Journey Week 2024: The Oracle and the Algorithm: An Interview with John Bucher, Ph.D.

Dr. John Bucher is the Executive Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, as well as a celebrated author and an alumni of the Mythology & Depth Psychology program at Pacifica. He will be presenting “The Oracle and the Algorithm: Our Search for Mythos in the Machine” as a keynote speaker at Journey Week 2024. Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here.

Angela: The name of this year’s Journey Week is “Beyond Boundaries: Caring for Psyche, Soul, and Imagination in a Posthuman Age” What does “Posthuman age” mean in the context of depth psychology? Is there a fear implicit in that term that suggests we’ve lost our humanity? Jaguars don’t appear to worry that they will become less than jaguars, neither do birds seem to worry that they might lose their bird-ness. Why do you humans worry that we might lose our humanity?  

John: This question has a number of different pieces to it that are important as we consider the essence of the question itself. First, I’d say that there is a subtextual fear in the question and there’s a rightful recognition that this would be a bad thing. Several factors go into why this fear has risen and become a topic of conversation. The first is that as human progress has moved forward, we’ve continued to rely more and more on the machines that we have created in order to ideally make our lives more efficient. It’s important to ask ourselves, why we’re attempting to harness the power of technology in the first place. Is it just about efficiency? The underlying factor and the best-case scenario for technology is that it might provide us more freedom. I believe that’s truly what human beings are largely in pursuit of—freedom. And if technology allows us the opportunity for more free time, freedom from the boundaries that have kept us confined to a given area, to travel to parts of the world we otherwise couldn’t, it’s quite understandable why we vigorously pursue it.  

The issue becomes complicated when those technologies that we create, which were developed in pursuit of freedom, begin to enslave us in some way or begin to take freedom away from areas of our lives. So for example, cell phone technology was meant to provide us a greater sense of connection and freedom. And that might have been a good reason to develop that technology. However, while we have a greater opportunity for connection, many of these connections are a synthetic replacement for the real thing. These replacement connections don’t often satiate us in the same way that authentic in-person connections do. I would suggest this results in a loss of freedom for us. With every technology, we gain something and we lose something. It’s important to recognize what we’re gaining and what we’re losing. Simply bringing awareness around these facts can help us make better decisions as a society about the type of world we want to live in. I don’t want to give up my cell phone, but if I’m honest, there are things we’ve lost as a culture because of it. And of course, there are things we’ve gained as well. Is what we’ve gained greater than what we’ve lost? We may not fully know the answer to that question yet. 

In terms of losing our humanity, we have rightful concerns that we may be trading some sense of what we perceive to be our humanity in order to gain something through technology. How much have we thought about exactly what it is we are trying to gain? More free time? More money? This is especially true when it comes to A.I. What is it we are looking to gain from this technology as human beings? We have some sense of what we might lose. For example, A.I. may eliminate certain jobs. We recognize that people need jobs, not just for the income but for the sense of purpose they provide us and the meaning they can add to our lives. That purpose and meaning gets back to this idea of what it means to be human.  

Technology is moving faster than it ever has in human history. We’ve even become comfortable with the idea of certain technologies existing inside the human body. The pacemaker has added to the human experience by extending lives. There are artificial limbs that have added to the human experience as well. We are starting to ask questions about where the boundaries should be in placing technology within our bodies—which is a good thing. There’s a mythological and philosophical question that arises the further we go in exploring this idea. It concerns the ship of Theseus. If you replace a plank on the ship, and eventually you replace every plank on the ship of Theseus, is it still the same ship? Or is it a new vessel altogether, even though it might still be called the ship of Theseus? The same question could be asked about what it means to be human. How much technology can you put inside the human body and still say that person is human and not at least partially an android of some sort? Can we define a line we shouldn’t cross? Most people would agree that someone with a pacemaker is no less human than anyone else. But is there a line where certain amounts of technology within the body could make someone less human? These become difficult questions to answer. What is it that makes us human in the first place? Is it our consciousness? Or is it embodied consciousness? Or is it something else altogether?  

Angela: So many of our visions of the future are dystopian, with machines playing the part of oppressor, the horror of contemplating a sentience that has lost the ability to empathize, to have mercy and compassion, to feel. At present, much of this centers around fears about A.I., and what might happen if we somehow develop technology that has sentience. And if sentience, then what intention? Your talk during Journey Week will be on “The Oracle and the Algorithm: Our Search for Mythos in the Machine.” Can you speak about the machine element of your talk?  

John: I believe this is a much more complex issue than our dystopian fantasies often portray. Machines have become very good at replicating things that humans do. And while a machine may not be able to feel empathy, I believe machines can be quite deceptive at replicating human empathy, and A.I. will be able to inform a machine of common empathetic responses that can be replicated. This is quite concerning to me. Even though a machine can sound empathetic, we know that there’s not actual feelings or emotions driving that empathy. And will people care as long as they are hearing something that makes them feel good? It brings us back to this question of what makes us human? Is it feelings? Emotions? The different ways we experience consciousness?  

This is also connected to the idea of the oracle. The oracle at the temple of Delphi was called Pythia, who was a mysterious presence in myth. There’s always a certain mysterious quality to those who seem to be able to offer wisdom. It causes us to ask where that wisdom comes from. That was part of the mystery of the oracle of Delphi. Was it wisdom that came from the deities? The oracle was serving at the temple of Apollo, so was this wisdom coming directly from Apollo? The oracle was said to experience a divine possession by Apollo where she could predict the future. In some strange similar way, with A.I., large language models predict what the next word will be when answering our prompts. The source of those models can seem as mysterious as the wisdom that the oracle at Delphi would tap into. However, we’ve determined that some of the sources being tapped into have been taken from artists, writers, and creators who have been uncredited. So, there are a lot of lawsuits in the world of technology right now to address this.  

We also may get to a point where there is enough material generated by A.I. that it may begin to rely on its own material that has been generated as its source. So, do we end up with a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy? That is certainly an area of caution. I want to be clear, however, that despite all these cautions I’ve mentioned that I don’t believe it’s healthy to move forward as a society basing all our decisions on the fears we are feeling. We must also walk with courage, balance, and a sense of curiosity. Our dystopian visions often exclusively highlight our fears. I hear very few people talking about what this technology could also gift to human beings. Could it lead us into the greatest season of prosperity for all humans that the world has ever known? If so, the problems associated with A.I. are worth figuring out. I’m not predicting that will be the case. But it’s easier to predict what the problems will be sometimes than predicting the advantages. We’ve somehow been able to avoid some of the predictions of the past. For example, when automobiles were first introduced as a technology to the world, there were many who were throwing up their hands, saying that humans weren’t meant to go that fast, and that it would create all kinds of psychological and physiological problems to go at that rate of speed. Now, we all accept that we can travel at high speeds in cars, trains, and planes. So, some of the concerns of our dystopian stories are just simply reflections of our fears. And while we should proceed cautiously, I would also state that humans historically have been really bad at predicting the future, and whatever we think is going to be the result of the technologies we create, I can almost guarantee, we will be wrong. The problems we’ll likely end up facing are probably ones we haven’t even conceived of yet.  

Angela: I’ve had the good fortune to visit Delphi, and found the landscape surrounding it to be stunning, a place where one might expect revelatory experiences. Since then, I’ve learned about the vapors that likely came up from the earth and informed the Delphic oracles, who I believe were usually women. Are you working only with the Oracle at Delphi in this talk, and how does mythos, or mythology, promise some aspect of remedy or succor in an age of technology? 

John: While I will specifically talk about the oracle at Delphi, the important thing to point to is that this oracle, this mythic figure, is a metaphor in so many ways. Being a Joseph Campbell scholar, I’m always looking at these figures as metaphoric and psychological in nature. The oracle reminds me that we are constantly looking for someone to mediate the experience of the future for us. And we’re still looking for that today. We don’t necessarily have an oracle to go to anymore, so we tend to go to Google or ChatGPT or technology in general. When we look at what the greatest search terms are on Google, we see how much people have turned to technology for the knowledge they once went to oracles for. Computers have become our oracles. We’ve shifted the expression of these archetypal energies from mythic figures to these practical expressions in our modern world.  

In my estimation, what we have in A.I. is something that speaks to a force beyond human understanding. We’re trying to tap into something that is greater than human understanding, to the collective knowledge and wisdom of all of humanity in order to see what we should do, how we should proceed, what the answers are for us. And that is not unlike the oracles of the ancient past. It’s easy to discredit this type of magical thinking, but we can recognize that sometimes there is an alchemical process that occurs with these things, and I’m asking the question, “Is there some sort of alchemical process that could occur in large language models where we get something greater than the sum of its parts? Or not!” But while we’re concerned about technology becoming sentient or conscious, we should also ask about the subconscious of technology. What is within the subconscious of A.I.? Is it similar to the subconscious of human beings with all its biases and stories that have made an individual who they are? Does that go into the consciousness of technologies? We don’t have clear answers but it’s important to talk about. I simply want us to ask better questions when it comes to our technology. 

Angela: There will also be a Joseph Campbell Foundation Mythic Writing Workshop offered as part of Journey Week. As a writer and a Joseph Campbell scholar, what kind of result do you expect to have from this kind of workshop? For someone not familiar, what might they expect? 

John: I’m very excited that the Joseph Campbell Foundation is participating in MythFest, and I’m excited we’re having Dr. Scott Neumeister lead this workshop for us. He’s the editor of our MythBlast series, where a writer every week takes an idea from Joseph Campbell and explores it in some interesting way. Scott works with each writer. That’s what he’s going to be doing in this workshop, working with people who have mythic ideas, and showing them how to get those ideas into digestible writing that can be read by others in a meaningful way. Sometimes we have an idea that we’re fascinated by when it comes to the mythic or the depth psychological. It’s helpful to have a guide who can help us get that idea into a structure where we’re making an argument about that idea. That’s what Scott will be leading us toward.  

I will be at the table for the Joseph Campbell Foundation at MythFest and will be talking to people who have an interest in myth and depth psychology, who are curious about the work we do and the ways that we serve the mythological community and work with other mythologists. So if you’re someone who has an interest in myth and is exploring the possibilities that are offered through Pacifica and wondering what this community is out there, Myth Fest is about bringing together different voices within our myth community and having conversations about what we see in the world of mythological thought today.  

Angela: I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you, and I’m looking forward to your talk at Journey Week! 

Journey Week is an immersive week of learning and connecting at Pacifica Graduate Institute, September 26th – 29th, 2024. For more information and to register, visit us here.