This bubbling mixture of excitement and fear makes it hard to weigh the opportunities and risks. But lessons can be learned from other industries, and from past technological shifts. So what has changed to make ai so much more capable? How scared should you be? And what should governments do?

In a special Science section, we explore the workings of llms and their future direction. The first wave of modern ai systems, which emerged a decade ago, relied on carefully labelled training data. Once exposed to a sufficient number of labelled examples, they could learn to do things like recognise images or transcribe speech. Today’s systems do not require pre-labelling, and as a result can be trained using much larger data sets taken from online sources. llms can, in effect, be trained on the entire internet—which explains their capabilities, good and bad.

Those capabilities became apparent to a wider public when Chatgpt was released in November. A million people had used it within a week; 100m within two months. It was soon being used to generate school essays and wedding speeches. Chatgpt’s popularity, and Microsoft’s move to incorporate it into Bing, its search engine, prompted rival firms to release chatbots too.

Read it all.

Rapid progress in AI is arousing fear as well as excitement. How worried should you be? https://t.co/YM85dCBxu3 pic.twitter.com/hWMRvB4C62

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 20, 2023

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), “Heaven-Haven”

La Résurrection du Christ, Andrea della Robbia pic.twitter.com/JiD8B0O2fv

— Academia Christiana (@AcademiaChristi) July 30, 2020

All year, death, after death, after death.
Then today look how majestically clouds float in the sky

–Barbara Ras (1949- )

amazing #clouds pic.twitter.com/XPWYy6yYHs

— Beautiful Moments (@beautfulmoments) April 12, 2021

From here:

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul
Shall (though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,
And life, by this death abled, shall control
Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death, bring misery,
If in thy little book my name thou enrol,
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrefied,
But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sin’s sleep, and death’s soon from me pass,
That waked from both, I again risen may
Salute the last, and everlasting day.

Resurrection of Christ by Bartolome Esteban Murillo. pic.twitter.com/88CyAPEScA

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) October 14, 2016

From there:

Not darkness but twilight
In which even the best
of minds must make its way
now. And slowly the questions
occur, vague but formidable
for all that. We pass our hands
over their surface like blind
men feeling for the mechanism
that will swing them aside. They
yield, but only to re-form
as new problems; and one
does not even do that
but towers immovable
before us.

Is there no way
of other thought of answering
its challenge? There is an anticipation
of it to the point of
dying. There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body.

God,however, raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are the witnesses; and it is the name of Jesus which,through our faith in it, has brought back the strength of this man whom you see here and who is well known to you. It is faith in that name that has restored this man… pic.twitter.com/aDGKfEFLmY

— Kalina Boulter (@Kalina_Boulter) April 13, 2023

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Happy #Easter! Jesus is risen! Today, we remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. May your day be filled with hope. pic.twitter.com/zjLWheg98c

— Samaritan's Purse (@SamaritansPurse) April 9, 2023

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899)

May this Easter fills your heart with renewed hope, love & peace. May all of us recognise the beauty of life..Happy Easter! ( Resurrection of Christ by Raphael) pic.twitter.com/SA48Cq63o0

— Liz Mathew (@MathewLiz) April 8, 2023

Sam believes that Gandalf has fallen a catastrophic distance and has died. But in the end of the story, with Sam having been asleep for a long while and then beginning to regain consciousness, Gandalf stands before Sam, robed in white, his face glistening in the sunlight, and says:

“Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?”

But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: “Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”

“A great shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from bed… “How do I feel?” he cried.” Well, I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel” –he waved his arms in the air– “I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!”

— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King

"God exists: that is the real message of Easter. Anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed."
~Pope Benedict XVI pic.twitter.com/DUmgk49vON

— ＴＨＥＯＤＯＲＩＣ ᴺᴼᵂᴬᴷ ن (@Theo_Logica) April 18, 2022

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined1 thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Read it all.

John 20:1-9

Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed. Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

Art:
The Empty Tomb, Resurrection of Jesus
Steel engraving, 1853 pic.twitter.com/iPK18Thn0W

— Kalina Boulter (@Kalina_Boulter) April 9, 2023

The resurrection of Jesus is claimed by Christians to be the turning point for the whole world, for each of us individually, and all of us together and for the whole of creation, always and everywhere. And that claim was made within 20 – 25 years of his death. So from the finality of death what this means is that the certainty of final endings is over. A new beginning is made.

Without the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, there are simply endings. Look at it through the eyes of the witnesses:

For Peter, it would be the end of any chance of forgiveness for his cowardice and betrayal.

For Mary Magdalene, it would be the end of a relationship, of a friendship, where she was valued, having importance and dignity.

For us gathering here in this extraordinary building, we would not be here because the building would never have been built were it not for the resurrection of Jesus.

It’s not just an event in history; it is the most powerful event in history: past, present and the history that we are yet to know.

And we see the reality of the resurrection around us in all corners of the world.

Read it all.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is among the most certain facts in history. It means eternal life, eternal hope, eternal joy because Christ is risen.

My sermon at Holy Communion at @Cburycathedral this morning:https://t.co/f9XAgC3ULU

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) April 9, 2023

Gather gladness from the skies;
Take a lesson from the ground;
Flowers do ope their heavenward eyes
And a Spring-time joy have found;
Earth throws Winter’s robes away,
Decks herself for Easter Day.

Beauty now for ashes wear,
Perfumes for the garb of woe.
Chaplets for disheveled hair,
Dances for sad footsteps slow;
Open wide your hearts that they
Let in joy this Easter Day.

Seek God’s house in happy throng;
Crowded let His table be;
Mingle praises, prayer and song,
Singing to the Trinity.
Henceforth let your souls alway
Make each morn an Easter Day.

Read it all.

🌿Ostermontag …🌿🐣🌿 pic.twitter.com/qzkEIjT9wt

— 💫Stein_harmonie🍀🧚‍♀️ (@SteinHarmonie) April 10, 2023

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that pierced died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

–John Updike (1932-2009)

Today (4/9): The Resurrection of the Lord#angels

“On Easter Sunday the Church celebrates the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the dead, the greatest feast of the liturgical year.”
We joyfully proclaim,”He is risen!” with the response,”He is risen, indeed!” pic.twitter.com/dVm44v38ft

— WritingAngels (@LectorGirl85) April 9, 2023

Look through them all.

One has to turn to poetry and music this day because the news of what occurred is so good it is impossible fully to take in–KSH.

#EasterSunday @EdPiotrowski @medwick @ChrissyKohler @WXIIJackie @Em_I_Am @JustinMcKeeWx @LeeHaywoodWX @ramelcarpenter @marioncaldwx @RealSaltLife @StarboardRail @StormHour @ThePhotoHour @Christina4casts @CMorganWX @AndrewWMBF @AlexCorderoWX @ScottyPowellWX @FOX8CindyFarmer pic.twitter.com/KT65UXmd7e

— Mark Moore (@MMoore_hoops) April 9, 2023

Words cannot utter

Christ His returning:—

Mankind, keep Jubilee,

Strip off your mourning,

Crown you with garlands,

Set your lamps burning.

Speech is left speechless;—

Set you to singing,

Fling your hearts open wide,

Set your bells ringing:

Christ the Chief Reaper

Comes, His sheaf bringing…

Read it all.

Happy Easter! 🐰🐣

At the top of this enormously dramatic early 17th-century painting, Christ miraculously rises from the dead after his crucifixion and burial.

Learn about "The Resurrection" by painter Francesco Buoneri, a close follower of Caravaggio: https://t.co/4Kb7CopVkw pic.twitter.com/P9JTZDLKrq

— The Art Institute of Chicago (@artinstitutechi) April 17, 2022

All night had shout of men, and cry
Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone,
He rose again behind the stone.

–Alice Meynell (1847-1922)

There's a rumour, a whisper. Something's happening. Could it be? #HolySaturday @gandkchurch @cofe pic.twitter.com/4xJz6oTEpv

— Fr Craig Huxley-Jones SCP (@FatherHux) April 15, 2017

HOW life and death in Thee
Agree !
Thou hadst a virgin womb
And tomb.
A Joseph did betroth
Them both.

–Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

Pietro Lorenzetti
(c.1280-c.1348)
Entombment
c.1320
Fresco
Lower Church,S.Francesco
Assisi#HolySaturday #HolyWeek#DonneInArte #ArtLovers pic.twitter.com/D2qtUwoQ3d

— Alessandra Ciccolini (@AlessandraCicc6) April 14, 2017

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been, if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you, you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

“You have laid me in the depths of the tomb.” -Psalm 88 “The Veiled Christ” by Giuseppe Sanmartino (1753) pic.twitter.com/c2uGbi5y5b

— Lady of Good Counsel (@ofgoodcounsel) April 11, 2020

look through them all.

Christians around the world mark #Good Friday – in pictures https://t.co/2m7zJmMkgd #christianity #globalisation #holyweek #holyweek2023 #photos

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 7, 2023

Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter, weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved….

Read it all.

#ImageOfTheDay on #GoodFriday.

“Love was His meaning.” pic.twitter.com/jLgNMo4AY4

— Michael Sadgrove 🇪🇺 (@MichaelSadgrove) April 7, 2023

O My chief good,
How shall I measure out thy bloud?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or can not leaves, but fruit, be signe
Of the true vine?

Then let each houre
Of my whole life one grief devoure;
That thy distresse through all may runne,
And be my sunne.
Or rather let
My severall sinnes their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sinne may so.

Since bloud is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloudie fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sinne:

That when sinne spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
All come to lodge there, sinne may say,
No room for me, and flie away.

Sinne being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sinne take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.

–George Herbert (1593-1633)

Christ is taken to be crucified and is nailed to the cross. A 14th Century wall painting at North Cove, Suffolk. Today is Good Friday. pic.twitter.com/Ld6h44cWbL

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) April 7, 2023

Il Guercino's dramatic "Capturing Christ" (1621) @FitzMuseum_UK #art #twitart #Baroque pic.twitter.com/8LoBr5ptCs

— Paul Wadey (@pwadey) October 26, 2016

As is our custom, we aim to let go of the cares and concerns of this world until Monday and to focus on the great, awesome, solemn and holy events of the next three days. I would ask people to concentrate their comments on the personal, devotional, and theological aspects of these days which will be our focal point here. Many thanks–KSH.

The Last Supper in unusual English glass of 1771 by the painter James Rowell at Apethorpe, Northamptonshire. Today is Maundy Thursday, and tonight the Church throughout the world celebrates the Mass of the Lord's Supper. pic.twitter.com/eZsM0f4BnO

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) April 6, 2023

The Taliban has further tightened restrictions on Afghan women by banning them from working for the United Nations, putting at risk the agency’s multibillion-dollar aid program in Afghanistan.

The U.N. warned Tuesday of “serious concern” after its female Afghan staff were prevented by the authorities from entering their offices in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Working for the U.N. was one of the last avenues of employment left for women in Afghanistan.

“We remind de facto authorities that United Nations entities cannot operate and deliver lifesaving assistance without female staff,” the U.N. said on Twitter.

The U.N. has repeatedly warned that excluding women from the aid sector is a “red line.” It says aid won’t be able to reach women in need without female employees, as the country’s conservative culture in the country doesn’t allow men and women to mix.

Read it all.

The Taliban has banned Afghan women from working for the United Nations, putting at risk the agency’s multibillion-dollar aid program in Afghanistan https://t.co/6qYZLONJ8G

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 4, 2023

Ian Sansavera, a software architect at a New York start-up called Runway AI, typed a short description of what he wanted to see in a video. “A tranquil river in the forest,” he wrote.

Less than two minutes later, an experimental internet service generated a short video of a tranquil river in a forest. The river’s running water glistened in the sun as it cut between trees and ferns, turned a corner and splashed gently over rocks.

Runway, which plans to open its service to a small group of testers this week, is one of several companies building artificial intelligence technology that will soon let people generate videos simply by typing several words into a box on a computer screen.

They represent the next stage in an industry race — one that includes giants like Microsoft and Google as well as much smaller start-ups — to create new kinds of artificial intelligence systems that some believe could be the next big thing in technology, as important as web browsers or the iPhone.

Read it all.

In the race to create new kinds of AI tech, several companies are building systems that will generate videos based on simple prompts. The new systems could speed the work of moviemakers, while becoming a quick way to create hard-to-detect misinformation.https://t.co/cO8aoxfVer

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 4, 2023

Turns out, it’s not that easy at all to create a bot that diagnoses disease with more nuance and compassion than a human doctor, and the consequences for some of us may be dire. You might reply that not all human doctors are nuanced and compassionate, but this is just my point. As long as AI is trained on human behavior, it will tend to replicate our worst flaws, only more efficiently. What happens when medical racism or sexism in the training data means that even our most sophisticated bots share human doctors’ tendency to misdiagnose women and people of color?

We are finding out. A 2019 study found that a clinical algorithm used in many hospitals required Black patients to be much sicker than White patients in order to be recommended for the same level of care, because it used data indicating that Black patients had less money to spend on care. Even when such problems are corrected and new guardrails are put in place, self-teaching AI seems to be able to find patterns in data that elude our own pattern-detecting capabilities. We don’t even realize they exist.

A 2022 study in the Lancet found that AI trained on huge data sets of medical imaging could determine a patient’s race with startling accuracy based on x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, MRIs, or mammograms, even when there was no accompanying patient information. The human researchers couldn’t figure out how the machines knew patient race even when programmed to ignore markers such as, for example, density in breast tissue among Black women. Attempts to apply strict filters and programming that controls for racism can also backfire by erasing diagnosis of minorities altogether.

“Our finding that AI can accurately predict self-reported race, even from corrupted, cropped, and noised medical images, often when clinical experts cannot, creates an enormous risk for all model deployments in medical imaging,” the authors of the Lancet study wrote. “Just as with human behavior, there’s not a simple solution to fixing bias in machine learning,” said the lead researcher, radiologist Judy W. Gichoya. As long as medical racism is in us, it will also be one of the ghosts in the machine. The self-improving algorithm will work as designed, if not necessarily as intended.

Read it all.

ChatGPT appears to be smart enough to recognize that artificial intelligence poses a threat to workers' livelihoods. https://t.co/JESPQXE7Ew

— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 5, 2023

Tests in medical school are trying for everyone but especially so for Melanie Wiley Gail as she struggles with sounds and smells her fellow students don’t seem to notice.

“Imagine taking the exam in a room full of skunks with rock music playing,” she likes to say.

It wasn’t until after her first year at the Medical University of South Carolina — where Gail is pursuing both her medical degree and a doctorate in neuroscience — that she was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. While she is open about it and serves as chair of the Autism Society of South Carolina, many in medicine have privately told her they are keeping their condition private because they fear the public exposure.

It is a stigma Gail would like to see changed.

Read it all.

Pursuing a medical degree and a doctorate at the same time is difficult enough. Then Melanie Wiley Gail was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and she decided to become an advocate as well: https://t.co/1S7MqQrn7I

— Thomas Corwin (@AUG_SciMed) April 5, 2023

…ultimately, to truly integrate and capitalize on AI, U.S. defense leaders will need to shift how they measure military capability. The Pentagon will never give artificial intelligence its due when it does not consider AI to be a key component of military strength. When military leaders appear before Congress to advocate for their budgets, they make their case in terms of industrial-age metrics. The navy, for example, lays out how many ships it requires, while the air force spells out how many aircraft it has to purchase. These measurements still matter, but what matters more today is the digital capabilities of these systems, such as whether the ships and planes have sensors to detect enemy forces, algorithms that can process information and enable better decision-making, and intelligent munitions to precisely strike targets. All these capabilities can be improved with artificial intelligence, and U.S. leaders must begin taking them into account.

It will not be easy for the armed forces to make these changes: the American military is a vast and unwieldy bureaucracy. It will also be hard for the U.S. government as a whole to adjust to the rise of AI, given how polarized Washington is. Reforms to high-skilled immigration, in particular, have run into repeat resistance from conservatives on Capitol Hill. And the fact that today’s AI systems have major limitations—and therefore require great caution and care during implementation—further complicates the process. Military service members will not use systems they do not trust, and so military officials must make sure that when AI is deployed it works as intended.

But the pieces of a better AI strategy are falling into place. The Pentagon may not yet properly measure the power of artificial intelligence, but it is paying much more attention to the technology. The federal government has increased spending and is exploring data and computing resources for academics. The White House is trying to make it easier for foreign STEM workers to come to the country. The United States, in other words, is working to ensure that China cannot fully catch up. If Washington ultimately maintains control over the semiconductor supply chain, maximizes the inflow of talent, and fields trustworthy systems, it will succeed in staying ahead. As the AI revolution reshapes global power, the United States can come out on top.

Read it all.

Washington’s immigration policies are making it more difficult to recruit foreign scientists—and, as a result, threatening the country’s advantage in the AI race, writes @paul_scharre. https://t.co/z1UR0faYUp

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) April 4, 2023

Saint James and First Baptist Hold Joint Palm Sunday Service

The congregation of Saint James Anglican, which leases property on the grounds of First Baptist of James Island, was invited to join in First Baptist’s service for Palm Sunday. Saint James’ Rector, Toby Larson, preached. Look for a story in the upcoming Jubilate Deo.

Read it all.

The Latest Edition of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina Enewsletter

Saint James and First Baptist Hold Joint Palm Sunday Servicehttps://t.co/V8NgK7Uaom [James Island, SC] pic.twitter.com/pvbhi8WAHx

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 4, 2023