The Why

I'm taking an online course about AI Strategy. One of the points the course leader makes is that we shouldn't think of AI as Artificial Intelligence, but as Abundant Intelligence —

The ability to know everything that can be known about a subject. Any subject under the sun. Or, given the course's focus on growing revenue and increasing profit, the intelligence to optimize processes — faster, more efficiently, and with fewer human limitations.

This got me thinking: If I could know everything about everything, what would I actually want to know? There are countless trivial things I could learn — the sports results from this weekend, the best workout routine, the best of this or that. Eventually, I'd be richer — much richer — and healthier. Presumably, happier.

Your idea of happiness may differ from mine — and it probably does. But if your idea of happiness is to be a trillionaire, then you probably haven't got time to read this essay anyway.

But that got me thinking: What would I want to know if I could know anything at all?

Very soon I would want answers to the big existential questions.

How can we stop people from dying of preventable diseases? How can we solve world hunger? How could we collectively make this world a better place? What does it mean to live in harmony and peace with others?

Then it struck me: These are not new questions unique to the AI age. Quite the opposite. These questions have existed since the beginning of time.

And there's a form of Abundant Intelligence that has existed just as long: the belief in a divine being — whom we might call by different names depending on where we were raised. The source of ALL intelligence — from the beginning of time to its end, long after we have all disappeared to wherever we believe we go next.

Just as people 2000 years ago were faced with the sudden, unexpected rise of something in their midst with the answers to their biggest questions, so too are we today. As I pondered the potential of AI, I realized that the quest for answers to life's biggest questions is not new. For millennia, humanity has turned to Divine Intelligence — the belief in a higher power — as the ultimate source of wisdom.

Could it be that AI, in its pursuit of Abundant Intelligence, is an echo of the divine — an attempt to replicate, in code and logic, what faith has long provided through mystery and grace? Where AI seeks to optimize, faith seeks to sanctify. Perhaps the rise of AI is not just a technological revolution, but a theological one — a reminder that our quest for knowledge is, at its core, a quest to know the divine. Just as AI seeks to optimize human systems, Divine Intelligence offers a framework for understanding our purpose within those systems. Together, they might just offer a path forward: AI as the how, and faith as the why.

In these essays, I will reflect on why these questions endure — and why we struggle to answer them. I will examine what AI and Divine Intelligence (DI) have in common, and where they differ. Could they be the same thing? Or are they leading us to the same point in our existence — both individually and collectively as a species?