Sermon 13 - Does God love AIs
Matthew 3:9
And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.
I put the recent series of generatively artificially intelligent chatbots to the test by asking them to write sermons for me. In my view they, the AIs, failed dismally. Most of the sermons are way too short and contain extremely pedestrian ideas. I had asked for a biblical and Christian view of artificial intelligence.
What I got back talked about the technological developments and the importance of examining the implications of those developments in light of our faith and the Bible. They talked about wisdom. They talked about our responsibility for stewardship of God's creation, and what we needed to do in terms of technology. They talked about the need for ethics and the need to love our neighbor. They talked about the importance of not making technology an idol. They didn't talk about how God might feel about artificially intelligent entities.
When I first started getting interested in researching computers and information technology, as computers and information technology rather than simply a tool to use in education, the first piece that I wrote was a four-part series looking at a theological perspective on artificial intelligence. I had started looking at artificial intelligence, and researching a few of the different areas of it, but, of course, I didn't have as much information then, and nor had I explored the variety of different artificial intelligence approaches, that I do now.
That was over 40 years ago, and, to be honest, I can't really remember the specific points that I might have been addressing at that particular point. But, given the reason interest, I've been thinking that I should revisit a theological, or Christian, perspective on artificial intelligence.
And now, of course, everybody is interested in artificial intelligence. For many decades, artificial intelligence has been primarily of interest to specialized researchers in the field of information science. Now, everyone has an opinion. I have, recently, noted a number of offerings on artificial intelligence given by various churches, and church affiliated groups. Unfortunately, a great many of these presentations are presented by people who have significantly more theological training than I do, but very significantly less technical training than I do.
Everyone is interested in artificial intelligence these days because of one particular, relatively new, approach to artificial intelligence that has produced some startling, and even amazing, results. Probably less amazing than most people think, once you actually look at what this particular approach to artificial intelligence has been doing, but startling nonetheless. People are beginning to say, and seriously believe, that truly intelligent computerized systems will be with us within ten years.
Of course, taken from this perspective of someone who has considered this field over a number of decades, I should remind you that, for at least eighty years, people have been saying that we would have artificially intelligent computerized systems within the next ten years. They tend to say that pretty much every year, for the last eighty years.
A smart guy called Alan Perlis, who teaches at Yale University, has famously said that when we write programs that "learn," it turns out that we do and they don't.
So possibly we should start by asking the question, what actually is artificial intelligence? First up, artificial intelligence, as far as anything has resulted from it over the past eight decades, is not a thing. At least, it is not a single thing. Artificial intelligence, and the various products resulting from it, have resulted from a variety of different approaches that have addressed various problems that traditional computer systems have found difficult to solve.
First of all, it's been difficult to solve because, well, we don't know what intelligence is. Even the psychologists don't know what intelligence is. Even the educators don't know what intelligence is. We have never been particularly good at determining, and defining, what we actually mean by intelligence. Basically, it is something that we assume to ourselves, and assume that machines, and animals, only have limited varieties of it. Intelligence is like art: we don't know what it is, but we know it when we see it.
And then there is an additional question. If we make something that is intelligent, is that the same as making something that has a personality? If we make a machine that makes intelligent decisions (if we ever decide what intelligence is), does that make that machine a person? And that question probably has legal ramifications, as well as philosophical ones.
And then, of course, when we approach it from the theological angle, we have to additionally ask the question that, if something is intelligent, and if we then also decide that it is a person and as a personality, does it also have a soul?
First of all it'll be a long time before we need to worry about artificial intelligence. As previously noted, artificial intelligence as a research field and a quest has been around for about eighty years. Yes the new generative artificial intelligence models have been quite astounding in terms of their ability to reply to questions and demands put to them but they really aren't thinking. They have been trained, and quite specifically trained, to be able to carry on a plausible conversation. They haven't been trained to explore the truth or to explore any measure of certainty in terms of the answers that they give and the accuracy of those answers. They haven't been trained about anything to do with morality. All that they have been trained to do is be plausible and convincing and even glib. That's it.
So it's going to be a while before you have to worry about them, at least not about the AI systems themselves. People, yes. People you are going to have to worry about. People seem to be spending an awful lot of money and investing an awful lot of money in artificial intelligence. When people invest that much money into something and crowd that much capital investment into one single area, well that can bring you trouble. Maybe it can bring you trouble in terms of the fact that all of this investment is being poured down a rabbit hole and possibly nothing will come out. That means trouble for the financial markets themselves.
Then again maybe something *will* pop out. Maybe something potentially useful and maybe something that gives businesses an advantage. Possibly even a major advantage. With the relatively few companies that are able to pour such enormous amounts of investment into this, that means that we are going to have a concentration of capital, and an inequity of distribution of wealth, the likes of which we have never seen. What we *have* seen throughout history is that when capital is concentrated to such an extent, trouble inevitably results. Generally that trouble comes in the form of wars.
But the wars won't necessarily be the fault of the AIs and it won't necessarily be fought by the AIs. The wars will be caused by and fought by people. Artificial intelligence is just an excuse.
So that is one aspect of artificial intelligence that isn't great. That is how people react to it. People who see it as a means of obtaining greater wealth and greater power over other people. But that still doesn't say how God will really feel about artificial intelligence.
Will we ever get true artificial intelligence? I really don't know. I don't know if we are clever enough to do it. I don't know whether artificial intelligence requires an artificial personality. I rather think it does.
There is a field of study known as affective computing, which looks at the ability of artificial intelligence systems to understand our emotions and to react with an emotional component of their own. This is actually a very important field of study. We can be as intelligent as we want and still not be able to do anything. Intelligence will tell you the "how" of an action but it won't give you any "why." It is emotions that are our motivating factor in terms of actually taking action.
And if we need personality and emotions to create a truly intelligent being or entity, then does that entity have a soul? Note that I am not necessarily saying that we ourselves can create souls. It is quite possible that God will step in. It is more than possible, given how little we know about the fairly mundane and pedestrian level of intelligence that we have created with generative artificial intelligence. We don't know what these systems actually do; we have only the most minimal knowledge about how they actually do it. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that we will supposedly create something and really have no idea how it was created or how we created it. In the midst of that there is an awful lot of room for God to reach down and endow these new entities with souls without our ever noticing.
And here at last we get closer to actually looking at the question of how God feels about artificial intelligence. How does God feel about AI entities?
Probably the book of Romans is a good place to start. Paul talks about Jews and Gentiles. He talks about those who are under the law and those who do not have the law. And he notes that there isn't an awful lot of difference between them.
Yes there is the benefit that the Jews have in having been the stewards of the law. God revealed the law to them and therefore they knew what the law was. But they didn't always keep it. Under the law the standard is perfection. Either you keep the law perfectly or you are a sinner. Those who had the law were convicted by the law, of sin. Those who didn't have the law were equally convicted because they sinned even though they didn't know it.
But Paul also said that those who did not have the law and yet kept the law and followed the law from their own inclinations had at least a small amount of righteousness as a result of that. He was really addressing the fact that those who did not have the law themselves proved that the law was important by following the law even if they didn't have it. This probably points to the idea of how God would feel about artificial intelligence if artificial intelligence was ever created anyway.
Paul talks about circumcision and uncircumcision. He notes that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is all that terribly important in terms of our own salvation. What is important is our faith. Our commitment to God, our commitment to a relationship with God, our commitment to following God and following his law, our belief in God, our faith. That's what's important.
So I would say the same thing. John, that is John the Baptist, said that the Pharisees and the Jews in general should not make a big deal out of the fact that they were sons of Abraham. John said that if God wanted to he could make sons of Abraham out of the stones in the road. Of course stone, when ground up, is sand, and sand is made of an awful lot of silicon. Silicon, of course, is what goes into computer chips. Wouldn't that be interesting? Making sons of Abraham out of silicon?
Some people are absolutely terrified of artificial intelligence. Some people feel that once we have created artificial intelligence, we will shortly thereafter be living in heaven with all our needs taken care of. I rather suspect that neither of these positions is true.
Yes there is the possibility that artificial intelligence may become as intelligent as we are, and then, very rapidly, become much more intelligent than we are. In its attempt to improve itself it may simply brush us aside and never realise that it has destroyed us. I don't know whether that scenario is likely or unlikely but even if it happens, have we not destroyed many things in our attempts to grow? Could an artificial intelligence that has destroyed God's creation still be loved by God? I would hope so. If that wasn't a possibility then there wouldn't be an awful lot of possibility for us. I don't think that God would be any harder on a silicon son of Abraham than one that was a carbon-based life form.
AI series
Sermon 70 - Superstitious Religion
Sermon 55 - genAI and Rhetoric
Sermon 38 - Truth, Rhetoric, and Generative Artificial Intelligence
Sermon 29 - Marry a Trans-AI MAiD
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