And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. [9] And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, `You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?” [2] And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; [3] but God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'”
[4] But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die.
[5] For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
[10] And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The name of today’s serpent is “Artificial Intelligence”. The enjoyable gifts of offloading human accountability and laborious tasks to a new world of comfort and opportunity is a fine tasting apple. It will be a wonderful world. Or, perhaps similar to the burden of sin brought upon Adam and Eve, there is good and too much bad ahead.

Bill Gates himself said that if we bite into AI’s apple, we as a species are vulnerable to extinction. The first Garden of Eden was designed around a different ethic of mutual survival and caring for the Garden.

16,000 extinctions and counting, disappearing water, millions of starving people, abusive plutocracy, chemically poisoned atmosphere and inadequate food don’t seem to be signs of caring for the first Garden. Is Artificial Intelligence the new stimulus package that will magically fix everything?

Ancient Mariner