technology

What To Do When We Feel Powerless

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A close-up view of a green circuit board with intricate white pathways and numerous small holes, used in electronic devices.

This article appeared in the July 2025 edition of village magazines in Potterne, Worton and Marston, Seend and Bulkington, and Poulshot

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling powerless in the face of a world where power and the will to abuse it seem to be spiralling out of control. I feel powerless in the face of the grim events in Ukraine and the Middle East, where human ingenuity is put to building ever more ingenious ways for people to kill other people.

A close-up view of a green circuit board with intricate white pathways and numerous small holes, used in electronic devices.
Image credit – Pixabay.

I often worry that the fruits of our intellect are outstripping our wisdom to use them well. Why is it that every couple of months, one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence research pops up in the news to tell us it could wipe out the human race? Most recently, it was Professor Yoshua Bengio from Canada, whose research is cited more often than any other computer scientist in the world, who left Faisal Islam visibly shocked when he told him bluntly on Newsnight that “the worst case scenario” from AI “is human extinction”.

I feel powerless in the face of not only of Artificial Intelligence galloping ahead but also Genetic Modification. I worry about why we feel driven to develop these very powerful technologies quickly, even when we know things as seemingly innocuous as social media and video streaming are driving some people crazy, partly thanks to smartphones that follow us everywhere, constantly buzzing and demanding attention.

Despite these problems, technology is often presented to us uncritically as good of itself. We live at a time when people seek truth in spreadsheets rather than sonnets. Yet human beings are more than rational creatures. We are made not for power, which often brings out the worst in us, but for beauty, truth, goodness, and love.

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Power and Glory (Trinity Sunday, 15th June 2025)

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A renaissance-style triptych; the central panel represents the Holy Trinity with the Father holding both hands of Christ being crucified, while the Holy Spirit flies out, i.e. proceeds, from them. The side panels show Judas betraying Christ, and John the Baptist in his loincloth of camel hair.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend

Readings – Romans 5. 1-5; John 16. 12-15

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”

Why is it that every couple of months, one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence research pops up in the news, to tell us it could wipe out the human race?

Abstract painting featuring a surreal composition with a bird-like figure and a humanoid shape. The bird has a dark, feathered body with a red eye and outstretched wings, perched on a pedestal. The humanoid figure, with an orange and blue head, stands beside it. The background includes a cloudy sky and an orange base with abstract shapes.
Gethsemane by Mark Rothko (1944). In a private collection.

On Newsnight last week it was Yoshua Bengio, whose research is cited more often than any other computer scientist in the world. Sometimes called ‘one of the three godfathers of AI’, Professor Bengio told Faisal Islam bluntly that “the worst case scenario is human extinction”.  

It turns out that Bengio is based at the University of Montreal. Coincidentally, I had one of the most interestingconversations of my life on a bus to Montreal airport two years ago this month. I started talking to an American in his fifties, in town to attend an industry conference for people working in quantum computing, and a woman of about twenty who was studying computer science at one of the local universities. When he outlined that the first thing functioning quantum computing would do would be to instantly render all existing cybersecurity obsolete, the young woman was wide-eyed – and so was I. He smiled and shrugged and said, “It’s just like when the Iron Age arrived. Up until then, anyone who had bronze weapons and armour ruled the roost. Then all of a sudden they were obsolete and people needed steel. It’s just what human beings do; we advance.”

We advance—to restoring sight to the blind and killing one another with drones; to conquering cancer and poisoning the planet. In recent decades, technology that changes what it means to be human has started becoming especially problematic, whether creating machines smarter than we are, or viruses more dangerous than nature would produce, or simply driving ourselves crazy with smartphones that follow us everywhere, constantly buzzing and demanding attention.

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The Transfiguration of Technology: Sermon Preached on 11th February 2024 (Sunday Before Lent)

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Carol Beer from Little Britain, and her computer which always says no.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne and Holy Cross, Seend

2 Corinthians 4. 3-6; Mark 9. 2-9

“He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”

Carol Beer from Little Britain, and her computer which always says no.
Computer says… yes…?

We seem to be hardwired to giving more credibility to information that comes from a screen than things we hear in-person from other people, or even things we see directly with our own eyes. Last month, after falling for a so-called Deep Fake, an employee of a large multinational firm in Hong Kong transferred twenty million pounds to fraudsters. Police in the territory think that the criminals faked an entire video conference, with perhaps fifteen computer-simulated participants, using Artificial Intelligence to add made-up dialogue to real recordings. Because the people in the video conference looked and sounded just like people the victim knew from the real world, she fell for it. Would she have fallen for a similar con attempted in the flesh by a troupe of actors?

And so to our first reading, from St Paul, writing another of his letters to those perpetually troublesome Corinthians. “The god of this world”, he warns them, “has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel.” The “god of this world” is, fairly obviously, a reference to the Devil. But the quote sets off all sorts of reflections about what the actual god or gods of today’s society are. We seem particularly prone to worshipping our own supposed cleverness, and the products of it. Above all, technology seems to be the Zeus or Jupiter of our 21st Century gods, the solver of problems and the bringer of enlightenment. That’s why we are at risk of falling for scams delivered via a screen, in a way we never would for a real-life cold caller at the door.

I’m hardly opposed to technology. I make quite heavy use of social media and the Internet and all sorts of gizmos and software for my photography. Technology is a morally neutral thing, neither good nor evil – at the end of the day, a computer is just a fancy tool. Difficulties start when we forget that humans are supposed to use tools and not the other way around. Technology often seems to be our master rather than our tool.

The Church seems besotted with technology as a sort of magic bullet to appeal to young people and reverse Church decline. In particular, during the pandemic, we tried to convince ourselves that Zoom services were the future of the Church rather than an emergency response to an unprecedented situation. By the end of all those lockdowns, however, I think we all knew that being on a videoconference call with people was emphatically not the same as being in a room or a Church with them. Electronic presence is not the same as physical presence; and, as already noted, experiencing things through a screen can make it harder, not easier, to discern the truth.

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The End of the World: Sermon Preached on 24th December 2023 (Midnight Mass)

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A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.

Preached at St Mary’s, Potterne

Readings – Isaiah 9. 2-4, 6-7; John 1. 1-14

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”         

How would you react if a vicar, at Midnight Mass, in a medieval church, in a rather traditional village in the depths of Deep England, started preaching about the End of the World? Would you wonder if he had been teleported in from the American Bible Belt? Or perhaps, on hearing a certain accent, wonder if he was a friend of another Ulster preacher, whom some of you may remember, the man who liked to say “no” a lot?

A painting of Our Lady in a stable with the Baby Jesus in her arms; watched by St Joseph and the angels, who have halos, and shepherds and animals, who don't.
The Nativity by Giotto (1311-20), in the Basilica of St Francis, Assisi.

In fact, in the churches I go to I never hear anyone preaching on the end of the world. They’re far too moderate and sensible for that sort of thing. But lately, I’ve heard people talking about the end of the world on Radio 4 and in the pages of The Times.

That nice Matthew Syed, who won an Olympic medal in ping-pong, and makes those interesting radio programmes about quirky bits of modern history, had a column in The Times the other week saying our advancing technology meant that we might cause our own extinction. Then last Tuesday, when I was driving, Radio 4’s PM programme – not normally known for fire and brimstone sermons – had an interview with Geoffrey Hinton, the man often called “the godfather of artificial intelligence”, warning of the risks that AI might pose to human existence within the next 5-20 years. And all that’s before we talk about climate change, or nuclear war.

The world might be entering a very dark era.

So far, so cheerful!

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I Do What I Hate: Sermon Preached on 9th July 2023 (5th Sunday After Trinity)

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Preached at St John’s, Devizes

Readings – Romans 7: 15–25a; Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30

“I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

I wonder how familiar you are with quantum computing?

I ask, because the last interesting episode of my recent trip to North America happened on the bus out to Montreal airport to catch my flight to Heathrow. There was conversation between a man in his fifties from the United States, in town to attend an industry conference for people working in quantum computing, and a woman of about twenty who was studying computer science at one of the local universities, who was asking him all sorts of intelligent questions.

It’s much more difficult to make quantum computers to work in practice than the digital computers we’re familiar with, the man explained, but experimental prototypes work increasingly well, and it’s possible that we’re within a few years of them becoming practical. There are many wonderful things they might make much easier, like finding new vaccines. He said, however, that the first thing that will happen is that every encryption scheme in the world will become obsolete overnight. Encryption means the codes that are used to keep your debit card payments secure, your e-mails private, and the suchlike. Even the encryption used by the world’s militaries and secret services will become worthless, he explained, possibly not too far in the future. The first thing that quantum computers will do, apparently, is to force all of these vital pieces of code to be rewritten using quantum computers.

The young woman was wide-eyed – and so was I. He smiled and shrugged and said, “It’s just like when the Iron Age arrived. Up until then, anyone who had bronze weapons and armour ruled the roost. Then all of a sudden they were obsolete and people needed steel. It’s just what human beings do; we advance.”

Nowadays we’re no longer talking about swords, but things like cluster munitions. The war in Ukraine is a reminder of what how terrible long conventional wars between well-equipped large countries are. We’d almost forgotten.

Necessity, as the old saying goes, is the mother of invention, and countries fighting for their survival have needs that are acute. So war drives technological advancement. The last big international war finished with the invention of nuclear weapons. For the first time, human beings had the power to destroy ourselves entirely. In the 17 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, there has already been a revolution in some military technologies, such as the use of drones.

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Embracing Our Humanity: Sermon Preached at St John’s, Devizes, Sunday 19th December 2021 (The Fourth Sunday of Advent)

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Readings – Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

“…as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.” 

If you’re interested in some intelligent listening, may I commend this year’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4? They are being given by Professor Stuart Russell, a British academic who works on Artificial Intelligence at the University of California. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a computer whizz to understand them – Professor Russell is very good at explaining his subject in terms understandable to an intelligent non-specialist audience.

A copy of the painting of The Visitation by James Tissot
The Visitation (1886-94) by James Tissot; now hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.

We have now lived through half a century where ever increasing computer power has radically transformed the way in which we live. The growing power of computers and the consequent disruption to established patterns of living will continue well into the future. Professor Russell, like most experts, thinks many of the jobs made unnecessary by new technology will be ones requiring high levels of education and specialist knowledge. For example, many fewer lawyers and doctors will be needed given the way the expertise of the best can be packaged and made available worldwide. Why do we need the average hospital consultant or barrister when a computer programme will make the knowledge of the very best available to all for a tiny marginal cost? Similarly, who will need the average teacher or university lecturer when the best in the world can be streamed via the Internet to every tablet from Devizes to Dubai.

The experts, however, all seem to agree we will still need just as many people who earn their living by taking care of others and their personal needs – from hairdressers to care home assistants. I hope that means there will continue to be a robust demand for priests.

Please note: when our expertise becomes redundant, there is still a value – including an economic value – on our humanity.

Let us keep this in mind as we reflect on our Gospel reading, and Mary’s visit to Elizabeth to celebrate their pregnancies, for it is all about the value of humanity and of human life.

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