Letters - 02 October 2026
'In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.'
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AI
Adrian Glamorgan’s insightful article on Artificial Intelligence (‘The age of disruption’, 11 September) will undoubtedly have been written before two recent developments in AI.
The first was from Robert Trager, co-director of the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, who said we are ‘plausibly close’ to crossing the line of AI ‘recursive self-improvement’, where AI systems improve themselves – likened to an explosion.
The second was from Evan Hubinger, a safety researcher at Anthropic, who wrote, ‘We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade’.
The question Adrian’s article prompted for him was: what does our common humanity, which is nourished by the workings of the Spirit, mean? This has, I suggest, greater significance now, not just for Quakers, but for all humanity.
For myself, I have been researching the foundations of human morality for many years. This has led me to look for its ‘rules’ in the complex adaptive systems of earthly life. Only in the last eighteen months have I realised how important this same approach is for AI – a perspective that appears to have been lost in the AI hype.
I am turning what I have found into a blog-book. It explains why Evan Hubinger has good reason to be worried. The latest chapter (available at https://humanityinthebalance.com/the-ai-alignment-fallacy) was published on 18 September. I am hoping it will be widely read and be able to influence present discussions.
Geoff Fielding
Young Friends
Many Local and Area Meetings are reconsidering their governance structures, and in some cases their continued existence. Meeting house closures (actual and threatened), declining finances, difficulty insuring Meeting house premises, a shortage of trustees, and a shrinking volunteer base, are causing piecemeal discernment across our Society, with consequences for individual Meetings that have yet to be discerned.
Are young Friends locally part of that discernment, or being appointed as trustees? Have young Friends nationally produced any public minutes reflecting their own discernment on the challenges facing Meetings? My long-held belief is that when young Friends speak nationally, the Society needs to listen. Decisions taken now, in these uncertain conditions, will still shape the Meetings they inherit.
Steven Walton
