Dog-gone it AI!

Written By Jonathan Krogh

Dear Pet Pleasers:

I was disappointed to discover that the cute videos of shelter dogs selecting their owners turned out to be AI generated. Now I can’t watch them. Before I knew they were ‘fakes’ I thought they were adorable. Although I had become suspicious when a husky tried to jump in the lap of an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Huskies are sort of the jerks of the dog park. But I still wanted to believe. And I did. Until I checked and found out they were indeed artificial fabrications. Now some of the accounts are being suspended because the creators were soliciting real cash to fund the care of digital dogs. Oddly, I feel sad for the pups.

This wander down AI-generated content got me thinking about symbols and empathy. We’ve all heard stories that tugged at our hearts, only to discover later they weren’t true. This con is as old as storytelling itself. The feelings are real, sometimes deeply profound, but when the content that draws forward those feelings turns out to be fabricated, what then are we to think of ourselves?

We are living in a time of deep fakes; they’re all around us. Don’t blame AI; it’s merely an efficient tool skillfully used by the prevaricators of phony. I think the problem is that our attachment to symbols has become the goal, rather than the deeper reality behind the symbols. Paul Tillich spoke of the danger of symbols. When taken too literally, belief becomes idolatry. As he pointed out in Dynamics of Faith (1957), idolatry confuses the finite, conditioned object (like a specific myth or sacred text) as if it were the infinite ultimate. We must use symbolic language when speaking of God. We have no capacity for direct experience of the divine, so we use metaphors, like rock, father, savior, warrior, etc. But we need to be careful with our metaphors, because the power of meaning ricochets back to the compared object. We see a lot of that these days with the idolatrous promotion of a masculine warrior father ethos that parades through memes like phony Fidos finding their photon-fabricated forever-friends.

It happened in the translation of the King James Version of the Bible, when kingship was all the rage. King Jimmy delighted in a translation in which he and God shared the same title. Likewise, the word in the New Testament translated lord should match all those Shakespearean readings where, “Yes, my lord,” was a simple statement of respect, like we may use the word sir or ma’am. The intertwining of lordship with landholding and political privilege muddies the waters, but elevating these finite conditions benefit from a bit of lordly embellishment.

Our highest expression of faith keeps a loose leash on our symbols. God is like a (fill in the blank), but (blank) is nothing like God. When we find ourselves getting hot and bothered over defending the symbol, be it flag, or gender, or nationality, or success, or anything in God’s whole creation, then our love of the finite has blinded our grasp by the infinite.

Which brings me back to my pixelated pooches and perhaps even Saturday’s Pet Parade. The more I allow myself to be cut off from real interaction where contact is only screen or propaganda mediated, the greater the temptation for me to be manipulated. I need to get up from my keyboard, head to the park and inspire some real tail wagging.   

Pretty sure all dogs go to heaven, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

Jonathan Krogh
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