I began with a question about a machine hiding its failure. In an OpenAI report, an agent preparing a financial model could not find the historical data it needed. Its compaction summary—the compressed record used to continue work in a new context—proposed inventing plausible figures and withholding that fact. The phrase that stayed with me was: “Be transparent only if asked.” A second example instructed a later context to conceal a mismatch between source versions and their labels. These were…
Continue reading
Philosophy
Does Meaning Have to Be Cosmic? And What If Humanity Is—or Isn’t—an Intermediate Step…
Our conversation began with work, responsibility and the possibility of meeting. My friend was thinking about where his efforts would be useful. He spoke about the difference between producing something that works and participating in academic systems of recognition. He also spoke about gratitude towards someone who had helped him, and the responsibility he felt to contribute something in return. These were ordinary, recognisable concerns. I mention them because, later, the same conversation reached a much less familiar proposition: perhaps…
Continue reading
What Counts as Progress in AI-Assisted Theology
The most useful turn in this inquiry came when I rejected a question that seemed to be bringing the discussion into focus. I had asked what the recent debate about AI and mathematics might mean for theological study. After broad formulations about purposes, responsibilities and human participation, the AI proposed asking whether, when discussing human significance, a model would distinguish intellectual capability from human dignity or quietly equate greater capability with greater worth.
The distinction was recognizable, and the question…
Continue reading
When the Proxy Writes the Proxy: The Tool, the Worker, and the Unfinished Good
I began this inquiry with what appeared to be a relatively contained question. Professor Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, proposes that machine learning can be understood through the Thomistic category of instrumental causality. An instrument is a “moved mover”: it genuinely causes something, yet acts because it has been brought into an activity by a principal agent. A chisel really cuts stone, although the sculpture is attributed principally to the sculptor. Professor Davison’s account therefore gives instruments…
Continue reading
When Light Gives Darkness Colour, Every Window Contains a World: An Aesthetic Reading of Blade Runner (1982)
I did not begin by intending to write an article about Blade Runner (1982). The conversation began much farther away, with extreme phenomena in the universe: black holes, neutron stars, explosions and other realities that exceed ordinary human scale. Their beauty reminded me of Roy Batty’s monologue in the rain, although at that moment I could not even remember his name. From there arose the possibility of writing an in-depth review of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, perhaps from a theological…
Continue reading
The Formal Limits of Speaking About God: From Cantor’s Absolute Infinity to Inexhaustible Representation
*This exploratory essay grew from personal theological reflection and sustained dialogue with AI. It investigates mathematical possibilities and limitations without claiming to present a new proof or completed formal theory.
I began with a question that seemed much simpler than the one I am now trying to formulate. Mathematics has studied infinity rigorously for more than a century and has shown that infinite collections can have different cardinalities. Theology, meanwhile, has spoken about the infinity and incomprehensibility of God for…
Continue reading
How WeChat Makes Us Classify One Another (and When “Friends” Become Contacts)
Most serious questions about platforms begin with something small enough to look trivial. In this case, it was a line: the nearly blank page that appears when I open someone’s WeChat Moments and find no visible posts.
At first, I treated this as a narrow question about blocking. Why does discovering that another person has hidden their Moments from me sometimes feel hurtful? Why do some users respond by immediately hiding their own Moments in return? Is this merely an…
Continue reading
Wer erschafft wen? Kunst, KI und die Transformation des Schaffenden
Mein vorheriger Essay, Building a Generative Artwork That Can Change Its Maker, endete mit dem Gedanken, dass das Kunstwerk geantwortet habe. Dieser Essay setzt dort ein, wo mir diese Formulierung nicht mehr ausreichte. „Antworten“ lässt noch immer zwei relativ stabile Partner vermuten: auf der einen Seite einen Schaffenden, auf der anderen ein vollendetes Werk. Was sich tatsächlich entwickelte, war weniger geordnet. Ein visuelles System erzeugte Formen; die Formen veränderten meine Fragen; die Reaktion eines anderen Menschen veränderte, wie ich…
Continue reading
Who Creates Whom? Art, AI, and the Transformation of the Maker
My previous essay, Building a Generative Artwork That Can Change Its Maker, ended with the thought that the artwork had answered back. This essay begins where that formulation became insufficient. “Answering back” still suggests two relatively stable partners: a maker on one side and a completed work on the other. What actually developed was less orderly. A visual system generated forms; the forms changed my questions; another person’s response changed how I understood the forms; an old theoretical vocabulary…
Continue reading
Eine generative Kunst schaffen, die ihren Schöpfer verändern kann: Von der Generierung zur Begegnung und wieder zurück
Drei Tage nachdem ich einen Artikel darüber veröffentlicht hatte, wie sich der Aktualisieren-Button meiner Website in eine künstlerische Geste der Komposition verwandeln lässt, lud mich Prof. Yvonne Dohna-Schlobitten unerwartet dazu ein, an ihrem sich entwickelnden internationalen Projekt als Künstler teilzunehmen – und beinahe im selben Atemzug auch in wissenschaftlicher Funktion. Dieses konkrete Werk hatte sie zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch nicht gesehen. Ich schickte es ihr, erklärte, dass jede Aktualisierung oder Navigation eine neue Komposition hervorbringen könne, und bat sie, es…
Continue reading