St Mark the ascetic Artificial Intelligence

[eschator83]

Shin's quotes have motivated me several times to try to find a bio for St Mark, but my notes say only that he was a 5th century hermit who wrote substantially (200 texts).  Reports of him as an abbot and friendly with St John Chrysostom were considered unreliable (by onelittleangel website).  Today I tried one of my first inquiries to Microsoft's AI and received the following which I hope you find interesting, even though disappointing.  Ai didn't recognize Mark the Ascetic, but the little angel said Mark was aka Marcus Eremita.

St Marcus Emerita: A Historical Overview

St Marcus Emerita is a small town in the province of Badajoz, Spain. It was founded by the Romans in the first century BC as a colony for veterans of the Legio X Gemina. The town was named after the emperor Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who was also the son-in-law of Augustus.

St Marcus Emerita was an important administrative and cultural center in the Roman province of Lusitania. It had a forum, a theater, an amphitheater, a circus, temples, baths, aqueducts and a bridge over the Guadiana river. The town was also the seat of the conventus iuridicus, a judicial district that covered most of western Spain.

The town prospered until the fifth century AD, when it was sacked by the Vandals and the Suebi. It was later reconquered by the Visigoths, who made it their capital for a brief period. The town declined under the Muslim rule and was eventually abandoned in the ninth century.

St Marcus Emerita is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a major tourist attraction. Many of its ancient monuments are well preserved and open to visitors. The town also hosts an annual classical theater festival that attracts actors and spectators from all over the world.

[eschator83]

This is one of my first forays into AI.  I'm finding it very interesting, but frustrating.  I want to print my results, but haven't yet been successful.  I'd love to hear what you thinking about AI.  In this case I presume the angel website was wrong about the St aka, since the city name preexisted the Saint by 500 years.  But I asked AI specifically about the Saint and got no reply.  On the other hand I've had several good response from AI.  It seems capable of saving a lot of time.

[Shin]

I do not understand AI too well, but my impression of how the programs work is that they are a Q & A version of something like wikipedia and a search engine combined, able to sift minutiae very well. The results are determined by popular vote or programmed 'best guesses' which may or may not be right, but when they are wrong if the users clues the program into that fact an adjustment is made and stored centrally so in the future a different result may come back.

The more accurate data that is input into the AI the more useful it gets so they AI programs are given vast amounts and from all the human experience and knowledge, with it put into the AI they quite artfully appear to be 'intelligent', but it is all human knowledge being displayed by a carefully designed programming script.

I have seen AI results pop up that are inaccurate when I have used a search engine, as well as had some useful information come up.

I have the impression AI is going to be very useful and helpful as well as very life changing for many people because many jobs will no longer have value due to the AI being able to sufficiently perform the tasks. Whether it's drawing pictures, designing various things,  answering Q&As and doing low level customer service..  There is a whole lot that AI will do sufficiently well to replace people in those positions and more, or at least assist people in various lines of work.
I think people who need mechanical assistance to perform tasks will find AI helpful in moving their prostheses better, medical researchers will have help finding more probable courses of research for new medications and treatments.. There will be a lot of good and a lot of harm too as AIs are programmed to reproduce the worldly propaganda we are already deluged with today, and perhaps even perform as substitute overseers and police over people's actions and speech when attached to security cameras and microphones. Crime may be reduced, but Christianity may also be all the more persecuted. The future is going to be full of changes as technology continues to advance.

So a very big deal in the future for good and for evil.

For what little it's worth just a few thoughts I have not thought deeply about this.

[eschator83]

I'm intrigued whether AI can be developed to seek truth more ardently and objectively than humans can by avoiding or disregarding our human biases, prejudices, and ambitions.  I wonder if individual AI systems can be protected from scam and false data.