Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by photochemsyn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The real question in this context might be 'can LLM output be divinely inspired'?

If we charitably accept that all holy texts are written by human beings in the grip of divine inspiration (as compared to texts magically appearing on the tops of mountains), in a manner opaque to tools of scientific inquiry such that no such divine interventions can be detected or measured, then why can't LLMs also be used in this manner by the divine presence?

Is it thus possible to create a new 'true' religion, with a holy text generated by a consortium of LLMs passing prompts and outputs back and forth among one another, with a few stipulations such as 'start with an origin story of the universe'?

Absolutely valid point, but I think that from a Christian POV, the question comes down to an entity having a soul, or you know, the something that makes humans somehow distinct to animals. This, let's call it a soul, is I think needed so that God has something to grip in order to deliver the divine inspiration. Following up, the LLM then needs to have this "soul", so that it can be inspired, so that it can deliver proper divine revelations. The question really is, where does this soul begin, and end, and what does it need to form an attachment to something. Can a human be born without one, can something, that is not a human, have one at any point? And again, as you say, how to test for this? It would really be a shame to be fooled by an entity, saying that it delivers holy texts, just to find out later that it was the Antichrist or something, and just a test of faith.

No, because inspiration comes from the nous, or intellect. LLMs have no access to the nous. They're purely epistemic.

Probably most believe a "soul" is required to receive inspiration.

I mean if a book or a peice of writing can be divinely inspired I don't see why am llm can't. Both are pieces of technology at the end of the day

Reply on news.ycombinator.com