. Other systems and codes were inscribed on stones prior to alphabetic writing, but none of them have lasted or reached people at anything close to the same level. And then, of course, the printing press was the key enabler of the protestant revolution starting in sixteenth century Europe.
Any one of us who opens a book to access our traditions stepping into a revolutionary technology just as we do when we tap our phones.
We have also used our technologies to create special places where we can consult higher powers. While there are an almost unlimited number of examples, one of the more well known is the Oracle of Delphi.
The Oracle of Delphi was a sacred site in ancient Greece, active from roughly the 8th century BCE into the Roman era, on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Visitors sought guidance from Apollo through the Pythia, a priestess who entered a trance (likely induced by natural vapors) and delivered cryptic answers that priests interpreted. Delphi became one of the ancient world’s most influential decision-making centers and functioned as an early human technology for accessing higher authority. Knowledge and ideas morphed as they flowed through this essential geographic and social crossroads.
In my The AI Ten Commandments book, I named the section of the book where I drew the parallel between the original Oracle of Delphi and our budding relationship with AI today “The Oracle of Delph.ai.” When the book was finished, I thought it would be fun to explore the possibility of uploading the AI Ten Commandments themselves and the entire book to an AI chatbot so people could ask ethical questions to be answered based on these principles. To add greater depth, my plan was to also upload my other books and writing, much of which has dealt with question of morality and ethics as we struggle to integrate our new, superhuman technological capabilities into our societies and lives.
As I looked for a technological partner to create what I’d imagined, it almost felt like a sign from the gods that I found a startup company called… wait for it… Dephi.ai. You’ve got that right. In trying to create Delph.ai, I found Delphi.ai. One “I” made us a we. Dephi.ai had previously done AI chatbots for many public figures, as they also did for me, but they had never before helped create an AI ethics bot.
Working together, we uploaded my books and other writing, as well as audio files of my voice. After lots of back and forths, the result is this AI ethics bot.
Ask it anything you want. Just click the “chat” icon and start talking. You might consider asking: “Based on the principles of The AI Ten Commandments, how might I think about [insert].” The voice you hear will be my digital avatar but it’s not me, so please take everything you learn with a big grain of salt.
Some other questions you might ask include:
- How can I use the principles of The AI Ten Commandments to navigate a particular challenge?
- How can I apply the Human + AI mindset to improve my work or creative process?
- What does it mean to live a meaningful life in an age of increasingly intelligent machines?
- How can I collaborate with AI in ways that enhance, rather than diminish, my humanity?
- What are the biggest risks of AI, and how can we work to mitigate them?
- How should we think about truth, trust, and authenticity in a world of AI-generated content?
- What principles should guide us in building and deploying powerful AI systems?
This AI ethics bot is not designed to in any way replace our many wonderful human ethical, moral, and religions, and spiritual codes, including the Ten Commandments, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Eightfold Path, the Yamas and Niyamas, the Five Precepts, the Analects of Confucius, and everything else.
Instead, it’s intended to bring together wisdom from all of our traditions that might be helpful and even meaningful to people.
I hope you’ll start a conversation and see if you are one of them.