The Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year for 2023 is AI.

Artificial intelligence is something we are hearing more and more about. After the industrial revolution, and the internet, AI is set to be the next big thing which will revolutionise the way we live and work. Who knows, maybe AI will be writing Thought for the Week in the very near future! 

I was at two weddings this year where the best man had used AI to write a poem to celebrate the happy couple, using information about their personalities, their likes and dislikes. It was quite entertaining and clever in a way, but Burns or Scott it wasn’t.

AI has shown great promise in analysing scans and other medical data to identify precancerous cells. When computers learn what they have to look for, the results can be astounding.

AI is being used to develop driverless cars and is finding all kinds of applications in controlling industrial processes, book-keeping, proof-reading, computer programming and software design. There are certain jobs which will probably become redundant because of AI.

A colleague of mine, for his amusement, asked an AI programme to write a sermon on a text from the prologue of St John’s Gospel - "In the beginning was the Word…".

The result was passable as an academic exercise but lacked authenticity because it wasn’t rooted in lived experience. It was more like an essay rather than a sermon.

Maybe AI programmes will get better at creative writing, and we’ll all be reading AI novels in the future, but I doubt it. Computers are good at managing data and identifying patterns, but that is only one aspect of knowledge.

There is another kind of knowing, which we sometimes call emotional intelligence or intuition: the ability to read people, to understand them, and then to make an emotional connection.

In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus said that God had revealed to the unlearned what he had hidden from the wise and learned.

AI may revolutionise our lives in various ways that we might not yet anticipate, but it will never help us to understand who we are and speak to our innermost longings.

Good wishes to all the readers for 2024, whatever changes it may bring.

 

Cumbrae, Fairlie and Largs Parish Church