Having heard and read about AI chat machines and recommended their use by others, when the BBC mentioned one (Elusive Ernie) in particular Coco thought Coco should look.
Coco was dismayed to find that it was not open to the public but only to registered users. Coco supposes Coco should not be surprised nor concerned by that if it were not that it suggests that the controllers may have more interest in what Coco as a user might be thinking than the answer that the machine provides. So, Coco thought Coco should look at the terms and conditions before proceeding. It was a most revealing and uplifting experience. Unlike other channels where your behaviour as a user may violate their policies, and lead to an exclusion from that market place, it would be impossible to find yourself in such a position with this application, you could never be in breach of their terms and conditions. The general principles read, in (not-British) English:
“Users can use individual services of Baidu’s various channels and products. When users use Baidu’s individual services, the user’s usage behavior (sic!) is deemed to be in accordance with the terms of service of the individual service and the various announcements issued by Baidu in the individual service. agree.”
(用户可以使用百度各个频道、产品的单项服务，当用户使用百度各单项服务时，用户的使用行为视为其对该单项服务的服务条款以及百度在该单项服务中发出的各类公告的同意。)
How refreshing, it matters not what your actual behaviour is, it will always be deemed to conform to the terms of service of the platform. Of course Coco shall be willing to agree to such a condition. It is a pity that ‘agree’ lacked a capital A and an exclamation mark, but hey-ho, it is not British English.
It seemed however rather an odd thing to include in your general principles. Now in many a state which lacks the checks and balances that are designed to ensure that each department of that state is accountable to another – rather as in the paper, stone, scissors game – we hear the words that are quite similar to this: The authorities will always act in accordance with the law by not violating any individual’s rights and within the constraints placed upon them by the legal system.
It sounds very good. That is exactly what we expect, until we look more closely and find that the words mean only exactly what the speaker wanted them to mean, knowing that the auditor would understand them in a different way. We are in the Looking Glass world again of Alice and Lewis Carroll.
There are others who distort the meaning of words too in a much more important context. The most important question we have, perhaps you should ask your favourite AI tool the question to see whether it understands the distinction, is How can a man be right with God? Coco heard recently a presentation which included a section about this matter in relation to temple worship recently. The speaker said we visit temples in order to make offerings which are acceptable to the deity and to bring us closer to him. How right he is, yet he missed the obvious conclusion that if there is a need for us to make such an offering, then we are coming from the position of being unacceptable to the deity (he would not have denied this). If we are unacceptable in ourselves to the deity, then the offerings which we bring, being tainted by us, will also be unacceptable. We find ourselves then between a rock and a hard place. In order to offer an acceptable sacrifice we must first be justified, but to be justified we must offer an acceptable sacrifice.
It is probably that what the speaker was averring to was that by joining in this process we could incrementally approach the deity; each of our efforts combined with a sacrifice would move us closer to justification or improve our justification. But even if this is the case it is not a hare and tortoise race, where motion takes place, it is more akin to approaching the speed of light for the closer you get to it, the more slowly you accelerate with the result that you never arrive – this is asymptotic behaviour, but don’t worry if you don’t understand the meaning of the word, that one does not matter. Some seem to speak of justification as if it contained shades of grey, where you can move from being unjustified to justified imperceptibly changing on the way (an imperceptible change is not an actual change is it? If a change has taken place it must be in some way be possible to perceive it – but that is a different discussion), whereas the reality is either/or, true/false. There is no middle ground. You are either justified or not justified. Even the third Scottish verdict of not proven does not contradict that.
What is required then? To do what no man could do, God has himself done in that he provided the acceptable sacrifice, and in his own person died on a Roman cross that we might not perish but live. It is his death accounted for us, that provides justification for us. A once and for all act, which justifies the sinner before God.
As Coco suggested, ask your favourite AI the question. If the reply is not we are justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.¹ And if it do not reply in that manner, it does not matter how well it answers questions about world leaders so-called, whether Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon B, H Wilson or any of our contemporary leaders, or what else happened on the day that George III was born, let it be anathema to you.