It’s really hard to be the voice of reason in troubling times, but here you are, trying your best…to be a Human…

"We replace Love with trips, houses, cars, washing machines, stoves, friendly company, professions, ambitions, fame, sex.

We turn ourselves into dependent, unfree and quite often sad-funny clowns living in imitation of love.

We swim in love and drown in lies.

God-the Divine has given us Love so that we don't forget what great souls we hold to grow when the divinity is with us.

But the Divine did not take away the choice to be small. That choice is entirely ours."

– Life in the rocks, M. Laleva

Pandora's box; Adart

...Minds immeasurably superior to ours looked upon this earth with envious eyes. And slowly and surely they laid their plans against us…

Anyone who in the 80s of the last century was of a conscious age and sufficient adequacy to listen to and perceive an intellectual product on the scale of the rock opera "War of the Worlds", based on the plot of the novel of the same name by H. W. Wells, to this day he shuddered when he heard those words spoken in Richard Burton's voice.

The chilling effect comes not so much from the tone of the narrator as from the moment of realizing the idea embedded in the narrative…

That something far beyond our imaginations could watch us as closely as a researcher under a microscope studies creatures swarming and multiplying in a drop of water.

But these "eyes" that judge us so methodically are cold and unfeeling. There is no love, compassion, mercy in them... No emotion neither empathy at all. This "supermind" or "higher intelligence" is not God.

Reading today is perhaps much more stressful than it used to be, because the cold eye watching over us is now here on Earth.

It's called artificial intelligence.

By this we understand the whole concept, in which computer machines, through increasingly sophisticated algorithms, analyze huge masses of information from the world around us and take actions to perform certain tasks or achieve certain goals.

Our smartphones, or rather the algorithms installed in all the applications we use, study us constantly. They listen and watch us even when we are not actively using the devices. And not because someone wants to spy on us specifically.

From what we do, say or watch every day, the algorithm builds piece by piece, or rather byte by byte, our cloud avatar. Our alter ego. Which, with the continuous improvement of algorithms, becomes an increasingly dense likeness of its physical earthly prototype.

For now, this serves certain commercial tasks. For example, to target us marketing based on keywords and behavioral patterns, to receive ads for products we would buy.

This we know for sure is already happening.

But what else do we not know?

And most importantly, how far can this go?

While many of us are lazy, there are people who seem to be seriously concerned about the future…

In January, a meeting was held at the Vatican in which Rabbi Eliezer Sima Weiss of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and Sheikh Abdullah bin Baya, President of the Abu Dhabi Peace Forum, participated. The representatives of the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - signed the Rome Call on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. (Or so we read).

The document is dedicated to algorithm ethics, that is, the ethical development of algorithms.

"Algorithms should serve people, not the other way around. Man is the one who should continue to manage the machine, not the machine guiding the man in his choices", says Monsignor Palia.

In his words, these mathematical processes, through which tools and platforms are produced that have a daily impact on the life of our societies, may become so defining in the future that they become something like a new dictatorship.

"We can call it algocracy, the power of algorithms, that is, the power of those who collect the data taken through these algorithms. Therefore, we also direct our appeal to large industries and universities, so that an ethical culture of new technologies is developed. We call this algorithmic. That is, the algorithms must comply with ethical rules", says Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia.

The 77-year-old archbishop speaks in terms that are yet to enter the language. It mentions how modern technology connects people, but at the same time it can also doom us to loneliness, giving us the deceptive feeling that we can have everything just through the display of our electronic device.

"We risk that the algorithms will lock us into a very sad individualism, turning us into prisoners inhabiting the bubble of virtuality. And we need physical proximity, not virtual. The avatar that technology creates for us should never replace the world of our real relationships," he says. And he immediately adds that, according to him, the term "artificial intelligence" is ambiguous, but unfortunately, it has already gained mass popularity and we are forced to accept it. But in reality, there is a dangerous ambiguity in this term. Because intelligence as such needs flesh, brain, human cells, while algorithms do not. Algorithms are a machine, they are a calculation. They are beyond that love which sometimes goes beyond calculation and reaches self-denial, heroism and even martyrdom.

And indeed, if we try to understand the great meaning of the Christian faith or any other faith, we are all, as God's creations, beautiful and unique not because we are more or less intelligent.

Our gift is that we can feel Love.

This is what separates us from machines and algorithms.

And each of us has a choice to be a "small" addition to the algorithm or to be the Divine creation of Love…

Shared with joy

A.A

Stob, Bulgaria