In an age where artificial intelligence can process the entirety of human knowledge in moments, a Christmas editorial calls for a return to the irreplaceable value of authentic human fellowship. The piece, reflecting on the season's message, contrasts the staggering scale of AI with the profound simplicity of personal encounter.
The Staggering Scale of Digital Knowledge
The editorial begins by framing the immense scope of information that modern technology now commands. It notes that the King James Version of the Bible contains roughly 800,000 words, a volume once considered substantial yet still physically manageable. The comparison then shifts to modern compendiums: The Canadian Encyclopedia, a landmark national project first released in 1985 with three million words, now holds four million in its digital form. The venerable Encyclopedia Britannica dwarfs that with approximately 44 million words.
Yet, as the article points out, these decades of scholarly labor can be ingested in minutes by the apparatus of artificial intelligence. It highlights Google's PaLM 2 large language model (LLM), which utilizes a staggering 340 billion parameters to analyze and organize text. The scale, resource consumption, and investment—amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars—demanded global attention throughout 2025.
The Mechanism and Promise of LLMs
Large language models operate by cataloging vast quantities of text to predict the most likely next word, phrase, or sentence. Where a human author might search laboriously for the perfect word, AI generates suggestions instantly. This process moves beyond the old materialist notion of infinite monkeys eventually producing Shakespeare through randomness. Instead, the new materialism of AI relies on recognizing intricate patterns across millions of data points to produce what the article terms a "reasonable facsimile" of human language and creativity.
While the technological accomplishment is undeniable and far more plausible than the proverbial simian typists, the editorial posits a critical question: Does this mastery of language signify a future where machines become the masters of humankind?
The Unquantifiable Human Spirit at Christmas
The article's resounding conclusion, particularly resonant during the Christmas season, is a firm "not yet, and preferably, never." It draws a powerful contrast between the binary, predictive world of AI and the foundational role of language and spirit in human tradition.
It recalls the Genesis narrative, where language is creative force—God speaks the world into existence. This theme echoes in the Gospel of John, read in churches worldwide at Christmas: "In the beginning was the Word." Here, the 'Word' (Logos) implies a deeper, spiritual principle of reason and creative force, far beyond statistical prediction.
The editorial argues that both old and new forms of materialism—whether relying on randomness or pattern recognition—ultimately squeeze out the human spirit. At Christmas, a time centered on community, reflection, and shared presence, the piece makes a poignant case that genuine fellowship requires real human encounter. It cannot be replicated or replaced by digital facsimiles, no matter how advanced or vast their database. The warmth of connection, the shared glance, and the spoken word in community remain uniquely and essentially human.
