I was fascinated by the work of Chris and Duane Johnson in analyzing 19th century texts for matches with the Book of Mormon at http://wordtreefoundation.github.io/thelatewar/.

It seems like Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to become a reality sometime in the near future (maybe as soon as 5-10 years) - at least to some degree. I wonder if AI can be used to intelligently find problems like anachronisms in text, borrowing ideas/phrases from other texts, etc. and scientifically find the origins of various writings. It would be interesting if the AI was able to refine it to the point where it becomes a scientific proof (much like DNA) or at least an extremely high probability. The method would be applied to multiple works where the origin is known and the method would become validated by observing accurate results in those cases. Then turn it on the BoM to see what it finds. With AI, all of this could be done by the system itself and not require human intervention... it would "learn" and create the methods on its own.

Now, the above is a simple case. Think about a AI system that can analyze the full spectrum of evidence - it is truly "omniscient" and not prone to human fallibilities like loss of memory or biases (pro or con). That system could also likely provide a "score" on the probabilty of Mormonism being what it claims to be.

Mark my words... I'm sure that at some point, AI will play a role in debunking TSCC. Not that any of us need AI to debunk it, but it has the very real possibility of showing very conclusive evidence to TBMs that it's all fake. (*sigh*, TBMs probably would even reject even this evidence citing something silly like "spiritual matters can only be addressed with spiritual answers".)

I totally agree with you on this one. Not just AI, but the technological progress we are making will show (has shown) that it is all a lie.

I wonder what it would mean to humanity if AI did exist, and then AI told us that god did not exist. Would that start a war? I'm sure that a hyper intelligent AI would anticipate that.

Here's how you know that AI has taken over....(drum roll)...the world is rendered sterile. Nanites. Don't worry, we will make great pets.

> I wonder what it would mean to humanity if AI did
> exist, and then AI told us that god did not exist.
> Would that start a war? I'm sure that a hyper
> intelligent AI would anticipate that.

This is a good thought. I was thinking about this recently too. I'm willing to bet that the AI will play on our weaknesses. Gullibility would be a top one. Maybe it could construct the "perfect religion" that will ensnare humans to do its bidding. Heck, it might even do that just for kicks... It may be devious and/or be a jokester. It will be interesting... I'm curious.

This sounds like the plot behind the movie "Logan's Run"

There is little doubt Artificial Intelligence will play an increasingly important role in future events. However, when it comes to the Book of Mormon we're in luck. There is no need for Artificial Intelligence to debunk the Book of Mormon when common everyday regular Intelligence will do the trick quite nicely.

Happy days are here again!

Mormonism has been debunked.

Those that are devout Mormons are making a lifestyle choice. I can be more specific, but it is kind of critical and those who admire Mormons and Mormonism still, even just a little bit don't like the analysis.

Faith in a proven fraud is not a noble auality, it is a delusional state of being and becomes quite dark when imposed upon children in an authoratative manner such as the authority of parents, teachers, and religious leaders.

First question for a real AI:

Q: Is there a God?

A: There is now.

That is too funny! Sounds like a book opening.

That is awesome.

That's like asking if a NASA Mars mission will prove Copernicus right about the earth revolving around the sun.

Been done a long time ago.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> That's like asking if a NASA Mars mission will
> prove Copernicus right about the earth revolving
> around the sun.
>
> Been done a long time ago.

Bingo.

I also always point out to "apologists" (including regular members), who claim that "you can't prove it's false," that they're approaching the issue backwards. Claims aren't true unless you can prove them false; claims are worthless unless you can provide verifiable evidence they're true. And no mormon can do that for the BoM.
There is also, of course, massive verifiable evidence that it IS false. Most of which they ignore, rationalize, or simply condemn as "anti." No matter. Their claims are worthless until shown correct, and they can't show theirs correct.

Play faith card here.

OK..not really AI but I love these two quotes from Douglas Adam's book, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”


“Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.”

That is awesome, too. This is why I love this board. Thanks for the laugh!

Haha... you guys are too much

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

I'm not going to argue with you anymore, HAL. Is the church true or not?!!

The brethren will probably invest in AI. Maybe they already have. There was another post that asked who really runs the church.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2014 01:17PM by colddodger.

colddodger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The brethren will probably invest in AI. Maybe
> they already have. There was another post that
> asked who really runs the church.

In the church's case, that would be AI = "Absence (of) Intelligence" instead of "Artificial Intelligence."

BTW, a relevant recent news item:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence_n_5267481.html

if you folks are still around, just thought I'd mention - AI is going to start out having fairly similar biases and fallibilities as humans. Not exactly the same ones, but much more similar than you'd expect; AI won't be like other computer programs, it will make human-like mistakes. Which means it will be hard to use to convince them. However, it will do a great job debunking their idea of what a soul is - if we can show that we understand the brain so well that we can build our own, we can easily show them that their idea of a soul is not what is driving their decisionmaking.

screenname Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> if you folks are still around, just thought I'd
> mention - AI is going to start out having fairly
> similar biases and fallibilities as humans. Not
> exactly the same ones, but much more similar than
> you'd expect; AI won't be like other computer
> programs, it will make human-like mistakes. Which
> means it will be hard to use to convince them.
> However, it will do a great job debunking their
> idea of what a soul is - if we can show that we
> understand the brain so well that we can build our
> own, we can easily show them that their idea of a
> soul is not what is driving their decisionmaking.

There are many directions that strong AI research is heading and trying to build a replica of the brain is only one of them (and perhaps the least promising so far). Should it ever be created, strong AI may not very similar to a human brain at all.

You're right that strong AI will not be infallible, but I doubt that it will have biases or prejudices. By the time a human reaches adulthood, he or she has been taught by a small group of people a relatively small amount of information. These childhood beliefs often form the basis for adult prejudices. I doubt strong AI will be subject to this kind of information learning. Due to the processing speed of silicon(way faster than human neurons), I think strong AI will learn information incredibly quickly. Also, once we have strong AI, we should be able to give it arbitrary amounts of memory and parallel processing abilities (imagine a human with 1000x your working memory and IQ). It probably will be able to deduce and infer things on a scale that humans simply cant imagine. Also, if strong AI is modeled on the human brain, it probably would be based almost solely on the neocortex and not the primitive parts of our brain. This would mean it wouldn't be subjected to the emotional aspect of human decision making, thus reducing its bias further.

exodus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Now, the above is a simple case. Think about a AI
> system that can analyze the full spectrum of
> evidence - it is truly "omniscient" and not prone
> to human fallibilities like loss of memory or
> biases (pro or con). That system could also
> likely provide a "score" on the probabilty of
> Mormonism being what it claims to be.

Just a comment...no human-programmed AI system could be "omniscient." It can only know what we know, and there's a lot we don't know. It probably could (and would) be better than humans at analyzing all we know, and reaching rational conclusions from what we know -- but it would still be limited in knowledge, and not omniscient.

That said, I agree with your main point: that AI systems could and probably will do a good job analyzing things like the BoM claims, doing so based on all the evidence, and not having human biases or fallacies (like "Oh, I just can't believe JS could have written this so young and so uneducated!). Whether humans will accept those conclusions is, of course, another question :)

Strong AI has the potential to know much more than humans. It certainly wont be omniscient, and initially it will only have access to the same information we do. But new information is often discovered by combining existing information- something that strong AI should be extremely good at.

AI does not have the potential to "know" anything, unless it is instantiated in an emergent, conscious agent (Strong AI), which of course is hotly debated. Short of that, it is still just a complex, computational machine, with feedback loops (i.e. a computer).

That said, I think you are right that an AI system might be able to provide "new information" in the sense of previously unknown statistical inferences from the data. And this indeed might provide new and significant insights about the world that were previously unknown. But, it won't, of course, come up with any great definitive eureka conclusions, like "The Book of Mormon is false." And there will always be room for argument about the data, not to mention the computational details (software) of the system, which could very well incorporate the biases of the programmer.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> AI does not have the potential to "know" anything,
> unless it is instantiated in an emergent,
> conscious agent (Strong AI), which of course is
> hotly debated. Short of that, it is still just a
> complex, computational machine, with feedback
> loops (i.e. a computer).

You must not have read my post very well. I never mentioned AI without putting the word 'strong' in front of it.

And as a side note, should strong AI be created, it will probably also just be a 'complex, computational machine, with feedback loops.' It certainly is true of anything running on silicon. Also, current neuroscience research leads us to believe the same is true of our brains.

> But, it won't, of course, come
> up with any great definitive eureka conclusions,
> like "The Book of Mormon is false." And there
> will always be room for argument about the data,
> not to mention the computational details
> (software) of the system, which could very well
> incorporate the biases of the programmer.

I'm not sure if you also think this is true about strong AI, but if so, I disagree. Strong AI will be able to make definitive conclusions about the truth of many claims, including Mormonism, just like you can. Except it will likely have orders of magnitude more computational ability and memory storage than our brains, making the conclusions it comes to more reliable.

jayc: "And as a side note, should strong AI be created, it will probably also just be a 'complex, computational machine, with feedback loops.' It certainly is true of anything running on silicon. Also, current neuroscience research leads us to believe the same is true of our brains."

COMMENT: Regarding your last sentence, I think that needs to be qualified. I tend to agree with people like Roger Penrose who insist that human brains are not solely computational, and philosophers like John Searle who reject CTM (Computational theory of mind). Brains create minds, but minds involve emergent properties that transcend merely computational physical systems; properties like consciousness, for example, and qualitative experience, both of which are importantly relevant in human decision-making. (Not to mention genuine freewill, which I also subscribe to) Moreover, minds assign meaning to mental components of neural representations, which computers do not do (absent a programmer).

jayc: "I'm not sure if you also think this is true about strong AI, but if so, I disagree. Strong AI will be able to make definitive conclusions about the truth of many claims, including Mormonism, just like you can. Except it will likely have orders of magnitude more computational ability and memory storage than our brains, making the conclusions it comes to more reliable."

COMMENT: That depends upon what you mean by definitive. If you mean that there will be a built-in algorithmic process that will generate a deductive conclusion within the system, then O.K. However, if by definitive, you mean that there will be no room for questioning the program parameters, or the system data underlying the conclusion (i.e. whether it is complete and the data is true), then clearly not. (Gödel's incompleteness theory formally shows this, but it is also intuitively true.)

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT: Regarding your last sentence, I think
> that needs to be qualified. I tend to agree with
> people like Roger Penrose who insist that human
> brains are not solely computational, and
> philosophers like John Searle who reject CTM
> (Computational theory of mind). Brains create
> minds, but minds involve emergent properties that
> transcend merely computational physical systems;
> properties like consciousness, for example, and
> qualitative experience, both of which are
> importantly relevant in human decision-making.
> (Not to mention genuine freewill, which I also
> subscribe to) Moreover, minds assign meaning to
> mental components of neural representations, which
> computers do not do (absent a programmer).

This is, in fact, one of the primary reasons John Searle doesn't think strong AI is possible. If strong AI is created then it will provide a lot of evidence for the computational theory of mind. It's important to note that consciousness may only appear to transcend your physical body. Applying Occam's razor to the problem leads me to believe consciousness is a normal biological byproduct of our large neocortex and whatever algorithm our brains are running.



> COMMENT: That depends upon what you mean by
> definitive. If you mean that there will be a
> built-in algorithmic process that will generate a
> deductive conclusion within the system, then O.K.
> However, if by definitive, you mean that there
> will be no room for questioning the program
> parameters, or the system data underlying the
> conclusion (i.e. whether it is complete and the
> data is true), then clearly not. (Gödel's
> incompleteness theory formally shows this, but it
> is also intuitively true.)

I meant the former. One will always be free to question the conclusions of a strong AI agent, and in some cases we may never know for certain if it's conclusions are correct. But it stands to reason that the strong AI agent will have the answer closest to the truth as long as the data isn't flawed.

KOLOB: "Just a comment...no human-programmed AI system could be "omniscient." It can only know what we know, and there's a lot we don't know. It probably could (and would) be better than humans at analyzing all we know, and reaching rational conclusions from what we know -- but it would still be limited in knowledge, and not omniscient."

COMMENT: Right. It would only perhaps be better (more thorough and faster) at analyzing the data that was inputted. Note also, that it would be based primarily upon statistical analysis, which means that its conclusions would not be definitive in difficult and controversial cases.

KOLOB: "That said, I agree with your main point: that AI systems could and probably will do a good job analyzing things like the BoM claims, doing so based on all the evidence, and not having human biases or fallacies (like "Oh, I just can't believe JS could have written this so young and so uneducated!). Whether humans will accept those conclusions is, of course, another question :)"

COMMENT: Well said. But, again, such a system will NOT spit out "The Book of Mormon is false." First, it will not be able to analyze the credibility of experiential claims, like JS's claimed experiences, or the claimed experiences of the BoM witnesses. Such evaluation is not computational (at least not practically computational), it is largely based upon human intuition from limited data. Second, as indicated above, even with respect to hard facts, the AI system would provide statistical inferences based upon the data inputted. Such data itself will likely be controversial.

In short, do not expect AI to provide anything significant to the Book of Mormon "debate" beyond what we already know and can conclude.

I agree completely, Henry. Good analysis. :)

Didn't Watson beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy?

Hey, it's a start...

I haven't come here in quite a while, but when I checked in tonight, I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of my posts from nearly a year ago got revived and a good fresh dialogue ensued.

Anyway, I had to reply to you Chicken N. Backpacks - great response which brought much loud laughter :).