Matters of Life & Death: Generative AI: Second Contact, avoiding the fate of Nokia, hacking the human operating system, and the resilience of Western democracy

New artificial intelligence software has swept through the internet over the last year. Many are thrilled by the potential and power of AI which can generate brand new text, images, sound and video. But others are sounding the alarm. Does this new generation of generative AI really pose a dire threat to humankind? What are the commercial and political pressures forcing tech firms to keep rolling out this unpredictable yet powerful software at breakneck speed? Will the Church’s role solely be to pick up the pieces of our broken public square and broken lives, or can we get ahead of the curve for once? And is all this not just a huge over-reaction to a flashy but relatively insignificant computing breakthrough?