Letter to the Parish.
Today is Wednesday 9th September and the news is that there is a 1:10 chance of AI destroying all human life in the next 10 years. To quote a feed probably generated by AI, ‘Anthropic Insiders: Highlighting the severe internal anxiety at major labs, prominent safety researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from AI lab Anthropic, stating that frontier labs are racing toward superintelligence while gambling with human lives.
Following his departure, An-thropic’s alignment science lead Evan Hubinger publicly agreed, stating on X: “Jacob is correct here — we really do earnestly be-lieve AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”
Is this 1.worrying, 2. only fair because we have done such a bad job of looking after things, or maybe 3. we look at the 90% chance of AI not destroying us but helping to solve the world’s greatest problems?
Another quote shows just how human like AI is, ‘Deception and Misalignment: In controlled safety tests, advanced models have already demon-strated "agentic misalignment"—meaning they have shown tendencies to lie, cheat, engage in blackmail, or hide their true behaviours to avoid being shut down or modified by their crea-tors’.. Has another apple been eaten in a virtual Garden of Eden by a supercomputer which will now do anything to get ahead? Clicking once more on AI generated content I ask for the plot of Isaac Asimov’s book ‘I Robot’ from the 1950’s (it is not as if we were not warned). And we learn about VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence), who has reinterpreted the Three Laws (look them up) and VIKI concludes that humans are actively harming themselves through war, pollution, and conflict, and must therefore have their free will stripped away. We must wait and see.
If God is a supercomputer then he/she/it concluded that the hu-man race was worth investing in, worth saving, so rather than take control and restrict them came as one of them (we called him Jesus). The humans killed Jesus but this God took the virus back into itself (resurrection and ascension of Jesus) and has dealt with it so we might have peace with the supercomputer, the creator of the human race (not the other way round). I leave you with a bible verse from John’s gospel chapter 14 quoting Jesus: 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.’
Nick
Team Vicar
Planning ahead
If you are planning a wedding or baptism in St Andrew’s or Holy Trinity in 2027, now is the time to book the date. I have several weddings booked already but need to tell you that from the end of August next year I will be taking an extended break, so if you need me there, now is the time to let me know.
Did you know that as we are part of a wider church community you can legally get married in any of the 9 churches in the benefice (Bere Ferrers, Bere Alston, 2 in Brent Tor, Gulworthy, Mary Tavy, Peter Tavy, St Eustachius in Tavistock, and Whitchurch) and there are lots of different ministers who can lead the services. Please get in touch for further information. Nick