Analogous to the "God of the Gaps", is there an "AI of the Gaps"?

Asked by ragingloli (52232

) January 27th, 2023

The “God of the Gaps” is the habit of non-6-day-creationist religionists of invoking “God did it”, where ever there is a gap in scientific knowledge, and the size and number of gaps ever shrinking, this God, too, is relegated to smaller and smaller niches of existence. Where in the past it was lightning, the weather, disease, or the origin of life, it now is abiogenesis, or the cause for the big bang.

Similarly, despite all the advances in AI and their continuously expanding capabilities, detractors will never stop saying “AI will never be able to do X, with X shrinking with each new iteration.

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I feel like that could be said about technology in general. Isn’t the history of technology one of not thinking it could do what it now does?

I’m not sure about AI. I’m still on the side of “AI is overrated in terms of what it can do”. I know Chat GPT is blowing minds across the internet right now but I have yet to get sucked in to thinking it’s going to replace human output, especially when I see how incompetent “personal assistants” are.

Locke (518

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It’s an interesting analogy, but I think it’s serving very different functions. The God of the Gaps is a justification for believing in God despite science showing that God is not, in fact, responsible for X or Y or Z. The AI objection instead ackowledges AI exists, but is a justification for believing that AI will never do X or Y or Z. It’s similar in construction but very different in usage I think.

Entropy (4172

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The difference as I see it is there will always be a gap in scientific knowledge and so there will always be room for God. I am no so confident about AI’s limits and I’m not sure it has any.

flutherother (34865

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