We Don't Really Want to Know

We need to curb our curiosity when it comes to AI

Knowledge Will Increase

There’s knowledge, and then, there’s the other knowledge. Daniel said knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4)—I think he means both kinds. We don’t make distinctions like this much anymore, but there was a time when that distinction made the difference between life and death.

Today curiosity is a virtue—even an unqualified good. But we should remind ourselves that there was once a saying about curious cats. And we had stories about boxes that shouldn’t be opened, and fruit that shouldn’t be eaten—because sometimes knowledge kills.

But the worst named movement in human history made those stories seem benighted, but it was the Enlightenment that was in the dark. Some things you can’t know, but there are other things you shouldn’t. Getting back to the dead cat, what killed it is curiosity.

The Apostle James tells us that wisdom comes in two forms—one from above, and that wisdom is pure, and spiritual; and another from below, and it is carnal (James 3:13-17). It’s the second kind that will kill you.

According to Plato, there are things we shouldn’t know not because knowledge is evil but because we are. The story he tells to illustrate that is the Ring of Gyges and it’s in The Republic. In that story a farmer finds a magic ring that makes the wearer invisible (sound familiar?), and according to Plato the guy who found the ring was corrupted by it—actually, it would be better to say that he was already bad but it was the ring that made it possible for him to get away with wicked things. According to the story, in the end he’s killed a man, stolen his possessions, and even taken his wife. That’s what you can get away with when no one can see what you’re doing.

But I think it is the story of Pandora that is the most apropos for our moment. In that story Pandora knows that many evil and terrible things are locked in the infamous box given to her husband by the gods. But there was an itch to see them that she just had to scratch. And like her, we know that there will be a host of evils that will follow once we fully adopt AI, but it doesn’t matter. Prudence is for sissies.

Someone needs to speak up for limits.

While it is true that human systems of justice disappoint us again and again, the Libertarian fantasy of a world without limits would inevitably lead to something far worse than unnecessary laws, it would lead to chaos and retribution and slavery.

Speaking of slavery, Booker T. Washington in his book, Up from Slavery had something surprising to say about that.