What If It All Works Out? Positive Visions of AI
This talk asks a hopeful question: What if it all works out? The speaker envisions AI's positive potential at three levels—garden, city, and planet. At the garden level, he invokes the simple paradise of Epicurus: friends discussing ideas in peaceful surroundings, suggesting we may already be closer to Eden than we realize. But this vision falters when one considers the unhoused sleeping under Zion's Bank, prompting a turn to the Mormon vision of Zion where there are no poor. Finally, at the planetary level, the speaker sees AI's greatest promise in its capacity to detect microscopic toxins and enable truly sustainable material cycles—going from “one to zero” as nature does, so that everyone might eventually enjoy the simple luxury of talking about ideas with friends.
Jon Ogden is an author, educator, and entrepreneur focused on the intersection of faith, family, and technology. He is the co-founder of Uplift Kids, a platform providing families with a lesson library and curriculum designed to foster spiritual health and well-being within the home. ¶ Ogden is also the author of When Mormons Doubt: A Way to Strengthen Relationships and Live a Quality Life, a work that explores themes of faith, doubt, and community within a Mormon context. His exploration of religious belief as a potentially modular system, similar to an API, suggests an openness to integrating diverse philosophical and spiritual traditions—a perspective that aligns with the Mormon Transhumanist Association’s interest in exploring how technology and innovation can enhance human experience and spiritual development. ¶ He holds a Bachelor’s degree in English, Literature, and a Master’s degree in Writing and Rhetoric, both from Brigham Young University. Ogden lives in Provo, Utah, with his spouse and two children and writes regularly at johnogden.com.
Transcript
I once read somewhere, maybe a tweet, that if you want to be happy you should ask yourself What if it all works out? Instead of imagining the worst of all possible scenarios, this is a hard pill for me to swallow since I’ve logged my 10,000 hours perfecting the art of imagining the worst of all possible scenarios. also known as having anxiety.
When it comes to AII, most of the time I’m just anxious that algorithms out of Silicon Valley funded by Suits on Wall Street will lead us into a state of perpetual distraction, draining our time and money and leaving us soul sick. I worry that they’ll continue to fixate unquarterly winds that feed our dumbest impulses for Empty calories and hits a dopamine.
But I want to be happy. So instead of waxing cynical, I will ask, what if it all works out? Which is a question in need of a vision. What does works out look like? I’ll talk about this vision at three levels: garden, city, planet.
For me, works out, looks like living in the garden of Epicurus. Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, is said to have lived a simple life in a garden, enjoying the company of friends, talking about ideas and beautiful Mediterranean weather. That’s paradise. It has flavors of Eden, a garden where the weather is perfect, where food grows without labor, and where you aren’t in danger from wild animals or war.
And it’s not totally out of reach, is it? I mean, here we are right now talking about ideas in a peaceful setting as friends. If we brought in some plants and squinted a little bit, maybe we could say we’ve already made it. We can call off the search. We have heating, air conditioning and food delivered to us. These are the days of miracle and wonder, as Paul Simon sings. Let’s give every job we possibly can over to automation and algorithms and AI and just enjoy this life. Right now, I mean it sincerely. This is not so far from paradise.
And yet, there’s at least one problem with this vision as it currently stands. If you walk out those doors, Onto the streets. Within minutes, you will encounter someone who is so poor they don’t have a home.
I used to catch a bus two blocks from here. In front of Zion’s Bank. I arrived at 6:25 a. and for five brutal minutes during the winter months, I waited in pain for the bus right near a man who slept on a bench in the snow. It’s deeply insight and linked to me that he was under Zion’s bank. Some mornings he’d be standing up, huddled in his blanket, bouncing on the soles of his feet to keep warm. So I enjoy this garden, but how can I fully enjoy it when that man’s eyes live in my mind’s eye?
This is where we must turn to another vision, the Mormon vision of the city of Zion. At the outset, Mormons were city builders. It could be argued, in fact, that this was the mission of the early church. As early as 1831, just one year after the church was founded, Joseph Smith longed to build a city, and he spent his entire life focusing on just that. Building in Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. After he died, his followers continued the project here in Utah. The goal was Zion, a city where everyone is of one heart and one mind, and there are no poor among us.
As a people, our track record on this front has been mixed. Attempts at fully living the law of concentration famously failed, and our relatively successful cooperative ZCMI has become a forgotten footnote in our history. The LDS Church does offer a fairly robust welfare system, and Utah does have lower average rates of homelessness in the nation, but it’s unsettling that the unhoused didn’t have a shelter here in Utah County until just last year. when the Provo Adventist Community Center, the Genesis Project Church, and the Provo Community Church stepped up to make it happen.
So how does this fit in with the positive vision of AI? I’ll speak here with a great deal of skepticism since it currently appears that AI will be used by hedge funds to more efficiently buy up homes and real estate as investment opportunities, raising rents and creating more homelessness. But I am struck by the possibility of an AI program I recently learned about that can take a video of someone, analyze tens of thousands of data points to diagnose specific mental illnesses and behavioral difficulties. This opens up the possibility for a program where the unhoused get low-cost diagnoses for issues behind their situation and then can get personalized help. I believe that such a program could possibly be paired to match those who have stability in their lives with those who don’t. If every homeless person had a networked of five assigned ministers or people who could offer support, we might be able to solve the problem using AI. It could take it would take each of us to think about one person. And collectively, we could support somebody in that situation.
But none of this will matter if we don’t work on the third vision, which is the planet. Again, here, I express skepticism. Supposing we can rein in the use of millions of gallons of water that are currently being used to power AI data centers, millions of gallons that could possibly go toward, say, Feeling the dying Great Salt Lake? I believe that there is real hope when it comes to AI and nature, despite that.
Right now, machines can drive through rows of crops and detect and automatically smash weeds without the use of pesticides. which is truly marvelous. Machines drive through fields and they can look at tulips and detect which tulips have disease before that disease spreads. Amazing.
In a world where we read ever-recurring headlines about forever chemicals and microplastics that are quite possibly changing our hormones and giving young people cancer, this level of detection might be our only hope. I mean, we need an AI that can analyze our water and soil and homes and detect and remove microscopic toxins. That’s a task that a human simply cannot do. It’s quite possible that on this front, AI is our only hope to save us from the irreparable harm to our bodies and minds. And that innovation can’t come soon enough.
What I’m talking about is going from one to zero. The most innovative tech companies focus on what Peter Thiel calls going from zero to one and creating something entirely new. Rather than making incremental change. But we must also learn to go from one to zero, like nature does. Grow a tomato, eat the tomato, eventually the tomato results in healthier soil. When we make a plastic water ball, it will end the opposite will happen.
And we can look at everything here. The cloth, the tablecloths, the tables, the lights, the finish on this wall, the carpet. In ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years, it’s going to end up in a landfill. But what if there were an AI that could take, that could detect Each bit of material and make use of that material again in some way. I see that as the only option. Currently, this is, you know, this will just be thrown into a landfill. and that’s not sustainable. So an AI-powered recycling machine could sort all material down to the microscopic level and renew our connection with nature, meaning return us to zero to one and one to zero. and then zero to one and one to zero to get us back in that cycle.
What I’m saying is that without the planet, we won’t have Zion, and without Zion, we can’t fully enjoy the garden. And the point, in my opinion, is the Garden. My positive vision of AI then is a future where everyone can enjoy the simple luxury of talking about ideas with friends. May it be so.