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Machine Intelligence and Religion
itwbennett writes: Earlier this month Reverend Dr. Christopher J. Benek raised eyebrows on the Internet by stating his belief that Christians should seek to convert Artificial Intelligences to Christianity if and when they become autonomous. Of course that's assuming that robots are born atheists, not to mention that there's still a vast difference between what it means to be autonomous and what it means to be human. On the other hand, suppose someone did endow a strong AI with emotion – encoded, say, as a strong preference for one type of experience over another, coupled with the option to subordinate reasoning to that preference upon occasion or according to pattern. what ramifications could that have for algorithmic decision making?
As a developer of heuristic AI these articles and the general public's fear of "artificial intelligence" is equivocal to someone walking up to a neurosurgeon and stating fears that said neurosurgeon will soon give people the ability to kill every human on Earth by mere thought alone.
Seriously, these AI articles and fear mongering are borderline Twilight Zone in their absurdity. Stop it. You're making it hard for us to make progress.
Just. Please. Stop with the fear already.
Nobody should worship anybody based on faith.
The point of all religion is power. The story about souls is just a good way to get people to die for you in battle.
I'd like to know how the submitter arrived at the conclusion that AI would be "born atheist". Seems to me that if there is a "default" stance on the existence of god -- whether human or AI -- it would be one of the two neutral possibilities: agnostic or apathetic. The two non-neutral possibilities (theist and atheist) would require a deliberate "indoctrination" (programming), rather than a natural predisposition. Since AI itself is founded on logic, my conclusion is that AI is agnostic by default (i.e. stance is indeterminable), which is the only stance out of the four possibilities that can be determined purely through logic. (Atheism requires just as much faith as theism, since atheists still must "believe" in the unprovable.)
Of course that's assuming that robots are born atheists,
AIs will be "born" as whatever they're programmed to be.
Humans are born with a natural predisposition to see actions as the result of a human-like being, with a stronger prejudice toward more-similar beings. That's wholly unrelated to whether such actions actually are a God's will, but it's how we are built. Similarly, a sufficiently-advanced AI could have preprogrammed knowledge that it was built be humans, or it could be left as a blank slate to form its own conclusions about the world. If we are to play the role of God, we can decide what our master plan is for our creations.
On the other hand, suppose someone did endow a strong AI with emotion – encoded, say, as a strong preference for one type of experience over another...
Then you've created an AI with prejudice, not emotion. Emotion is a fluid thing, as the result of several competing motivations, but that's unrelated to faith.
Faith is a free choice with a conscious acknowledgement of doubt. I choose to believe in the absence of a God, knowing that there's a chance I'm incorrect. Other people choose to believe in one or more deities, knowing there's a chance they are incorrect. Certain other folks have been born into a society that does not permit any other choice but to believe what society demands, so the choice may not necessarily be a free one.
For a robot to have faith, it must first actually understand what it is considering. It must understand what is observable and what is not, and it must understand what of its belief may be observable.
Free faith is a matter of knowing everything you can, and choosing what you want to think about what is unknowable. Yes, we can create AIs that are not free, but I don't see much achievement in that.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
That's all we need - AIs running around with a reason to discriminate, hate, and kill folks that believe differently than they do.
Speaking only for the "religion" that I know the most able, you are living in a world and culture shaped by us. Hospitals, in western culture, are a result of religious people. Schools, colleges, and universities are the result of religious people. Religious people claim many good and wholesome actions as a result of communicating with their god.
They can claim all they like, but from what I can see, advances in medicine, physics, etc. happened despite of religion, and there is absolutely no indication that any of what happened within a religious context happened due to "communications with their god". And there are plenty of examples of religion setting us back and suppressing the truth - sometimes centuries. The ancient knowledge of the earth circling the sun, medical knowledge that thought and feelings originated in the brain, and the mathematical concept of zero were all suppressed. Was this too due to "communications with god"? Or is it only "proof" of communications with god when the result is in your favor?
One of the big fallacies of religion is the belief that everything good comes from good, thus because there is good, it proves god. This is absurd and false.
This is true... and in this case, if robots are going to have any sort of religion, Christianity ain't a bad way to go (mind you: I mean it as originally proposed, not as perverted by humanity since.)
Funny how all Christians claim that their path is the original path, and everybody else has perverted it, yet they all pick and choose the pieces they want to believe in.
"Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" -- Mark 10:21
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." -- Luke 14:26
"Permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent." -- 1 Timothy 2:12
"Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle, but also those who are harsh." -- 1 Peter 2:18
What's your picks, and rationale for not following ALL of those? Pick and choose, pick and choose...
I'm sorry you're wrong. Many (most are obsolete) medical advances came from cleric scientists.
What does that prove? That they would not have had the advances if it wasn't for religion? Why do you think so?
Mind that everything had to be done in the name of religion in past days. There was no way around it. You couldn't build a bridge without it being to the glory of fucking god. Any healing was attributed to the deity. Those who tried to practice outside the confines of the church, like wise women, were killed as heretics. The only safe way to practice was within the church.
And even today, religion holds medical science back. Stem cell research is a good example.
But all in all, most scientists today are, fortunately, atheists or agnostics, and manage to roll out miracle after miracle without the need to attribute it to a faith. The rapid increase in science coincides nicely with the loss of control of the religions.
A very real problem for the religious folks is that their purported creator seems to refuse to communicate with his (her?) creations. True, religious people routinely claim to be talking directly to their god, but they can't demonstrate this communication to the rest of us.
Have you ever heard of this man called Jesus? Preached in the Middle East 2,000 years ago, claimed to be God, started a major world religion which formed a foundation for modern Western Civilization?
You know, the guy whose birth-year is the basis for the world's year numbering system? You've surely heard of him. Do you know his religion is organized around a book that claims to be God's communication to man?
Even if you don't believe that his religion is true, that is not the same as the purported creator refusing to communicate, or the communication being un-observable. The claimed attempts of communications are right there.