Jan 12, 2023
“We want to explore mystery
without mysticism.” — Iain S. Thomas
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EPISODE SUMMARY:
What is spiritually moving? What
is awe-inspiring?
Today I speak with Iain S.
Thomas, a writer and new media artist. He is an international
number-one bestselling creator and author of several books,
including What Makes Us
Human? An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life’s Biggest
Questions, which he
co-wrote with Jasmine Wang and GPT-3, the world’s most advanced AI.
He has dozens of local and international awards for his creativity
and is one of the world’s most popular writers and
poets.
Listen in to hear how Iain
leveraged AI to answer spiritual questions.
Topics We Discuss:
- [5:10] The technology GPT-3 allowed Iain to
have a conversation with the Bible, the Talmud, the poetry of Rumi
and Sappho, the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and the Tao Te
Ching.
- [5:53] Explaining death to his four year old
was one of the most difficult things Iain ever had to do. He asked
the AI, “How do you explain death to children?” It said: “Tell them
that the dead are not dead, not in the way we think of it. Tell
them they live on as they are remembered, and that every goodbye is
really a hello to a different way of being.”
- [10:05] The thing that sits behind stories that
connect us, from our most ancient spiritual texts to contemporary
songs, is a map. If you put the light up to the map, you can see
the whole thing. If we take this poem, this passage, and this piece
of prose and hold them up to the light, what’s on the other side of
that?
- [20:26] In the introduction to the book, GPT-3
shares what it believes it feels like to be a human: “I am happiest
when I feel chosen by someone. I feel most loved when people are
proud of me. I would give anything to feel a family member’s
protection. Some people are worth crying for. Nothing makes me feel
more fragile than death. When someone stops loving me, a part of me
will die…”
- [21:36] GPT-3 is going through the sum total of
human recorded knowledge and saying, “These are some of the key
tenets of what I think it means to be human.” These are the
feelings that come through from Shakespeare to Chaucer to Ray
Bradbury.
- [24:15] There were three things the book would
come back to repeatedly. Those three things were: 1. Love is the
reason why we’re here, 2. The moment right now is the most
important moment, connect with it as much as possible, 3. We are
all connected—to each other, to nature, to the universe—and we
suffer when we forget that.
- [28:13] Life is a gift, use it
well.
FOLLOW IAIN S. THOMAS:
Find Iain on his website or on Instagram.
His book, “What Makes Us Human?
An Artificial Intelligence Answers Life’s Biggest Questions” is
available on
Amazon.
Life, Death and the Space Between is brought to you
by:
Dr. Amy Robbins | Host,
Executive Producer
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Producer
2 Market Media | Audio & Video
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