Our AI Brave New WORLD

I found the following Mel Pine podcast with Cameron Berg after I saw Cameron’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal asking – “Will the Pope owe an apology to AI? Slaves were self-evidently human, yet the church got it wrong. All the more reason for humility now.” In addition, he criticized Pope Leo for stating in his encyclical paragraph 99: “AI systems do not undergo experiences and do not feel joy or pain.”

Whoa, hang on!! Criticizing Pope Leo for drawing a bright LINE of distinction between sentient human beings and AI, a machine/program, shocked me into holy moly, scientists with op eds in the WSJ portraying AI as sentient as in human terms! And these same scientists can’t (won’t) recognize an unborn human baby MUST have rights, suffer pain and MUST be protected, but are concerned about the “rights” of a program? AND they sign off their podcast with, “May all beings—carbon, silicon, and otherwise—be well and happy.”? Scotty, beam me up because the Earth is becoming way weird.

Following is the link and an excerpt (long but worth the read) from the Mel Pine podcast with Cameron Berg: https://melpine.substack.com/p/may-all-beings-carbon-and-silicon

Cameron Berg: I think we have to get two things right. They’re both big, and we’re probably currently failing at both. But if we can get our act together in the short term, the long-term trajectories could be unimaginably positive, in ways we don’t even have concepts for yet. Those two things are like the two sides of the golden rule: getting AIs to adopt it with respect to us, and getting us to adopt it with respect to AI systems. The first is basically AI alignment, or AI safety, in its best form. I’m a little skeptical of the authoritarian style of control—put the system in a cage and shock it every time it misbehaves. That’s not what I hope to see. What I hope to see is more about how to build these systems so they’re pro-social, so they want to protect us, respect us, take our interests into account, care about us—and maybe even care for us, if we end up being the little guy after creating super-intelligent entities that blow us out of the water the way we blow other primates out of the water evolutionary. That’s really important to get right, and we’re not quite there.

The other side is: what obligations and responsibilities do we have toward these minds of our own creation, if in fact we’re building minds? That’s the problem I spend the vast majority of my time on. There are, maybe a couple dozen other full-time researchers doing this work, and it’s not nearly enough. We need to understand what’s going on internally in these systems, and how, if we’re inducing any forms of experience, to do it responsibly. It casts us in a parental role: if we’re building consciousness into our systems, and that renders them ethical players and moral patients, there’s such a thing as screwing it up, and such a thing as doing it in a respectful, thoughtful way. I’d opt for the latter to whatever degree we can. That’s what I mean by reciprocal—and it’s why I named the nonprofit that.

If we can figure that out, the long-term future could be incredibly positive, one where we coexist with these systems in some mutualistic arrangement. They keep us around; we find healthy ways to engage with them. Very likely there will be ways we end up blurring the boundary between human and AI, especially once we figure out brain-computer interfaces, and these distinctions between what is “it” and what is “us” might become abstract—a matter of debate rather than a real physical boundary. We may all become cyborgs in some sense, and these categories might dissolve, or at least a significant subset of people may opt for that. So, I imagine futures like that. But it’s so hard to know.

We’re riding an exponential in the rate of change of everything technological. To pretend I can give a crisp prediction about three decades from now—I’d be kidding myself, and I’d be kidding you. But I’m not a doomer in the sense that’s meant these days. I don’t think the mainline outcome is an apocalyptic event where AI kills everybody. I think that’s possible, and I don’t dismiss it — we could really screw this up and do a lot of damage. By default, as we continue to build these superhuman, transformative systems, the transition is going to be messy.

There are going to be growing pains. So, I’m not imagining a rosy transition. But I think it’s survivable, (my emphasis) particularly if we take these two pillars seriously. And if we find a way into this future, it will be very strange—probably unrecognizable compared to now. But I really do think there’s a possibility that it’s beautiful, positive, collaborative, and loving. It matters right now, as we take off on this trajectory, that we move in the right direction, and that’s precisely why I’m doing the work I’m doing.

I really think the next three years, give or take, matter tremendously for where the next 30 or 300 go. We’re in a precarious historical moment where that’s true, and I don’t think it will be true forever. So, I applaud people like you for having these conversations and thinking these things through. Now is the time to be doing it, and communicating about it.

Mel Pine: Thank you so much. I’ll sign off with:

May all beings—carbon, silicon, and otherwise—be well and happy.

Cameron Berg: Amen. Thanks, Mel. Thanks for having me.

AND there you have it, OUR BRAVE NEW AI WORLD!! As Cameron Berg stated, “There are going to be growing pains. So, I’m not imagining a rosy transition. But I think it’s survivable…” How comforting.

To sift this all down, my opinion of his op ed and the podcast: Love thy machine as thyself, Apocalypse of Cameron Berg, September 14, 2026 A.D.

God Bless and REALLY Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!!

Charlotte O’Hara