The World and Everything in It: October 14, 2025

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! 

Israeli hostages who survived more than two years in captivity are released at last.

ORI NACHMANI: I hope the end is really over and the suffering from our side and the other side can stop. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: WORLD’s Travis Kircher reports from Tel Aviv. Also, the ethics of tinkering with unborn human life. And later … what history teaches about political assassinations.

WILSEY: Had those men not been assassinated, had they died peacefully in their beds decades later … this would just be a totally different country.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, October 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: It’s time now for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

SOUND: [Israel music]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel hostages latest, next steps » Singing and tears of joy in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Monday … as the 20 surviving Israeli hostages were set free … after two agonizing years in captivity.

Officials were well prepared to receive them. Dr. Lena Koren Feldman with Beilinson Hospital:

FELDMAN:  For each of them, we have assembled a dedicated and personalized medical team, including a physician, mental health professionals, physiotherapist, and dieticians.

The Hamas terror group took around 250 hostages during its October 7th attack.

Israeli authorities were able to bring more than 150 of them home, either by military rescue or by way of numerous exchanges. But sadly, many died in captivity. And officials received the bodies of several deceased hostages Monday.

In return for Hamas releasing the surviving hostages, Israel agreed to release some 2000 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners … including some known terrorists.

Egypt peace summit » Meantime, in Egypt …

President Trump called for a new era of harmony in the Middle East.

TRUMP:  The momentous breakthrough that we're here to celebrate tonight is more than the end of the war in Gaza. It's with God's help. It'll be the new beginning for an entire beautiful Middle East.

The president heard there during a global summit in Egypt on Gaza’s future.

He urged world leaders to put "the old feuds” to rest and seize momentum. He called it a once-in-a-lifetime chance "to declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past.”

Egypt’s government says it has awarded Trump the country’s top civilian honor … for brokering the Gaza peace deal.

The president also visited Israel … where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked …

NETANYAHU:  Mr. President, you are committed to this peace. I am committed to this peace , and together, Mr. President, we will achieve this peace.

The prime minister also thanked Trump for his efforts in uniting the region behind the peace deal that halted the war.

China trade » The Trump administration is working to defuse the latest spike in trade tensions between the United States and China.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

BESSENT:  I am optimistic that this can be deescalated, but you know, we're, we're willing to, uh, do whatever it takes and, you know, to adopt whatever posture it takes. And again, this is a global problem and I think our global allies will follow us on this.

It started last week when Beijing announced new export restrictions on rare earth minerals … which are critical for high-tech manufacturing, both commercial and military.

President Trump in response threatened 100% tariffs on all Chinese goods starting next month.

BESSENT:  They announced these export controls, uh, that are going to go into effect next month, and we have aggressively pushed back against them.

China is demanding that the White House withdraw that threat.

Meanwhile, new Chinese trade data shows exports to the US down for the sixth straight month, dropping 27-percent in September from the year before.

Ukraine / Zelenskyy to visit » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will travel to Washington this week … for meetings with President Trump and other leaders. That news came a day after Trump said he would consider supplying long-range tomahawk missiles to Ukraine if Russia does not end the war soon.

ZELESNKYY: The main topics are air defence and our possibilities with long range (strikes) to pressure on Russia.

Tomahawk missiles would allow Ukraine to strike deeper into Russian territory. Zelenskyy is also looking for more protection … as Moscow continues its assault on Ukraine’s energy grid.

A meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump could happen as early as Friday.

The Ukrainian president said he also plans to meet with defense and energy companies and members of Congress.

Alaska typhoon » In Alaska, the remnants of Typhoon Halong slammed coastal areas with hurricane-force winds and flooding … strong enough to sweep away entire homes.

Carson Jones with the National Weather Service:

JONES:  We had wind gust of a hundred miles an hour. Um, 75 to a hundred miles an hour. Were measured at multiple sites, um, including communities of T Bay, um, St. Paul, uh, chive, um, and some others along the coast that.

More than 30 people were rescued, but three people remain unaccounted for in western Alaska.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy said Monday that “Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm. Help is on the way.”

Mexico heavy rains death toll » The death toll from last week’s torrential rains in east-central Mexico has risen. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Mexican authorities now say at least 64 people have been killed … and another 65 are missing.

The scale of destruction across five states is becoming clearer, but …

Many communities are still cut off by landslides.

In northern Veracruz, 80 communities remain inaccessible by road.

And President Claudia Sheinbaum says it could still be days before rescue and relief workers are able to drive into hard-hit areas. So for now, she added … “A lot of flights are required to take sufficient food and water” to those places.

Early official estimates note 100,000 affected homes, and in some cases, houses near rivers have “practically disappeared.”

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: celebrations continue in Israel as hostages are reunited with their families. Plus, an update on religious persecution in China.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 14th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

SOUND: [HOSTAGES SQUARE]

First up: Celebrations in Hostages Square.

That’s the sound from a crowd singing before the hostages were released.

EICHER: Regular listeners may know our breaking news reporter Travis Kircher has been in Israel for the last month. He went expecting to cover the 2nd anniversary of the October 7th attacks, but also ended up being there for the hostage release that Israelis had been hoping for.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Lindsay Mast recorded a conversation with Travis and takes it from here.

LINDSAY MAST: Yeah thanks—I called him up while he was in Hostages Square in the hours just after that release. Travis, thank you for being with us.

KIRCHER: Yeah, Lindsay, thanks for having me.

MAST: You’ve visited Hostages Square multiple times over the last week or so… Mood—compare/contrast from last week and over the course of the day Monday.

KIRCHER: Oh, Lindsay, I can't imagine just covering this over the past couple of weeks, the words that came to my mind a little while ago was emotional whiplash. I mean, I was, I was here in Hostages Square. I guess it was maybe two weeks ago, shortly before the October 7 second anniversary. And wow, what a change. Back then it was, it was practically deserted, very melancholy. There's like a single guy sitting there playing a piano under a tree. It was, it was just a, just a very somber, somber scene.

And now, to come back today, I mean, there's, there's, there's people dancing. It's a concert really. It's really a concert field, people dancing, people crying, people cheering, clapping, chanting, Lindsay. There is a guy, a 10 foot guy on stilts, handing out balloons. You know when balloon guy is there, it's a good day.

MAST: So really celebratory it sounds like. What have people said when you talked to them?

KIRCHER: Well, Lindsay, I talked to a guy named Brad Myers. He's actually an immigrant to Israel from Australia. Here's what he had to say.

BRAD MYERS: Today it kind of feels like a bit of—I don’t know how to put it into words—but it feels like putting the wrong to right to a certain extent. It feels like the Jewish people in Israel can finally start to heal a bit. Can start to process what’s been but at the moment, we just have to be in the moment that everyone is coming home.

KIRCHER: How big a deal is this? Put this into context.

MYERS: This is huge. I’m 26. I haven’t been alive for all of Israel’s history. But this is the biggest day in my lifetime in Israel 100 percent. 100 percent.

KIRCHER: He really summarized what I heard from a lot of people, namely, that this whole ordeal with the hostages, with October 7th in general, it's really been like a weight, a heavy weight, on the shoulders of not just the families, but really the whole country here. I had one woman told me that, you know, since October 7th, they haven't been able to just go about daily life or do the things that, you know. It's like their lives have been set aside, and they've just been dealing with, you know, getting the hostages home, and now, you know, they feel like they could finally move on, like there's a new chapter in Israel's future. So very much, he very much summarized what the whole country seems to be feeling.

MAST: Well, President Trump addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem. Of course, that’s a couple of hours away from where you are, but what was the reaction in the square?

KIRCHER: Oh, let me tell you, Lindsay, President Trump is very popular here. One of the chants that they were chanting here was, was, “thank you, Trump.” And it's just amazing. I talked to a guy last night who told me that, honestly, Trump was not his choice. He was not, he was not the one that he wanted to win the U.S. election, but he told me he was wrong. He told me, after what Trump did, arranging the hostage deal, arranging the ceasefire deal, he said I was wrong.

Trump is the right man for the job, and I wish we had similar leadership here.

I talked to Ori Nachmani, some another, another person here participating. And here's what she had to say.

ORI NACHMANI: I really hope that we’re not only going to get the hostage back. I really hope the end is really over and the suffering from our side and the other side can stop and we will—we can rehabilitate. We need our time and they need their time. And I really hope—I don’t know, the words of President Trump is true and we will see peace. It will be the greatest end to this hell that we felt for two years.

KIRCHER: And that's another theme that we've heard here from a lot of folks, is just that it's great to get the hostages back, but it's not over. There's going to be a healing time, not just for the hostages and their families, but for the whole country. The whole country has been through trauma and needs to heal, and then they need to look forward to, you know, how do we prevent this again, what does it mean to have, you know, relationships with Gaza and the West Bank. What does that look like?

And, and so there's a lot of, a lot of, actually, disagreement. I heard disagreement on the, on the ground this morning, I was talking to a group of people and, and, you know, one of the one of the young ladies there who was talking to me said that in the future, you know, we're going to have to learn to, you know, look at, look at Gaza and the West Bank and the Palestinians and and see what we need to do to facilitate a better relationship. The other gentleman who was there said, No, we don't. It's all, it's entirely on them. They're the ones that launched October 7. They're the ones that started all this, and really it's up to them. So a lot of different views here about how to proceed.

MAST: Sure. I want to ask you about, you know, another source of division has been how people feel about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Can you sense, is there any change in feeling toward Netanyahu at this point?

KIRCHER: I think, I think they kind of feel the same. There might be a little bit more approval of Netanyahu today, I can tell you that the vast majority of people I talked to are crediting President Trump, not Netanyahu, for this, for this peace deal. Now whether they’re right or whether they’re wrong, that’s not for me to decide. But I can tell you that the gentleman I talked to last night said that one of the things that he admired about President Trump is that he puts the people first. He puts his own country first, and he says he's not getting that from Netanyahu.

MAST: Any reaction from Gaza Strip/Palestinian side? Have you been able to talk to anyone there?

KIRCHER: I haven't talked to anyone since the peace deal. I did spend a couple of days in the West Bank, both in Bethlehem and in Hebron, and I spoke to some of the Palestinian Christians there. And obviously, before the peace deal and it, they obviously have a very different feeling for all of this. It's, somebody told me this region is complicated, and that's, that's, that's the perfect word for it, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to find an answer for that, and the only, the only one I could really give is, I talked to a messianic pastor. And I put that question to him, you know what's, what's the right answer in this situation? And he said, All I can tell you, I'm paraphrasing, is that one day, Jesus is going to come back, and he's going to set it all right, and it's it's all going to be just and that's all we can hope for. So a lot of hard, hard situations here.

MAST: So glad you’re there Travis. Thank you so much Travis Kircher speaking with us from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Thank you Travis.

KIRCHER: Thanks, Lindsay.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, manipulating human reproduction.

Earlier this month, a team of scientists out of Oregon announced they successfully fertilized human egg cells in the lab…but these were no ordinary cells.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Dr. Paula Amato leads Oregon Health and Science University’s research on endocrinology and infertility. She talked about her research on the Peter Attia podcast this summer.

PAULA AMATO: In vitro gametogenesis, which is making eggs and sperm, potentially from skin cells.

What’s the objective here…and is it ethical? Joining us now to talk about it is David Prentice…he’s a PhD stem cell expert and co-founder of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology.

REICHARD: David, good morning.

DAVID PRENTICE: Good morning. Good to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, let’s start with the basic facts…human females naturally produce eggs, and males produce sperm. So (in layman’s terms) how did scientists manage to make eggs and sperm from skin cells?

PRENTICE: Their starting point was a clone, taking that nucleus from a skin cell, putting it into an egg, making a whole new human being. But then further manipulations to get that new human being to toss away half of his or her chromosomes so that they could then call it an egg. It looked a little bit like an egg and acted a little bit like an egg. They could get a small percentage of them to fertilize with sperm. But this is such a strange and horrific way, actually, when you think about it, to make a human being, you actually create and then destroy a human being to make the egg and then try and recreate a human being under somewhat normal conditions.

REICHARD: And what’s the success rate?

PRENTICE: Let’s be clear that through all this manipulation, they really didn't achieve success. There was one quote that they got it to kind of partially work. It really didn't work very well at all. Only a small fraction of those laboratory- made eggs actually could be fertilized and grow for a little while, and again, they were destroyed, as they do in all of these experiments, after a few days. But even those that grew for a few days had genetic abnormalities. And there's a real question, even from researchers who support these kinds of experiments, as to whether this type of procedure would ever actually work to produce normal human beings.

REICHARD: David, we reached out to Dr. Amato and her team, and their spokesman said  “it’s not yet clear whether this technique will ultimately be safe enough to use clinically.” 

What do we know of the medical purpose these researchers have in mind?

PRENTICE: One of the things that's often cited is there are so many people who suffer from infertility, women who can't produce eggs, who can't become fertile and actually carry a child. So the thing they'll first trot out is, oh, well, we could make eggs that would be genetically matched to them, and then they could have a baby. And it's always gets spun out from there, of course. Well, what about homosexual couples? Gay couples could make eggs or make sperm and be able then to create genetically related individuals. It keeps going from there; there's actually one proposal that one person could make eggs or sperm from these types of procedures, and you could have what's termed a uni-baby, somebody who was created by fertilization after you'd gone through these other techniques. But it's, it's all of their own genetics.

REICHARD: What are the rules on this kind of research? Can they take the next steps of creating embryos…and born children?

PRENTICE: Well, there are some regulations and some laws in place. We don’t have a lot, even in the U.S. At least at the federal level, there's a, it's a rider that's put on every year by Congress since 2015 it's called the Adderhold Amendment, and it says that you can't genetically modify and create genetically modified embryos and gestate them. There are laws, actually in about a dozen states that would prevent them from doing this cloning type of procedure.

So that you know they may be able to do some of this in some states, but there are others where they would be precluded from doing it, even in the laboratory, and it looks like this federal prohibition might prevent them from ever gestating these particular individuals, which is a good thing.

Let's, let's go back to the real reason they want to do this. They want to play God. They want to make human beings and do all sorts of experiments on them. And it's just something that we shouldn't really even cross that threshold.

REICHARD: I’m curious: do scientists ever ask themselves, ‘What’s in the best interest of the child?”

PRENTICE: You've really put your finger on what are the main problems here. And it's that they're not thinking about children. They're thinking of children, let's say, as commodities, as products that can be manufactured, and it's to satisfy the desires of adults, and they're not thinking about what's best for the child that might be created and not what's best for society as a whole.

REICHARD: David Prentice is co-founder of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology. Thank you, David.

PRENTICE: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next… persecution in China.

Late on Friday, Communist authorities began detaining pastors and members of the prominent Zion Church.

The arrests mark China’s latest crackdown on underground or unregistered churches and Christians in the country.

WORLD’s Onize Oduah reports.

ONIZE ODUAH: Last week, Maryland resident Grace Jin got a call confirming her fears.

GRACE: I received a call from my mom, who's also in the US, and she said that she has not been able to contact my dad or any of the people who … live close to him or around him.

At 8 p.m. on Friday, more than 10 police officers entered the home of pastor Jin Mingri,  also known as Ezra Jin, in the Chinese city of Beihai. By the next morning, they took him away in handcuffs.

In a coordinated set of raids, officers seized other pastors and church workers across multiple cities.

Jin says at least 22 people are now detained … but the number could change as they make contact with more church members.

GRACE: Subsequently, we know that they froze the church assets. Everything, all the bank accounts that was associated with both the individuals and the church.

Jin says many of them are facing charges of illegal dissemination of materials online.

Zion Church is not new to government harassment. Back in 2018 … authorities raided and shut down the church’s meeting place over accusations that it held “illegal gatherings.”

They switched to a hybrid model … sharing mp3 files and later holding Church sessions over Zoom. The Church now has thousands of members meeting in apartments and restaurants across 40 Chinese cities.

That was before the recent government shakedown.

GRACE: Starting around, like, six months ago, we've known people been taken in for, like, for tea. Taken in for tea, as in, like, the police would take you in and, like, ask you a lot of questions.

Church members recounted how local police stopped them to ask questions about the church and Pastor Jin.

Police recently stopped Pastor Jin in Beijing on his way to a United States visa interview.

GRACE: At one point, my dad said maybe up to like 70 policemen who were on him and detained him and questioned where he was going and why he was going to the U.S. Embassy.

They kept him from the interview and forced him to return home. Jin says he was also kicked out of Shanghai a few weeks ago.

The renewed crackdown on underground churches isn’t limited to Zion Church. Back in May, authorities detained the pastor of Light of Zion Church. The following month, authorities sentenced 10 members of the Golden Lampstand Church in western China.

Jin worries about her 56-year-old diabetic father. She’s also heard stories of parents separated from young children … and people barred from visiting their family members.

But she says the battle is more than a geopolitical situation or government repression.

GRACE: It is ultimately a spiritual battle, and this is because we are proclaiming the true God.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Down in Stuart, Florida, an alligator walked into a bar. Now maybe you think I’m kidding about this — I am not. But the bartender sure took it that way.

SARAH FELTON: She said, ‘what’s our policy on alligators at the Tiki? And I thought she was joking, so I kinda laughed and was just like, oh they gotta be over 21!

She could’ve said — and it would’ve been true — we don’t serve alligators here.

To which a joking alligator might supply the punchline, “I’ll just have some fresh water … what do you think I am, a crocodile or something?”

But again: This is a true story.

The manager spotted the gator near the children’s play area and called police.

Audio from WPBF in Palm Beach:

BEN FOSTER: He was just, you know, hanging out…. I didn’t think I was going to come to work today and see an alligator in my restaurant!

The reptile was under five feet long — obviously underage. Shouldn’t be in a bar anyway.

So, see you later, alligator.

In response, the tiki bar added an appetizer to the menu: Gator bites.

So now they can say, yes, we serve alligators — but only deep-fried, and with hot sauce.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next, remembering Charlie Kirk through the lens of history. A week after his assassination, the United States Senate passed a resolution declaring today… October 14th … a national day of remembrance for the Christian conservative.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A day of mourning is part of American tradition when honoring those lost to political violence. And that’s not the only ritual the nation followed over the last month. WORLD’s Emma Eicher reports.

EMMA EICHER: On April 4th, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy addressed a crowd of people at a park in Indianapolis. The speech was spur of the moment—Kennedy had no cards in front of him, no prepared words.

ROBERT KENNEDY: I have some very sad news for all of you. And that is, that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight.

The speech lingered in the public mind long after Kennedy spoke the words.

KENNEDY: In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are. And what direction we want to move in.

Just two months later, Robert Kennedy himself would become a victim of political violence. He was shot and killed during his presidential campaign.

Since America’s founding, our country has witnessed the assassinations of less than ten national figures. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.

JOHN WILSEY: Had those men not been assassinated, had they died peacefully in their beds decades later, this would just be a totally different country.

John Wilsey is a professor of church history at Southern Seminary, and author of Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer. He says last month’s murder of Charlie Kirk continues the tragic legacy of high profile assassinations. There are obvious similarities …

WILSEY: He is a cultural leader and a cultural icon. He was connected to political movers and shakers.

And some stark differences.

WILSEY: I mean, if you want to see the video, all you gotta do is Google it. And it's not a grainy, eight millimeter film like Kennedy's assassination. It's as clear as if it were happening right in front of you.

The American government tends to follow a kind of routine in the aftermath of political assassinations. Flags are flown at half-mast, and national leaders call for unity.

The government also sets aside an official day of mourning.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared such a day in the wake of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

LYNDON JOHNSON: All who love freedom will mourn his death.

And Johnson did the same for Martin Luther King Jr. five years later.

The Senate carried on this historical tradition, declaring today a national day to mourn Kirk. Here’s Republican Senator Rick Scott introducing the resolution on the Senate floor.

RICK SCOTT: Let us honor Charlie by believing in the power of our ideas to win the day and leave this nation a better place.

The resolution serves to remember Kirk’s life as well as condemn all political violence.

ZACK SMITH: It showed a lot about Charlie Kirk and his supporters, that after this tragic event, instead of rioting or causing further political violence, they engaged in prayer and thoughtful remembrance.

Zack Smith is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He says there has been a wide range of reactions since Kirk’s death. In some cases, people publicly celebrated the assassination.

SMITH: The political left is trying to justify this violence, trying to excuse it, trying to downplay its severity.

And there’s a modern reason for that. John Wilsey says many people commonly use politics as a moral compass. Just a few decades ago, that wasn’t the norm.

WILSEY: I think our culture today sees reality starting with politics, that politics is the starting point for the way we see the world. When politics is the starting point, everything is on one side or the other, and one side is evil and one side is good.

The division fueled a bipartisan concern over the apparent “surge” in political violence during the last month. President Donald Trump claimed the radical left was the main cause … while some mainstream media outlets blamed Kirk himself. Still others spun anti-semitic conspiracy theories.

Despite this, Wilsey says the American political climate is not much different from other developed countries.

WILSEY: Americans are just as politically violent as anybody else.

He also says it’s not a recent phenomenon. Political violence is common throughout all of American history.

WILSEY: When Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 there wasn't some kind of navel gazing about like, ‘what's wrong with us?’ Americans are human beings, and they have the same human nature as Russians do, or as Iranians do, or as Frenchmen do. And that political violence is not necessarily unique to them and not unique to us.

Along with traditional calls for peace and unity, some unique calls to action have appeared this time around. Supporters not only want to continue Kirk’s political work to honor his legacy but also encourage a similar passion for Christ and the gospel.

LUCAS MILES: I think that, you know, Charlie gave a lot of people a voice. He pointed the way for a lot of people on where to go. And I think that the world is grieving that.

Lucas Miles is the Senior Director of Turning Point USA Faith. He knew Kirk personally, and believes his influence on the younger generation was greater than just politics.

MILES: Charlie wasn't, I think, trying to point people just in some sort of political direction. I think Charlie was trying to point people up to the Lord, and he knew that if people were able to develop a real relationship with the Lord, that that would trickle down into the political realm.

John Wilsey says there’s historical precedent for peace after crisis moments. He quotes Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself … but it often rhymes.”

WILSEY: When we think about hope for the future, we can take some encouragement from the experience of previous generations, generations of Americans, that they can get past irreconcilable conflicts to the extent that they actually forge a new love of country as a result of those divisions.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, October 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s hard to talk about artificial intelligence without using human terms. And some experts say that’s a good thing…because the best way to keep AI from taking over might be to give it something surprisingly human.

EICHER: WORLD Opinions contributor Maria Baer says it’s an interesting idea…but one that probably won’t work. Still, it reveals something deeper: a God-shaped hole in both the machine and the men who made the machine.

MARIA BAER: Long before we were talking about computers achieving “deep learning,” MIT professor Sherry Turkle began writing about a peculiar problem. Audio here from a HuffPost video posted online.

SHERRY TURKLE: In 1976 it was just the beginning of the personal computing trend. And I saw how people related to their personal computers…

Turkle studies the sociological impacts of digital tech, and she wrote in the 1980s that kids were beginning to refer to their digital games in human terms. They spoke about what their games “knew” or didn’t “know;” and whether the games “could cheat.”

Turkle said this implied a set of parallel risks: that digital tech would cause us to think of machines in increasingly human terms and humans in increasingly mechanistic terms. Both she claims are categorical errors.

And yet, the temptation to talk about AI in terms of what it “knows,” what it “says,” and the kind of “thinking” it can do is almost insurmountable. Is intelligence really the right word? It feels dystopian and weird; but how else do we describe this thing?

AI is a form of computing that can scour and synthesize impossibly huge sets of data much faster and with far fewer errors than the human brain is capable of doing. Its essential offering is its speed, and that’s not nothing. To be clear, neither is this a human action. But it is like one, and there really isn’t anything else it is so nearly like.

Geoffrey Hinton is widely referred to as a “godfather of AI.” On a recent Globe and Mail podcast he said that in order to diminish the existential risks posed by the technology, engineers ought to imbue it with a distinctly human virtue.

GEOFFREY HINTON: We have to face up to fact, they're going to be more intelligent. They're going to have a lot of power. And what examples do you know more intelligent things being controlled by less intelligent things? Well, the only one I know is a mother and baby.

Hinton and many other AI critics contend that AI will, by design, eventually have to choose between competing values. Because AI “learns” over time, we may lose control over which values, and how it weighs them.

His solution is to build AI with a “maternal instinct”—to “teach” it to value its humanity’s needs over its own. Hinton believes that the only thing that will stop the tech from “replacing” us, is its decision to “parent” us.

Hinton is an avowed materialist. He has stumbled here upon a sacred and mystical truth. In fact, the “maternal instinct” has long been a jagged stumbling block for evolutionists like Hinton who believe that humans evolved from animals by continually adapting toward survival. There is no plausible reason for the “evolving” of selflessness in such a scheme. Self-sacrifice is categorically antithetical to survival.

Evolutionists who are willing to grapple with this question will usually argue that selflessness “promotes social cohesion” or peace or some such, but that’s a fully circular argument. It says we adapted to admire selflessness because it’s admirable.

The real, non-circular argument is that selflessness is Good because it is what love requires, and because God is Love, God is Good, and He made us in His image. Being human, therefore, means being the only created beings with the capability and the moral imperative to be selfless.

Paul told the Philippians to “look not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interest of others.” This kind of exhortation isn’t even possible, let alone good, unless we’re in a world designed and continuously protected by a God of love.

Fortunately, that’s the world we are in. Geoffrey Hinton is right that without selflessness, all relationships—even a material “relationship” between humans and machines they’ve built—will devolve into power struggles. But he’s wrong that selflessness is the kind of thing that can be “built into” something that’s not human.

It’s because selflessness doesn’t make practical sense that it must be chosen, and chosen again and again. The Holy Spirit has to give it to us, but we must choose to ask. As we barrel forward into a machine-dominated world, beseeching Him again and again for this distinctly human virtue is going to be essential.

I’m Maria Baer.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Hunter Baker is here for Washington Wednesday. And, in Oregon, a homeless ministry works to pull people out of the mud … but some prefer to stay. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

“‘There is no peace,’ says the Lord, ‘for the wicked.’” —Isaiah 48:22

Go now in grace and peace.

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