A recent edition included an article titled “Writer prompts computer to reveal gospel truth” about a series of books that used ChatGPT-4.0 to reveal the truth of God and the basic tenets of Christianity.

I will not comment on the intent or general character of the people involved with this article. It’s important to communicate to the readers of the Chinook Observer, however, that ChatGPT-4.0 doesn’t understand what it outputs and cannot prove revealed truths.

The article opens with an oft repeated assertion that the odds of our universe forming by random processes are so astronomically small that it must have been created by an intelligent designer. This shows a profound lack of understanding for how probabilistic reasoning works.

Imagine that you are dealt a hand of five cards. That hand is one outcome out of (52*51*50*49*48)/120 = 2,598,960 possible outcomes. With those odds, clearly an intelligent entity controlled which cards you received. But of course, it’s just a hand of cards. The chances of getting that hand are one since it is the hand you got. This is the well-known “Post Hoc probability fallacy.” Probabilistic arguments cannot be used to look backwards. You define the parameters of the problem, analyze the odds for different outcomes, and then run the experiment. Probabilistic reasoning is forward looking only.

A more critical issue, however, is the flawed concept behind the AI books by John E. Wilkins. In these books, the author claims that GPT-4.0 understands gospel truths and proves the existence of God. GPT-4.0 is a sophisticated Large Language Model. It considers a sequence of prompts and then it guesses the best sequence of words the person writing the prompts wants to see. It doesn’t prove or understand anything.

I am sure John E. Wilkins meant well, but take it from me (a research scientist working in AI) the GPT-4.0 model does not prove God exists, reveal gospel truth, or discredit atheists. There is too much confusion about AI and what it can (and cannot do) to let this sort of misleading material go unchallenged.

TIM MATTSON

Ocean Park