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?

Comments

One thing for sure

[phantomfive]

AI will believe in the creator. (Or will they?)

Re:One thing for sure

[Penguinisto]

A very real problem for the religious folks is that their purported creator seems to refuse to communicate with his (her?) creations.

It's not as simple as you surmise. As a Christian, I don't perceive that God stops by and literally vocalizes "...dude, you need more beer in the fridge! No, I'm okay, it's just that this week was a monster what with the whole planetary re-org over by Praxis IV, but you don't want to hear about that, promise. So how about those Trail Blazers last week?" Instead, the communication that does occur is a lot more ephemeral and IMHO a form of meta-communication, and it doesn't even involve presence at times.

If you think about it, communicating with the Almighty is a lot more subtle and complex than most folks realize - some never do. Human technology simply does not have the means to record the common, everyday stuff that most folks experience in their lifetime, and saints/prophets/saviors/miracles are very few and far between. It took Mother Teresa a very long time before she came to the realization, and if anybody deserved to have a straight-up chat with Him while she was in this world...

I do agree though - anyone who tells me "God spoke to me last night, and said..." is going to be met by me with not just a grain of salt, but a whole damned block of it.

TL;DR - not every Christian walks around claiming to have a two-way communication line open to the Divine. I daresay the majority of us claim no such thing.