A.I. does not get Christianity
Of course it doesn’t!
Algorithms are only as good as the data they train on. For modern AI tools that data is the content we collectively create and promote. Today I had a somber reminder of what that is. Or more specifically, what it isn’t.
Full disclosure, I’m working on a coloring book inspired by the Eucharistic revival. I thought a monstrance coloring book would be a great idea to promote Eucharistic adoration. Circles, patterns, Catholic symbols. This would make for a killer coloring book!
A monstrance is meant to hold up the Eucharist, that is, the real presence of Jesus Christ. It is fitting that most monstrances look a bit like circular crowns with Catholic references in every corner. Sometimes it is the number of elements (3 for the Trinity, 12 for the apostles, 4 for the evangelists, etc.). The elements themselves are also packed with meaning, not only in their symbolism but even in how they are distributed. Monstrances are true pieces of art that aid us in symbolizing what, or rather, whose presence is really in there.
As with most new ideas, I started drawing with great enthusiasm. Try googling “how to create and sell a coloring book”. You’ll find endless guides on how to find free images or generate them and very little on digitalizing your own original work.
Naturally, after a few hours of researching and working, I decided to outsource the task to a robot. Boy, was I in for a surprise.
“I’ve used AI in my science work before,” I thought, “I should at least give it a try”. A few easy instructions and a $10 license later, I was ready to put the robots to work. “Who knows?” I thought. “Perhaps it will save me some hours of drawing concentric circles in Illustrator.”
So here I go, trying to get A.I. to recreate an object meant for the worship for the most sacred of the sacred. In retrospect, I have no idea why I thought this would work… but at least I didn’t expect what I found…
/imagine monstrance
Woah what is that!?
Do you see the problem?
Just stop for a moment to think about what the A.I. would say if it was asked to explain the purpose of this object. The geometry is there, it even looks kind of similar, but the main element, what makes the whole point of a monstrance what it is, is missing. The place for the Eucharist just isn’t there.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a great metaphor for the senseless pursuits of this world in the absence of a knowledge of Christ. Without Christ, it is all pretty pictures that look like they might mean something, or matter somewhat, but on closer inspection, they are just crude copies of the real thing with no memory of what they were supposed to be.
At the time I of course did not immediately stop to mourn what this implies about what has happened to our culture. My pursuit, after all, was to enable my own complacency. So I did not relent.
“Maybe if I ask it for the coloring book itself, it won’t matter that it has no idea what a monstrance is. It might make my job even easier!” Then it got even worse…
/imagine monstrance coloring pages
If I was confused before, now I was a little horrified. “Maybe some cult stuff out there pollutes the internet?”
Still, I insisted. “Maybe it just needs to know my faith. I bet that adding some context will help it.”
/imagine CATHOLIC monstrance coloring pages
I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t as bad as before, but in all honesty, that’s when the moral of this story really got to me.
Some elements are there, but looking at this closely, you’ll see it all tends to make the same mistake: Here’s a picture of an object with some random aesthetic symmetries whose middle part is either important or supposed to be empty. And here’s a bunch of fluff added on for good measure. Color away!
I had a sad moment, really, thinking about this.
It is not the robot’s fault, of course. It did the best it could. It is the input data that is the problem. It is but a symptom of the culture, which has forgotten about Christianity and Christ, to the point that any of this is just not a thing the internet cares about in the least bit. The culture is not just no longer Christian, it is not even actively hateful of Christianity nearly as much as we sometimes think it is. Rather, the culture at large has just been forgetting. This world has been washing away Christ from its memory in a wave of the comparatively irrelevant.
Forgetting about a monstrance is one thing, but where will our culture be once it forgets all about His sacrifice. Where will we be when we have forgotten that we have a savior and that we have been redeemed?
Where is everything going already? And what am I doing about it?
There is a reason why the data that algorithms train with is so depleted of truths about the faith. The secular culture is surely part of the problem, but the other part is us. Believers who relent in our efforts to engage others in the public square are partially responsible for what the summary of the collective human knowledge looks like right now. It turns out that removing ourselves from the conversation has effects way beyond ourselves.
What a renewal of the calling to be the light of the world, to make disciples of all nations! What a reminder that that every blog post, every comment, every bit of our interaction with the online world (or lackthereof) is an opportunity to, at the very least, not be part of the reason why the world forgets…