Baby shoes, supercomputers and God

Google released an Artificial Intelligence chatbot called Bard last March. When asked to summarize the New Testament it took Bard five seconds and only 17 words to do so: “The New Testament is the story of God’s love for humanity which was revealed through Jesus Christ.”

The following is a short short story, usually attributed to Ermest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” When asked to create a narrative based on that quote, Bard passed with flying colours. Then it was asked to put its own story into verse. In five seconds, it offered this:

“A woman lost her child,
And mourned in sorrow deep.
She saw an ad, and thought
‘These shoes could help me grieve.’
She bought them, held them close,
And felt her pain subside.
She knew her baby’s soul
Would always be alive.”

This was crazy! In Bard’s third demonstration, its closing words testified to an apparent awareness of life after death. This floored me. How was this possible? Then I remembered a story I had read many years before, eerily similar to Bard’s exploits.

In 1956, in Science Fiction Quarterly, Isaac Asimov published “The Last Question.” It raises the problem of cosmic entropy, which multiple generations try to reverse in vain. Asimov’s solution: just start over again, this time with the help of two supercomputers instead of God. And so two supercomputers merge, restart, and together say, “Let there be light.” I remember being disquieted by Asimov’s story, and for some reason also angry, when I first read it.

Now, 70 years later, we have learned what these new machines are capable of doing. But I cannot help but wonder where God fits in with all this, for neither Bard nor the computers in Asimov’s story are sentient – they have no feelings, and I do not understand how they do the things they do. But I do not believe in God because he is a supercomputer or some sort of super magician who can do things that I cannot. I believe in my God because he walks with me and talks with me and tells me that I am his own. And some day, he will walk with me through the Great Reversal where all will be made new in him, and I will live with him in glory forever: “I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out – plans to take care of you, plans to give you the future you hope for” (Jer. 29:11, MSG).