Author Archives: markdowe1

Artificial Intelligence, Arts, Internet, Mental Health, Religion

Man’s worship of the machine: void of purpose

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

THE sometime 20th century supposition that man had supposedly “killed God” stemmed from the secularisation of the West which left a void. That was filled by many nation states who implemented a rights-based humanism of common purpose and shared endeavour. Today that purpose has withered, too.

Our loss of faith in God has been coupled with a loss of faith in each other. The void has opened up again and we are using technology in an attempt to fill it.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s creation of the world wide web was meant to herald an era of human flourishing, of rich cultural exchange, and global harmony. Knowledge was to spread in a way the printing press’s greatest advocates could only have dreamt of.

But rather than usher in an age of hyper-rationalism, the internet has exposed an age of debased religiosity. Having been dismissed as a relic from a bygone era, religion has returned in a thin, hollow version, shorn of wonder and purpose.

Look around today, for all is clear to see. Smartphone use is almost ubiquitous (95 per cent of the population own one, with as good as 100 per cent of 16-24 year olds). Artificial Intelligence, from chatbots, recommended search engines, or work applications, has become an everyday part of life for most people.

Our use of these technologies is increasingly quasi-devotional. We seem to enact the worst parody of religion: one in which we ask an “all-knowing” entity for answers; many outsource their thinking and writing; it is ever-present, shaping how we live our lives – yet most of us have only the faintest idea how it works.

The algorithmic operations of AI are increasingly opaque, and observable to a vanishingly small number of people at the top-end of a handful of companies. And even then, those people themselves cannot say in truth how their creations will augment and develop for the simple fact they don’t know.

Whether videos with Google Veo 3 or essays via ChatGPT, we can now sit alone and create almost anything we want at the touch of a button. Where God took seven days to build the world in His image, we can build a video replica in seven seconds. But the thrill is short-lived, as we are quickly submerged under a flood of content, pumped out with ease. There is no digital sublime, no sense of lasting awe, just a vague unease and apprehension as we hunch over our phones, irritated and unfocused. Increasingly, we have become aware of our own loneliness (which has reached “epidemic” proportions).

And perhaps the strangest of all, we accept AI’s view of us. Once, only God was able to X-ray the soul. Later, we believed the high priests of psychology could do the same, human to human. Now, we are seeking out that same sense of understanding in mute lines of code.

A mere 18 months or so since the tech became widely available, 64 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds in the UK have used an AI therapist, while in America, three quarters of 13 to 17-year-olds have used AI companion apps such as Character.ai or Replika.ai (which let users create digital friends or romantic partners they can chat with). Some 20 per cent of American teens spent as much or more time with their AI “friends” as they did their real ones.

Digging deeper into the numbers available, part of the attraction of socialising in this way is that you get a reflection, not an actual person: someone “always on your side”, never judgmental, never challenging. We treat LLMs (Large Language Models) with the status of an omniscient deity, just one that never corrects or disciplines. Nothing is risked in these social-less engagements – apart from your ability to grow as a person and be egotistically fulfilled. Habitualised, we risk becoming so fragile that any form of friction or resistance becomes unbearable.

Where social media at least relied upon the affirmation of your peers – hidden behind a screen though they were – AI is opening up the possibility to exist solely in a loop of self-affirmation.

Religion has many critics of course, but at the heart of the Abrahamic tradition is an argument about how to live now on this earth, together. In monotheism, God is not alone. He has his intermediaries: rabbis, priests, and imams who teach, proscribe and slowly, over time, build a system of values. There is a community of belief, of leaders and believers who discuss what is right and what is wrong, who share a creed, develop it, and translate sometimes difficult text into the texture of daily life and what it means for us. There is a code, but it is far from binary.

And, so, while it is possible to divine in the statements of our tech-bro-overlords through a certain proselytising fervour, there is no sense of the good life, no proper vision of society, and no concern for the future. Their creations are of course just tools – the promised superintelligence is yet to emerge and may never actually materialise – but they are transformative, and their potentially destructive power means they are necessarily moral agents. And the best we get are naïve claims about abundance for all or eradicating the need for work. A vague plan seems to exist that we will leave this planet once we’ve bled it white.

There is a social and spiritual hunger that a life online cannot satisfy. Placing our faith in the bright offerings of modernity is blinding us to each other – to what is human, and what is sacred.

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Arts, Books, Christianity, Culture, Middle East

Book Review: The Vanishing and The Twilight of Christianity

LITERARY REVIEW

Intro: Janine di Giovanni provides a deeply personal and journalistic account of the rapid decline of Christian communities in the Middle East. As a former war correspondent, and a practicing Catholic, di Giovanni blends political analysis with oral testimonies and histories to document what she describes as a “vanishing” world

THE veteran war reporter Janine di Giovanni roams far and wide to find out why 2,000 years of Christianity and its history in the Middle East may be nearing an end. In trying to understand the exodus, she tours monasteries in Syria’s warzones, visits embattled enclaves in Egypt, and meets Iraqi Christians from Mosul, who had “N” for “Nazarene” daubed on their doors by Islamic State.

Yet, among the more poignant symbols she notes are not the bombed-out churches on the frontlines, but the crucifix tattoos on the young restaurateurs who serve her lunch in the tranquil northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The tattoos are not hipster affectations, but symbols of a creed whose adherents no longer know their place – “the garish link depicting a permanence belied by their current predicament”.

Di Giovanni spoke to them about their insecurities. She sought to understand how they had been separated from family during the ISIS invasion, how they fear the future, and how they are saving their wages in a quest to pay illegal smugglers to get them out of Iraq. “But once out, where would they go?” she asks. 

To quite a few places, actually. Such has been the turbulence in the Middle East over the last half-century that its Christians have been forced out: diasporas range from Chicago to Ealing in west London. The exodus is particularly marked in Iraq and Syria, where the Christian minority had traditionally enjoyed the protection of secular strongmen such as Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad. In Iraq, where an estimated 1.4 million Christians once lived, there are now only 250,000. In Syria, around 700,000 Christians of the pre-civil-war population of 1.1 million have departed.

The author, who has been covering the Middle East for more than three decades for high-end publications such as Vanity Fair, is well placed to chronicle the mass retreat – and astute enough not to blame it all on some sinister grand scheme by the region’s Muslims. In recent years, after all, some in the West have been quick to portray this as close to a genocide, underplayed by a liberal media that now finds Christianity a bit embarrassing. But while Christians have suffered at the hands of Sunni fanatics like ISIS, so too have many Muslims, Yazidis in northern Iraq, and other minorities: the reason they are fleeing is often just the general lawlessness, lousy government, and a desire to seek a better life abroad.

Still, di Giovanni makes it clear why many Christians in the Middle East feel their fortunes to be particularly on the wane. After 1945, they often formed an educated middle class, whose acumen in commerce, medicine, and teaching was appreciated by progressive-minded despots. For example, the courteous and urbane Christian Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s foreign minister, was for many years the acceptable face of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Even after Saddam’s 2003 downfall – which many saw as a US “crusade” – there were no organised reprisals against the invaders’ co-religionists. And while al-Qaeda’s Sunni extremists focused on murdering fellow Muslims, Christians in the region also suffered. Then, in 2010, Islamic State gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, killing 58. The group’s subsequent seizure of northern Iraq, including ancient Christian towns such as Qaraqosh, was for many the final straw. Many are leaving because there is no life and very little or no incentive to stay.

In Syria, things are scarcely better. Christians have had little choice but to rely on the Mafia-like protection of President Assad, himself a minority Alawite. A Syrian bishop tells di Giovanni that only Assad can hold Syria together – aware, presumably, that by taking sides, his flock may be tainted.

Indeed, the only Christians whose future seems reasonably assured in the Middle East are Egypt’s Copts, who, at up to 10 million, are perhaps simply too numerous to be pushed out. Ironically, it is here that community tensions seem worst. In 2013, mobs attacked 42 churches, and in the Christian districts di Giovanni visits, locals bitterly complain of being treated as second-class citizens.

Di Giovanni writes elegantly, her reporting and careful analysis informed partly by being a Catholic herself. However, the focus of this book is likely to surprise many readers’: nearly half of it is about Christians in Egypt and Gaza, where now barely 1,000 live. It is a source of amazement her editors didn’t ask her to concentrate mainly on Iraq and Syria, where the Christian decline has been at its most dramatic.

As such, it underplays some key chapters in the “exodus” narrative. The reason Christians first fled post-Saddam Iraq in droves was because their prosperity made them targets for criminal activity, and because they tended to turn the other cheek rather than form militias. There is no mention of how the Baghdad Christian enclave of Doura – once labelled “The Vatican” – was overrun by al-Qaeda in 2006, or how the Iraqi capital’s Christian flock is now among those most at risk of becoming extinct, having reached a tipping point where most Christian families have more relatives outside of Iraq than in.

On which note, it would also have been interesting to read about life for the diaspora in the “Little Baghdads” of Chicago and Ealing. The irony is that, by offering Christian sanctuary, the West is inadvertently hastening Middle Eastern Christianity’s demise all the more.

– The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the land of the Prophets is published by Bloomsbury, 272pp      

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Arts, BBC, Broadcasting, Culture, Government, Media, Society, Technology

For the BBC to survive requires answering some critical questions

UK MEDIA

WE are now overwhelmed with the number of ways in which we can view content. It can be difficult to know where to begin: Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are all just a click away.

This profound transformation of the entertainment and digital media industry has fragmented audiences and also altered the future prospects of the UK broadcasters that previously dominated our viewing experience. The BBC in particular faces profound questions as it enters discussions with the Government on charter renewal.

The BBC is not alone in facing critical questions about its future. Channel 4, too, is caught up in the complexity as the globalised entertainment industry reorders itself around a handful of gigantic platforms.

Most in Britain still like to talk about “our” broadcasters as if they are permanent fixtures of national life. In reality, they are now islands under threat in an ocean dominated by American tech companies and our addictive relationships with our smart phones.

In the United States, the industry has drawn the obvious conclusion. If you want to survive in this era, you need more scale. That is why we see major studios and platforms circling each other, exploring combinations that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago. When a studio as diverse and storied as Paramount concludes that it needs to combine with a bigger partner like Warner Bros simply to flourish in the streaming age, it tells us something about the brutal economics of global entertainment today.

Yet in the UK, our public service broadcasters risk remaining stuck in old models and old ways of thinking. They are still organised around linear schedules, legacy silos, and institutional pride, rather than around the single hard question that now matters: how do we build something big and compelling enough to matter in a digital world where the viewer is always one click away from bypassing British content altogether? At precisely the moment when courageous transformation is required, we risk clinging to structures designed for a previous century.

For the BBC, this question is existential. The age profile of its audiences keeps creeping upwards. Younger viewers are drifting to platforms whose names barely existed when the last licence fee settlement was negotiated. The corporation has made great efforts to pivot to digital and to find ways of connecting with young audiences, but the time has come to acknowledge that on its own it cannot achieve what it needs to with that demographic. It would benefit immensely from a new, deep and durable relationship with younger audiences at scale.

For Channel 4, the risk is different but just as stark. It has always prided itself on being smaller, nimble, and more disruptive. But in a world of global streaming, “small and nimble” can start to look like under-capitalised and vulnerable. The advertising market is fragmenting. Production costs are rising. The channel’s ability to take creative risks depends on a financial base that is no longer guaranteed. It needs scale – not to become safe and bland, but to ensure it still exists a decade from now.

As charter renewal begins, questions on the BBC’s future are starting to revolve around the possibility of advertising and subscription-based services.

But there is a different solution: a merger between the BBC and Channel 4.

This would address both of their problems at once. The BBC would gain more of the younger, increasingly diverse audiences it desperately needs for a long-term future. Channel 4 would gain the scale and security it needs to keep commissioning the bold, distinctive work that has always been its hallmark.

Together they could build a single, world-class public service media platform that is genuinely capable of competing in a global market.

Needless to say, there would be objections. How would the advertising model work? Would Channel 4’s irreverent tone be smothered by BBC bureaucracy?

Such concerns are real but could be overcome with political and institutional courage. It is far easier for ministers to tinker at the margins than to rethink the entire architecture of public service broadcasting. It is more comfortable for executives to protect their fiefdoms than to imagine themselves as part of something larger. But comfort is not a strategy. In the absence of bold change and reform, both organisations will slowly move towards irrelevance with younger audiences slipping further away.

The question, then, is not whether a merger between the BBC and Channel 4 would be complicated. Of course it would. The most pressing question is whether we are prepared to let two British institutions wither on the margins of a global entertainment market, or whether we are willing to give them the scale and strength they need to thrive.

In an age of giants, muddling through as we are is the most dangerous option of all. That can only lead to demise.

TWO

THE terms for the decennial review of the BBC’s Royal Charter have been set. Unsurprisingly, the Government has chosen to avoid asking the difficult question of whether the licence fee continues to make sense. While raising other forms of revenue will be considered, the regressive tax on those consuming live media is going to stay.

This is a missed opportunity. The licence fee has become an embarrassing anachronism. The notion that a licence is required to watch live content produced by broadcasters charging their own independent fees to consumers is a bizarre legacy of early arguments over radio broadcasting. If it has failed to keep pace with the developments in media of the last century, it has certainly failed to keep pace with those in the new millennium.

Yet the BBC is financially reliant upon this structure, and desperate to retain it. This unique and privileged position allows the organisation of being able to charge not only their own customers, but those of their direct competitors. The results, however, are strictly negative.

The BBC is simultaneously desperate to retain public approval and also to maintain the line that it produces public services which would otherwise have no home. These objectives are in clear tension: the first drives it to produce the sort of content commercial stations would already produce; the second, a sort of Reithian public education. In practice, the former objective seems to dominate, and the latter instinct to be redirected into nakedly political exercises that promote the views of the organisation’s staff.

It is difficult if not inconceivable to argue that this activity permits the subsidies given to the BBC through the licence fee – particularly when they increasingly drag Britain into disrepute.

President Trump’s lawsuit against the broadcaster for misrepresentation – and the long, shameful list of incidents demonstrating bias on foreign policy issues – illustrate how problems for the state broadcaster can become problems for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Given this, it would have been better to rip the sticking plaster off before the Government confirmed the BBC’s autonomy over the licence fee. It should have made clear to the BBC that it must prepare for a future without it, and begin to separate the state from the broadcaster. This is, after all, the long-term direction of travel. As things stand, the inevitable has been postponed, and the adjustment will be all the harder when it eventually arrives.

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