Yasir Qadhi – Is Artificial Intelligence Harmful for the Future of Islam
AI: Summary ©
The potential of artificial intelligence is discussed, including its use in various fields such as medicine and the potential for deep philosophical conversations. The potential for AI to change behavior and affect outcomes is also discussed, including the use of AI in predicting future events and the potential for positive outcomes. The potential for AI to lead to a rationality of human behavior and affect outcomes is also discussed, including the potential for AI to predict future events and the potential for negative consequences of AI. The potential for AI to shift power dynamics and lead to a more powerful government is also discussed, along with the use of AI for issues of Islam and the potential for positive outcomes.AI: Transcript ©
AI will make choices that might be logical
and rational, but completely
unethical
because AI is not interested in ethics. And
some of those choices might even bring about
types of destructions to human species.
So I don't know about the rest of
you, but, I have been without electricity all
day. How many of you without electricity all
day?
So
not actually, not everybody. Most of us apparently
have electricity. But,
so the topic therefore that I thought about
was exactly related to
a concept that I feel we need to
bring up. And it just so happened that
today was,
reminded me of it.
Of course, overall, the dependence that we have
on technology,
it is actually frightening.
Because
today, since 6 AM, I have been without
electricity, myself, my whole family, what not. And
in reality, it is so utterly trivial because
for 10000 years, mankind has lived like this.
But for us, 12 hours,
it's as if we don't know how we're
gonna survive.
We are so dependent
on this function,
we have forgotten how our own grandparents
and 10000 years before them have lived
without that interdependence.
So today I wanted to bring up
a new technology
that is already integrating into our lives and
we are becoming
frighteningly
dependent on this new technology.
And this generation, our generation,
is gonna see the interweaving
of this technology
to an unprecedented
level, and we're already seeing it. And it
is very important.
Every one of us, even those that don't
believe in a higher power, they must be
talking about this because
it is truly
frightening, and I'm talking about artificial intelligence,
AI.
I'm talking about artificial intelligence. Now, what exactly
is artificial intelligence and the pros and cons?
That's a whole long topic. But to summarize
in a nutshell,
artificial intelligence is a relatively new field. It
only dates back to almost 2 decades or
a decade and a half, and it's only
gained traction in the last few years in
particular.
And what artificial intelligence is, is
us human beings
programming
processors
to essentially think like us.
So imagine in realistically
5, 10 years,
your child or even you
having
a
partner
that you can have conversations
with, ask information of,
find detailed
analyses of your particular niche field, and that
partner is imaginary.
Imagine engaging in deep philosophical
conversation
and this partner that you're having a talk
with will be able to research as you
are saying something
and be able to
amass
thousands
of books instantaneously.
And as you ask a question about a
totally new field,
this partner of yours becomes a global expert.
And this is what artificial intelligence is. It's
the mechanism,
the potentiality
to
almost, not actually create, because only Allah is
Al Khaliq, but
to program
a system
whose results even we cannot predict.
This is what is frightening.
Up until now, we knew exactly what the
output would be. Up until now, computers and
programming was basically doing a lot of computation
super fast. We know exactly what the output's
gonna be. We could have done it ourselves,
except that the computer does it much faster
than us. Right?
What's happening now is that we are
allowing a program
to program itself
and learn as it continues.
And this is unchartered
territory.
Now,
already we are seeing the impact of this.
Now by the way, there's 2 types of
AI.
You have, AI which is very specific or
niche oriented, and this is fairly common already.
So for example, we already have, the technology,
which is a very frightening human technology
to be able to translate
a verbal speech into any other language. AI
can already do this. Right? Google can already
do this. You can speak into an app
in your conversational
English, Urdu, Swahili, in your particular dialect, in
your particular region.
And this app will now be able to
assess your accent, your your terminologies, your nuances,
even your tone,
and will then translate into any of the
languages it is programmed to do on the
spot. This is specific AI, right? Or frightening
already being used by Israel and by China
and others is facial recognition.
And again, this is something we think is
basic, it's not. Imagine walking down the street
of anywhere in the world, and the camera
catches half of your face. It wa- by
an angle, and it's blurry picture.
Now AI has already reached a level where
it can recognize exactly who you are, and
if the governments have the databases, China does
and Israel does. And Allahu Alam, our own
country most likely does, but they're not saying
this. And you know, every time we go
at the airport, this is exactly what they
do. Right? So the to able to capture
your image, you will be trackable wherever you
are. Wherever you go, just one image anywhere,
and AI will be able to recognize out
of billions of people,
instantaneously,
they'll be able to recognize exactly where you
are. We're already using this in medicine. Doctors
here can tell us what AI is doing.
Amazing technological advances,
where your sonogram, or your MRI, or whatever
your diagnosis might be, that the computer will
tap into
millions of different data points, and be able
to analyze
far better than any doctor can.
It might be possible
soon, we won't need medical doctors. Guys, don't
be scared because when that happens, you guys
will be in charge of it anyway. So
jobs will be there. Don't worry. But realistically,
you will be better off getting
analyzed by an AI doctor than by a
real doctor. Because the AI doctor will have
a database that is infinitely larger than any
human being. And the AI doctor will have
a one stop specialty. Right now, if you
wanna have one specialist, then another, then another.
You have to keep on booking 5 different
appointments, go through your this and that. Imagine
one computer screen, one camera in front of
you, one analysis, everything being done
simultaneously.
We are literally within a few years away
from something like this. This is tangible, realistic,
niche AI.
The more frightening
is general AI,
and we're heading there now. CHAD GPT 4
and others, we're heading there now. And general
AI is basically a polymath, a super intellectual
genius,
a partner,
an intellectual partner
that
you have no idea what is gonna come
from this. You are talking about
all of the specialties of the world combined
into 1 person and you can converse with
that person. Imagine something like this. That is
where the world is heading. And it's way
the way things are happening is just a
matter of time. Already, chat gpt version 4
and others, they can do some amazing things
that are already frightening. And I'm telling you
as a professor, as a lecturer, as a
teacher, it's very frightening what is happening already.
And this is just the beginnings of, you
know, the realities. Now,
there's a lot of positives as with all
technology. Today's not about the positives.
Of the positives, by the way, we just
told you medical medical developments are gonna be
groundbreaking. Of the biggest positives, we're already seeing
this, is
the,
the driving, the self self driving cars, right?
This is AI, self driving cars, to be
able to recognize anything on the road,
and then be able to
maneuver and navigate.
We've already seen this. I mean, this is
our generation.
Few years ago, it was a dream. Now
I drive a Tesla. So many people drive
a Tesla. You just click the button and
you just, I answer my email messages while
I'm driving the Tesla. Literally. You know, it's
halalut is legal because my hands my hands
on the road. I literally do my WhatsApp.
That's why I got the Tesla because of
time. Like I'm just literally just doing my
WhatsApp and answering email, and the the the
the the car is driving
automatically on the freeway. I have the full
drive version. Even on the roads it's driving.
And this is something we heard about for
a decade. Now, I have it. We have
it. Is the technology already there? And it
keeps on improving. Every few days, there's a
new version.
Automatic upload. And it does some amazing things.
So we're already seeing this this,
reality.
There are some
challenges and ethical concerns, and we as Muslims
need to be very cognizant of this because
our sharia provides an answer for everything. We
need to be at the forefront as some
of the problems of these, new technologies. So
I wanted to just bring them up, and
then in the end of the day, it's
not my area and forte. Other people need
to take up and and help us in
this regard. What are some of the problems
that AI might bring about? Well,
first and foremost,
one of the most obvious problems
is going to be
AI will have to decide
who lives and who dies
in a rational manner and not an emotional
manner. You see, when you are driving, may
Allah protect all of us, but you see
something
and you react on impulse.
You swerve,
you see a child, you see something, and
you just do something on impulse.
Generally speaking, we are forgiving of you, because
what could you do?
Generally speaking, no matter what happens, like if
it's not your fault, if somebody ran onto
the road and you did something and then
an accident happened,
generally speaking, you might not be criminally responsible.
You might be, you know, legally, whatever, but
not nobody's gonna look at you as a
criminal. Like, you couldn't do anything. You're a
human being. You just reacted.
But you see, AI has zero emotion, and
AI is doing things at supersonic speed. Right?
Faster than or or at the speed of
light, to be precise.
So you will have to figure out
which life is more important.
And the AI is gonna make a calculation
in milli, milli, milliseconds, nanoseconds,
and will literally decide,
is the life of the driver more important
or the life
of that person on the road?
And how will you decide that? Well, some
programmers are gonna have to have ethical questions.
Because in the end of the day, no
matter how awkward it is, you have to
program the AI to figure out what to
do. If there's a child, if there's an
elderly man, now we get to the famous,
you know,
philosophical problem that if you can swerve
a train with 2 people in it, and
you know, in the process save 5 people,
are you allowed to swerve the train? Or
should you let the train just go and
crash? You know these famous problems, these ethical
problems. Well, right now, when we do it,
it's just a hypothetical.
With AI, it will become a real problem.
The car is going straight down, it sees
a bunch of school children.
You will have to program the AI what
it needs to do.
And some people will die and some people
will live. And this will not be on
impulse.
This will be a rational decision
that somebody programmed into the AI.
Right? So this is one of the issues
that we're gonna have to be thinking about.
Already,
AI is being used in war.
Right now, according to international law, not that
is applying, but still, there is a modicum
of human involvement. Right now, according to the
UN and the international law, any drones that
send bombs,
a human must make that decision.
So that somebody can be pinpointed a finger,
it's your fault.
This is now the law of the world,
right? It is not allowed to send a
bomb on a civilization
or a population, whatever it might be, unless
and until at the last minute a human
being presses a button. The reason being, obviously,
they want to blame somebody or hold somebody
accountable. Pause here. Not that it helps all
the time. We see what's happening, but still
there's a human being that's made that decision.
What AI is gonna bring bring into the
picture is why do we need a human
to make the decision? What if we need
to make a split second decision? We don't
need to get involved with a human being.
So once again, we're gonna get all of
these
complex problems that are literally solving
life and death
issues based upon artificial intelligence.
Another,
problem that we get of AI
is and it's already happening to a a
small level. We're gonna see this times 100
within a year or 2. And that is
AI, and this is frightening and we see
this now,
figures out who you are based upon your
history.
AI knows you better than your spouse and
your children. This is already true.
AI knows what types of videos you like,
what types of music, what types of clips,
what types of intellectual talks, what type of
saqrullah, fahish and haram. Everything,
AI has a profile.
And because
AI wants you to look at the computer
screen, well, because the,
social media apps want you to look at
the computer screen because they want money,
AI will then show you what it knows
will attract your attention.
And what
this allows
AI to do
is to brainwash you,
and to keep you
cut off from learning outside of your own
comfort zone.
And we already see this in the Israeli
Palestinian conflict.
Even though I would say at this stage,
it's not being done intentionally
because
all of your news feeds, without exception, when
you're going down Twitter and Facebook, all of
us in this masjid,
our news feed is generally
pro Palestinian.
Our news feed is generally people that are
sympathizing.
Why is that happening? Because of AI.
And what you guys need to understand
is that pro Zionist and pro far right
Christian fanatics
who are on a different wavelength,
their entire
scroll and news feed,
exact same time as you,
is gonna be completely different than
you. And here we are, me and you,
when we're going down Twitter and Facebook and
everything, we're like, why can't everybody else see
this? I see it. Why why is not
everybody else seeing what I'm seeing? Because they're
not seeing what you're seeing.
You can follow the exact same 2 people,
but the ones that come after these, the
ones that come in between, it will be
catered upon your own psyche.
And therefore,
right now it is non malicious, I e,
the computer algorithm
wants to feed you what it knows you'll
be interested in reading. And so you liked
a Palestinian protest
video somewhere, guess what? The next 5 days,
and you're gonna see more pro Palestinian protests.
You're gonna say, masha Allah, the tide is
changing, and it is changing, by the way.
But I'm saying, you are in your bubble.
Believe it or not, the other side, they're
only gonna see the news,
you
know, items and and vignettes that are catering
to their worldview.
And they will form a totally
skewed worldview.
And they're gonna hear from politicians that are
pandering to them. And they're gonna see advertisers
that are pandering to them. And you 2
could be neighbors. Next house. And you 2
could be looking at the exact same screen
at the exact same time, but everything is
different.
And imagine this times,
10 months, 10 years, imagine what's gonna happen.
Now imagine, which is totally illegal,
but it might be happening by one particular
government, you can understand which one.
Imagine if it is now intentionally
done.
Right now it's algorithms, random, meaning you can
program it, and you can give it a
try. You can literally give it a try.
Look at something of a news item or
something you have never been interested in in
your life, okay.
Do some, you know, Antarctica cruise at the
penguins. Just I'm giving you an example, literally.
And look at 2, 3
news items. You've never in your life been
interested in doing a cruise to the Antarctica
to go visit the penguins.
Next thing you know, for a few days,
little thing popping up there. Did Did you
know this about a penguin? Did you And
then slowly but surely, you get drawn into
a whole different world. Now imagine this is
being done to advertise. Right now, it's money.
One country might be doing it to brainwash.
Imagine
if
powerful
interests decided,
let's
sway
American public opinion in a certain way.
This is very, very doable.
Because what AI can do, it can monitor
all of your biases
and then figure out how to begin tapping
in and swaying you the way that it
wants you to be swayed.
You will become a pawn in a game
that we have no understanding of how deep
it can go. Right? And this was predicted
in a different way by the famous intellectual
Noam Chomsky when he wrote his book in
1985
or something, manufactured consent, where he said that
this is being done by the media at
a very low level. But now we're talking
about AI
assessing your psychological profile,
having a detailed analysis. Even your psychiatrist wouldn't
know what the AI knows.
And it knows exactly
how to begin to persuade you to have
a different worldview.
And this leads us to my next point,
and that is
what AI is doing,
it is shifting
power dynamics.
Right now,
power is in the hands
of the governments,
which is also bad.
But at least it's a physical tangible government
and you understand.
With AI,
power is gonna go to multibillion dollar corporations
that are operating
in extreme privacy.
And this is why there's so much tension
between Facebook and whatnot and between our governments,
because the governments are worried. What do you
and the government wants to ban TikTok and
whatnot, because things are happening beyond their control.
AI is going to completely change power dynamics,
and the real power will be in the
hands of those who have access to all
of that data.
They will be far more powerful than any
government.
And
when it comes to our Islamic religion, in
particular, there are a number of specific issues.
We've already seen this a few months ago.
Somebody attempted an AI fatwa program.
It was a disaster
of the highest magnitude.
You ask it a basic question, and it'll
give you something totally irrelevant.
And so the guy himself had to apologize
and say it was just a prototype.
But here's the point.
What does a prototype mean?
It's only a matter of time
before
you don't need me anymore.
You sir Qadhi becomes super flawless. Okay. You
will have mufti chat GPT, mufti saab.
Mufti GPT.
And I'm not even joking. This is where
this is heading now. Right?
This is where this is heading, where you
will ask your fatwa or your question, and
you can even, you'll be able to input.
I want the Hanafi response.
I want the This response, that response.
And
AI will be able to,
and here's the scary point,
99% of the time probably,
be accurate in giving you a response.
The problem comes that one time it'll be
wrong, it'll be majorly wrong. But they were
heading there. We're heading there, and it's very
soon. I have a friend, cannot say too
much more about the project.
Let me just say generically,
he's one of computer geek, neuro whatever. He's
using AI
for
hadith, isnaads,
and an analysis of hadith.
And I've seen aspects of this, and it
is super exciting and super scary all at
once.
Where you just put in the hadith and
it's gonna automatically
look at all the books in the database
and all the and draw an entire chart
for you, and then give you its own
verdict. You don't need ibn Hajjr or albaniyah.
You don't need it all. Right? Chat GPT
will tell you the isnat,
And they'll tell you whether it's authentic or
not based upon all of these criteria.
We are already there. This is not in
1 generation. This is within a year or
2.
This is right now we are seeing this.
So the whole globe is changing in this
regard.
And people who do not,
who want
to find problems with Islam, they're using AI
for the wrong stuff as well when it
comes to Islam.
You know, and again, I don't wanna get
too explicit here but, you know, the main
miracle we have is that our book cannot
be reproduced.
The AI is being done and I know
this from my friends, friends and whatnot, it
is being done to try to do something.
What are you gonna do in this regard,
right? These are people that have
complete, you know, nefarious intentions.
And they're using these types of technologies
to try to bring doubts to Islam and
the Muslims.
SubhanAllah. So we have now a very, very
different world coming up. And
if you're aware of what's happening, in the
last year,
massive internal scandals have happened within the AI
community. Even last week, one of the senior
highest level officials resigned in public
and said, there's no oversight.
I love this, but I'm frightened to death
of it. What you guys are doing And
she didn't say more, but she resigned and
it caused shock waves because she didn't tell
us explicitly what's going on, but something happened
and and and and and and what she
was saying is that there is no oversight
and you guys are not understanding the ethical
issues involved over here. So bottom line, I
know it's not exactly a purely Islamic thing,
but here's my philosophy.
We can't separate the deen from the dunya.
Muslims have to be aware of this. It's
gonna impact us, and it is impacting us.
If we can't live 12 hours without electricity,
in a few years
AI will be integrated into our phones.
In a few years AI will be in
our houses. In a few years, we're literally
gonna be interdependent
on it, right? There will be a lot
of positives.
Can you imagine one of the easiest positives
already happening
is that
schools will not be needed anymore.
An AI will take charge of teaching your
child
exactly in the best manner that your child
needs. Your child is strong in one field,
AI will zoom over that. It's weak in
another, AI will be able to figure out
what is the best way to help your
child in that maths problem, in that engineering
problem, in that algebra problem. AI know exactly
what will be the most, you know,
repetitive
routines that need to be done so that
child understands this particular problem, and they'll be
forever. So can you imagine a tutor
specifically for every human being in the world
cater to
your particular mindset. That's a massive positive.
But in the process,
by the time this child grows up, this
AI companion will be even more knowledgeable than
his kareen of the ins and the jinn.
The AI will know more about you than
the kareen of your own jinn knows about
you. Right? Maybe even the jinn will be
frightened of the AI because the AI knows
about the kareen as well. And we as
Muslims are disconnected
from that reality completely.
But my point to bring it up is
just to remind us that,
SubhanAllah,
we have to be cognizant. We're living in
a very fragile world. We're living in a
time and a place where within our lifetimes,
and anybody above the age of 30,
the technological change that had happened in your
lifetime,
it is exponentially
at the speed of light. I mean, I
remember you all remember the about about about
the age of 40, Even cell phones, we
didn't have them. And now the first phones
that came, remember the Nokia that came out,
right? The little brick that came out. Remember
that back in the nineties. And then the
Now look, we have more power on this
phone
than
NASA did on its supercomputers when it went
to the moon. We have more power on
this phone than NASA did on the computers
that fill this whole room and they use
them to go to the moon. We have
more power here. We've already seen this in
1 generation. What is gonna happen next? Allahu'alaam.
We need to be very very careful. Final
point which is truly terrifying. One of the
biggest concerns that ethicists have about AI
is that once you give AI that much
power,
AI will make choices that might be logical
and rational, but completely
unethical.
Because AI is not interested in ethics.
And some of those choices might even bring
about types of destructions to human species.
And there's a frightening
science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov in which
the computers take over the world. What is
it called? I forgot. Irobot? I forgot it
was I wrote it read it as a
kid. But he predicted this that a time
will come when humans are gonna be fighting
the machine,
and the machine will
know more than the human beings.
This is the reality we are facing here.
And wallahi, one wonders, perhaps it's better than
that we don't go down all of that
route, and we just live our simple lives
so that once electricity is gone, we don't
even know how to light a candle anymore,
right? Maybe our ancestors had it more wiser
and better that they could actually live a
simple and easy life. Allahu'ala what the right
answer is. In any case, wanted to bring
up to you some difficult issues. And by
the way, I will inshaAllah be presenting on
an AI conference, next year inshaAllah about issues
of ethics. So I'm doing my own research
in this regard. If any of you are
experts in this regard, please come to me
to benefit me so that I can, get
some ideas as well.
Until next time. Assalamu alaikum.
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