JIS XXXVII 2025: 1-12

Editorial

AI BRAVE NEW WORLD: WHEN FICTION BECOMES FACT

Oskar Gruenwald
Institute for Interdisciplinary Research
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By the twenty-first century, artificial intelligence promises to transform the world from iPhones and automation in education, business, and government, to international relations where superpowers vie for global dominance. Even without an AI superintelligence, Agentic AI’s emergent qualities pose risks of uncharted capabilities that concern even AI creators, apart from malvolent individuals who may use this new technology for dubious purposes. Genetic engineering promises to cure diseases and extend the human life span. Yet this Orwellian Brave New World also portends unprecedented control over populations via DNA-powered AI systems that could enable universal tyranny. Recalling Jules Verne, the essay proposes that fiction may become fact. To retain control of the new Age of Robotics requires humanizing its effects but resisting the transhumanist hubris while reaffirming the inherent value and dignity of a creature created in the image and likeness of God.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 13-34

SLAUGHTERBOTS AND EMPEROR AIs: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO HUMANITY

Robert M. Anderson, Jr.
Chaminade University of Honolulu
Yevgeniya K. Melnik
Clinical Psychology, Maryland
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There are two significantly different artificial intelligence applications that could present an existential threat to humanity: Artificially intelligent lethal autonomous weapons (killer robots) and artificially intelligent systems tasked with controlling a nuclear arsenal, a major military force, or nuclear reactors. This essay describes necessary and sufficient conditions for each of these AI applications to cause a potential annihilation of humanity. Autonomous, armed, robots programmed for self-protection and swarming could work together to destroy humanity. To prevent such an outcome, countries need to develop internationally agreed on and enforced controls limiting artificial intelligence development. Yet, countries are very self-protective, and are already developing lethal autonomous weapons. Historically, the control of dangerous technologies has been inadequate with nuclear reactors melting down and deadly viruses escaping laboratories, but one can learn from these failures. This essay reveals how innate human spirituality and compassion may be called upon to help bring humanity together to develop a treaty, agreed on and enforced by most, to protect the human species from potential rogue AI.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 35-52

AI MODEL COLLAPSE AND HUMAN CREATIVITY:
BEYOND JACQUES ELLUL’S DYSTOPIA

Joshua D. Reichard
Omega Graduate School
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.Jacques Ellul predicted that technology-driven societies risk losing human agency to autonomous technological systems focused on efficiency (“technique”). This essay assesses critically Ellul’s concerns regarding technological dystopia through the narrow context of Generative Artificial Intelligence. While acknowledging valid concerns raised by Ellul and contemporary scholars, the essay contends that Generative AI’s inherent limitations will prevent it from realizing such dystopian scenarios. Specifically, Generative AI relies fundamentally on human-generated data, and inevitably suffers from “model collapse,” a technical degradation resulting from recursive training on AI-generated content. Consequently, Generative AI lacks the capacity for sustained autonomy and poses minimal long-term threats compared to Agentic AI. An eventual collapse of Generative AI models may catalyze a renaissance of human creativity, and thereby ensure humanity evades Ellul’s most dire predictions of a technological dystopia.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 53-70

BEYOND JACQUES ELLUL’S TECHNOLOGICAL DYSTOPIA:
A RESPONSE

Daniel W. Hollis, III
Jacksonville State University
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This response to Joshua Reichard’s essay focuses on his references to Jacques Ellul’s technique which uses dialectic on two parallel levels: sociological and theological. Ellul argues that technique long predated the Industrial Age, and began in the earliest cities, though it was only incidental to society’s power centers from the ancient through early modern eras. Only in the modern age has technique come to a position of dominance where some see it as a possible threat to humanity due to dystopian elements such as artificial intelligence. This essay explores Ellul’s frequent references to both utopias and dystopias. By the 1950s, utopias were said to have ushered in totalitarianism. Dystopias were popular because they decried utopias as being out of touch with reality and thus dangerous to society. Ellul’s strong Christian faith provided answers to his concerns about the direction of human history, including technique. Though the twentieth-century dystopian totalitarian systems threatened humanity by utilizing technology for maximum repression over populations, they like prior systems may eventually dissipate and be replaced.
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JIS XXXVI 2025: 71-92 

AI ADVANCEMENT IN ISRAEL:
ADVANTAGES, CHALLENGES, AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

Yaron Katz
Holon Institute of Technology, Israel
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Artificial Intelligence is increasingly integral to modern military strategy, offering significant benefits and substantial challenges. AI’s applications in military operations span various functions, from enhancing strategic decision-making and automating operational tasks to enabling the development of advanced autonomous systems. This essay draws on lessons learned from the Israeli military’s notable failures on 7 October 2023, focusing on AI’s expanding role in military operations. Key findings emphasize the importance of integrating lessons from real-world failures into future AI development to ensure that technological advancements align with ethical standards and operational needs. The essay advocates for a multi-faceted approach to address AI-related challenges, including strengthening security protocols, developing robust ethical frameworks, and fostering ongoing research. The study stresses the importance of effective human oversight and collaboration to complement AI capabilities, reduce potential risks, and ensure that AI systems serve strategic goals responsibly.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 93-108 

COMMON SENSE IN AI: THE LIFEWORLD AS KEY

John W. Murphy
University of Miami
Carlos Largacha-Martínez
University of Areandina, Bogotá, Colombia
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For some time, common sense has been viewed as a valuable source of knowledge in AI. Recently, a significant push is underway to accumulate a body of knowledge representative of common sense that can guide AI in a more socially-relevant manner. AI models are currently divorced from how everyday persons understand themselves, others, and their surroundings, and thus tend to hallucinate, or make inappropriate responses. The assumption is that a good dose of common sense may bring AI closer to how persons actually think and behave. Yet the search for common sense is guided by Cartesianism, and thus the resulting common sense does not reflect the daily lives of persons. In the Cartesian framework, the aim is to accumulate a large amount of objective data that allegedly represent the daily lives of persons. This essay advances an alternative, less dualistic philosophy that can bring AI closer to persons and how they make decisions. AI should be grounded in the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) of persons, a notion borrowed from phenomenology, so that this technology may become more individually and socially-attuned and relevant. FlourishingAI, a project in Bogotá, Colombia, is an example of how this philosophy can be put into practice. This essay envisions a more socially-responsible and less alienating AI that does not pose a threat to human existence.
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JIS XXXVI 2025: 109-131 

MAN AND MACHINE: BALANCE OF POWER

Michael Y. Kuznetsov
Kharkiv National University, Ukraine
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This essay argues that artificial intelligence can benefit humanity through ethical governance and robust control mechanisms that preserve human oversight. AI’s transformative potential in healthcare, transportation, and security is tempered by risks like algorithmic bias and autonomy erosion, necessitating a multidisciplinary approach. Drawing on philosophy, theology, and technical scholarship, the essay explores ethical frameworks emphasizing transparency, fairness, and accountability that can mitigate challenges when paired with technical safeguards like kill switches and human-in-the-loop protocols. Historical lessons from AI’s evolution, from early automata to modern neural networks, highlight the importance of aligning innovation with human values. A Judeo-Christian perspective rooted in imago Dei affirms human dignity and moral responsibility, where AI serves as a tool for flourishing rather than domination. The essay concludes that global cooperation, adaptive ethical algorithms, and public oversight are essential to balance AI’s power with human authority.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 132-150 

THE PROMISE AND PERILS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AND GENETIC MODIFICATION

William R. Clough
Samaritan Counseling Center of the Gulf Coast
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Artificial Intelligence is a rapidly emerging technology which promises profound changes in computer productivity and power, as well as society. By using computer systems to perform tasks involving decision-making hitherto done by humans, it will make many tasks quicker, more accurate, and more influential. On the plus side, AI promises to automate repetitive tasks, improve decision-making, and reduce human error. But it might impact interpersonal communication, economics, politics, war fighting, sales and political influence, personal privacy, and other areas in potentially dangerous or malicious ways. Coupled with AI, the mapping of the human genome has given humans unprecedented potential to modify humanity itself. This essay explores some implications of applying AI to DNA modification, highlighting ideas for safeguarding humanity from the malign effects and encouraging the salubrious effects of these powerful new tools in the human toolbox.
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JIS XXXVII 2025: 151-164 

EVOLUTION, INFORMATION, AND
SEMIOTIC INTELLIGENCE (REVIEW)

J. Scott Lee
Association for Core Texts and Courses
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In The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning, Gary Tomlinson uses a Piercean framework of signs within the context of the “extended evolutionary synthesis.” The search for cardinal terms in the evolutionary lexicon leads to “first principles.” An extended evolutionary hypothesis opens up ”processual” views of biological phenomena; for example, genes are invoked or retarded in their operations through their molecular surroundings and momentary environment. Reflexivity between organism and environ-ment and within the brain of some species makes an intellectual space for the machines of the title to operate as “abstract” schemata of highly generalizable algorithms of evolution. These include natural selection, niche construction, the “blind probe head” (the molecular interaction between niche and organism), and the fourth, or “semiotic,” machine. In that machine Tomlinson probes species that use meaning–for example, songbirds–and species that do not–bees. The book closes on questions of meaning in other species, human meaning with tools, and traditions that chimp groups share. This latter expands our notions of teaching and learning for both humanists and evolutionary biologists.
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SPECIAL SECTION:  U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

JIS XXXVII 2025: 165-188 

AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS:
A READJUSTMENT MODEL

Michael E. Meagher
Missouri University of Science and Technology-Rolla
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American Politics, often prone to the passions of democratic governance, continues to be subject to those passions in the twenty-first century. Traditionally assigning majority party status to one of the two major parties, this has provided the engine through which change has occurred over the nation’s history. Able to set the agenda of the nation’s business and carry out its program, public frustration was muted given the ability of the political system to address concerns. However, that previous practice of having a majority party is now gone. American politics now takes place within a framework of readjustment: the two major parties are evenly balanced, making it challenging to address the nation’s ills. With the system straining to address public concerns, the public’s frustration level has increased. This essay argues that while change can occur absent a majority party, the lack of a majority party prevents the change from being long-term and systemic over decades. FDR’s New Deal was a system-level change that provided American politics with a public philosophy for decades. At present, rather than realigning, the nation has readjusted.
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