Explainer

Belief

Creed

6 November 2024

5 min read

Whether it's AI or us, it's OK to be ignorant

Our search for answers begins by recognising that we don’t have them.

Simon Walters

Simon Walters is Curate at Holy Trinity Huddersfield.

A street sticker displays multiple lines reading 'and then?'

Stephen Harlan on Unsplash.

When was the last time you admitted you didn’t know something? I don’t say it as much as I ought to. I’ve certainly felt the consequences of admitting ignorance – of being ridiculed for being entirely unaware of a pop culture reference, of being found out that I wasn’t paying as close attention to what my partner was saying as she expected. In a hyper-connected age when the wealth of human knowledge is at our fingertips, ignorance can hardly be viewed as a virtue.

A recent study on the development of artificial intelligence holds out more hope for the value of admitting our ignorance than we might have previously imagined. Despite wide-spread hype and fearmongering about the perils of AI, our current models are in many ways developed in similar ways to how an animal is trained. An AI system such as ChatGPT might have access to unimaginable amounts of information, but it requires training by humans on what information is valuable or not, whether it has appropriately understood the request it has received, and whether its answer is correct. The idea is that human feedback helps the AI to hone its model through positive feedback for correct answers, and negative feedback for incorrect answers, so that it keeps whatever method led to positive feedback and changes whatever method led to negative feedback. It really isn’t that far away from how animals are trained.

However, a problem has emerged. AI systems have become adept at giving coherent and convincing sounding answers that are entirely incorrect. How has this happened?

This is a tool; it is good at some tasks, and less good at others. And, like all tools, it does not have an intrinsic morality.

In digging into the training method for AI, the researchers found that the humans training the AI flagged answers of “I don’t know” as unsatisfactory. On one level this makes sense. The whole purpose of these systems is to provide answers, after all. But rather than causing the AI to return and rethink its data, it instead developed increasingly convincing answers that were not true whatsoever, to the point where the human supervisors didn’t flag sufficiently convincing answers as wrong because they themselves didn’t realise that they were wrong. The result is that “the more difficult the question and the more advanced model you use, the more likely you are to get well-packaged, plausible nonsense as your answer.”

Uncovering some of what is going on in AI systems dispels both the fervent hype that artificial intelligence might be our saviour, and the deep fear that it might be our societal downfall. This is a tool; it is good at some tasks, and less good at others. And, like all tools, it does not have an intrinsic morality. Whether it is used for good or ill depends on the approach of the humans that use it.

But this study also uncovers our strained relationship with ignorance. Problems arise in the answers given by systems like ChatGPT because a convincing answer is valued more than admitting ignorance, even if the convincing answer is not at all correct. Because the AI has been trained to avoid admitting it doesn’t know something, all of its answers are less reliable, even the ones that are actually correct.

This is not a problem limited to artificial intelligence. I had a friend who seemed incapable of admitting that he didn’t know something, and whenever he was corrected by someone else, he would make it sound like his first answer was actually the correct one, rather than whatever he had said. I don’t know how aware he was that he did this, but the result was that I didn’t particularly trust whatever he said to be correct. Paradoxically, had he admitted his ignorance more readily, I would have believed him to be less ignorant.

It is strange that admitting ignorance is so avoided. After all, it is in many ways our default state. No one faults a baby or a child for not knowing things. If anything, we expect ignorance to be a fuel for curiosity. Our search for answers begins in the recognition that we don’t have them. And in an age where approximately 500 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, the sum of what we don’t know must by necessity be vastly greater than all that we do know. What any one of us can know is only a small fraction of all there is to know.

Crucially, admitting we do not know everything is not the same as saying that we do not know anything.

One of the gifts of Christian theology is an ability to recognize what it is that makes us human. One of these things is the fact that any created thing is, by definition, limited. God alone is the only one who can be described by the ‘omnis’. He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. There is no limit to his power, and presence, and knowledge. The distinction between creator and creation means that created things have limits to their power, presence, and knowledge. We cannot do whatever we want. We cannot be everywhere at the same time. And we cannot know everything there is to be known.

Projecting infinite knowledge is essentially claiming to be God. Admitting our ignorance is therefore merely recognizing our nature as created beings, acknowledging to one another that we are not God and therefore cannot know everything. But, crucially, admitting we do not know everything is not the same as saying that we do not know anything. Our God-given nature is one of discovery and learning. I sometimes like to imagine God’s delight in our discovery of some previously unknown facet of his creation, as he gets to share with us in all that he has made. Perhaps what really matters is what we do with our ignorance. Will we simply remain satisfied not to know, or will it turn us outwards to delight in the new things that lie behind every corner?

For the developers of ChatGPT and the like, there is also a reminder here that we ought not to expect AI to take on the attributes of God. AI used well in the hands of humans may yet do extraordinary things for us, but it will not truly be able to do anything, be everywhere, or know everything. Perhaps if it was trained to say ‘I don’t know’ a little more, we might all learn a little more about the nature of the world God has made.

Review

Culture

Film & TV

7 August 2024

9 min read

Deadpool and Wolverine admit there’s only one story worth telling

Here's why a knowing take on post-modernity's void strikes a chord.

James Lawrence

James is Canon Missioner at Blackburn Cathedral. He researches technology and theology at Oxford University.

Two superheroes, deadpool and Wolverine, stand and crouch respectively, in a desert like place.

'A desert of criticism and a wasteland of cynicism.'

Disney.

Can Marvel Jesus save a dying cinematic universe? That's the key question for the latest film from Marvel Studios and, it would seem at least from the box office, that the answer is: yes!

Deadpool & Wolverine, the snarky buddy comedy odd-ball team-up between Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, made over $590 million in its first week. That’s the sixth biggest opening of all time.

What follows is not a traditional review, you can find plenty of those online already. Instead, I want us to consider Deadpool & Wolverine as a cultural artefact that displays some of the key themes of our society. The stories that we tell, including the films that Hollywood produces, can act as a mirror to our culture, giving us an opportunity to see trends that we might have otherwise missed. 

As a mirror to this cultural moment, I want to suggest that Deadpool & Wolverine presents us with a cynical and nihilistic take on the end of an era in which all the protagonists can do is barrage the audience with an endless stream of jokes and quips.

The third instalment of the Deadpool trilogy is the first to be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since Disney acquired the rights to 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion. Until now all the X-men movies, the Wolverine movies, the prequels and the Deadpool movies have been produced by 20th Century Fox. But it’s the start of a new chapter for the X-men franchise.

The Disney executives hope for a new lease of life for the MCU, which has been struggling to find its way ever since the epic conclusion to Avengers: End Game. Of course, ordinarily, this sort of corporate back and forth would be irrelevant when thinking about the themes of a movie, but, in this case, the business backdrop is effectively a major plot-point of the film.

A significant portion of the dialogue is spent discussing the acquisition of the X-men franchise by Disney. Deadpool talks about what Kevin Feige (president of Marvel Studios) will and won’t allow in his films. A major action set-piece takes place next to a ruin of the 20th Century Fox logo. Deadpool jokes with Wolverine that he is joined the MCU when they are in a bit of a slump, and, when Deadpool is asked to save the universe, he takes this to mean that he should save the entire MCU franchise describing himself as ‘Marvel Jesus’. The movie knows that this film is the product of a business deal, and it wants its audience to know that too.

So, this film takes place at the end of an era and to highlight this throughout the film, a series of high-profile cameos are made by actors and characters from the last 24 years (no spoilers here). They are brought into the movie so that they might be given a final send off. A heroic on camera action hero death, one last valiant fight before the curtain falls. In a sense, Deadpool & Wolverine is a eulogy to the comic film industry, an era has passed away, we live only in the ruins of a once great edifice and all we can do is joke around and reminisce about the good old days

Deadpool’s is a dark humour, laughing death in the face, traipsing around the trash heap at the end of time incessantly spouting one-liners.

The scepticism Deadpool and Wolverine exhibits about the movie industry, correlates neatly with a post-modern disposition to be suspicious about the role of power. Deadpool knows, and points out to his audience, that it is only the vested interests of corporate power that allow this film to take place, and he revels with delight when these corporations seem to be failing. He is under no illusions that the studios are benign entities who merely hope to make worthwhile art - Deadpool is a cynic, the jester, who takes great satisfaction in declaring that the emperor has no clothes.

Coupled with this is the constant breaking of the fourth wall. This is one of Deadpool’s foundational characteristics, he has been breaking the fourth wall since his earliest appearance in the comics and the previous two films. Deadpool uses this ability to deconstruct and point out some of the quirks of the superhero genre. For example, in the first film when a villain jumps into the scene from a great height, Deadpool says to the audience: “Superhero landing. She's gonna do a superhero landing… You know, that's really hard on your knees.” (This joke is repeated in Deadpool & Wolverine).

The deconstructionist tone contrasts sharply with Marvel’s previous movies, particularly the grand narrative which spanned 22 films and culminated in Avengers: Endgame- an unashamed mythic narrative about the defeat of evil and the triumph of good over bad. Yes, there were jokes and subversive elements in the MCU before Deadpool, but in the main the characters like Captain America are sincere and the movie takes them and their motivations seriously. Deadpool in contrast delights in deconstructing the narrative: Marvel’s grand narrative is over, Fox’s cinematic universe is over, and it is unclear if they will be able to successfully tell another epic mythic story.

All of this, I imagine, sounds quite dystopian and that is not just how the film feels but also serves as the set piece for the middle section of the story. The misadventure of Deadpool & Wolverine lands both characters in “the void at the end of time” a place described as a Mad Max set, a barren desert where only the strongest survive by dominating the weak. In this hellish environment, Deadpool is completely unphased, he continues to make joke after joke, despite multiple characters in the movie telling him to ‘shut up’, and he displays zero remorse when his joking around results in other characters being killed. The humour of this film is the final element which makes it feel very post-modern and nihilistic. Deadpool and Wolverine are left in a hellscape and all they can do is fight with one another and make non-stop sarcastic quips. Deadpool’s is a dark humour, laughing death in the face, traipsing around the trash heap at the end of time incessantly spouting one-liners.

Paul Ricoeur, the French Christian and philosopher describes in his work two instincts in modernity: a ‘willingness to listen’ and a ‘willingness to suspect.’ The willingness to suspect is best exemplified by the three ‘masters of suspicion’, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Following these masters of suspicion, modernity has learnt to be critical and to criticise texts, narratives, motives and power. Ricoeur thinks that we need both instincts, we need to be able to listen and we should be able to suspect, but, he cautions post-modern society that it is possible to find yourself in a desert of criticism in which there is nothing symbolic, nothing sacred, nothing but power and will. I have never seen a better depiction of the ‘desert of criticism’ put to film than Deadpool’s void at the end of time.

Perhaps the film is doing this because this is, in fact, the only story worth telling.

All of this was bubbling around in the back of my head when the film came to its final climax. It is my experience of the finale that made me want to write this review of the film. After almost two hours of post-modern nihilism, in the denouement, our two protagonists are faced with the classic superhero choice to sacrifice themselves so that they can save their universe from imminent destruction. And, of course, like good superheroes, they go willingly into danger and give up their lives for the sake of their friends.

I had such a strange set of emotions as I watched this part of the story unfold.

Firstly, I thought “Oh, right, this is the moment when the hero sacrifices himself- that is obviously what comes next.” I have been conditioned by decades of superhero films to expect this sequence of events at the end of the movie. But secondly, I found myself thinking. “This is so out of place with the rest of the film, this is pure sentimental heroics, we’ve just had two hours of cynicism and fourth wall breaking and the climax of the whole thing is a traditional superhero ending?!” And then, lastly, I found myself wonderful, ‘Perhaps the film is doing this because this is, in fact, the only story worth telling- that everything up to this point has only been playing at cynicism because, at a fundamental level, the filmmakers realise that cynicism and scepticism aren’t enough to make a compelling story.”

Western society feels as if it has lost its narrative. It is as if, just like the MCU, our best story is behind us, and we are flailing to find a new story.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a strikingly resonant film, it has struck a chord with contemporary culture. The film offers us a mirror to the contemporary society in which we live and I think we must look deeply into the mirror if we are going to accurately diagnose the ills of our current cultural moment.

Many people today feel like they are living in a desert at the end of time, devoid of meaningful symbolism and sustenance for the soul. The hollowing out of meaning in post-modern Western culture has resulted in a tinderbox which is ready to combust at a moment's notice. “Over the last month we have seen riots breakout across England caused by an incident in Southport that sent sparks flying.”. Relatedly, contemporary Western society feels as if it has lost its narrative. It is as if, just like the MCU, our best story is behind us, and we are flailing to find a new story. Look at the average Netflix viewing figures to discover that many of us only enjoy watching re-runs of our favourite TV shows from 10 years ago.

The cynicism and scepticism of Deadpool & Wolverine resonates with many people in the contemporary West, and the film offers two ways of reacting to the pain of our cultural moment.

For most of the film Deadpool saunters through this nihilistic hellscape spouting a barrage of gags, sex-jokes and sarcastic quips- that is the first option, to laugh in the face of meaninglessness. But for the climax of the movie, it’s as if the writers knew that they couldn’t maintain the ruse. When the characters of Deadpool and Wolverine make the choice to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others they choose to live for something bigger than themselves. They admit in their actions that they aren’t the nihilists they were pretending to be, and the film acknowledges that in the final analysis there is nothing ultimately satisfying, nothing ultimately sustaining, in that way of being in the world.

Or, to put it another way, the only way that Deadpool could become ‘Marvel Jesus’ is by following in the footsteps of actual Jesus: by sacrificing his life for those whom he loved and by discovering that true life, resurrection life, is always and only ever found on the far side of death.

Paul Ricoeur writes that ‘beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again’, called to a second, or post-critical naïveté. Naivete is a deliberately provocative term to use, no one wants to be considered naïve (even postcritically naïve!), so perhaps you might prefer to think of it as synonymous with restored or as experiencing a recollection of meaning. I think many people in the West today are waking up to the challenge of living in a desert of criticism and a wasteland of cynicism. The capacity to criticise is an important skill, but it has run rampant and left out society with a void of meaning in which nothing is sacred, nothing is enchanted.

Deadpool & Wolverine speaks of a culture desperately in need of a new story, a narrative within which meaning can be found. The film paints in vivid imagery the result of a society that has lost its narrative. And, in the end, Deadpool and Wolverine seems to admit that there is only one story worth telling: self-sacrificial death and resurrection.