What Does AI Mean for the Church and Society?

[MarkD]

Just found this video of a newer model Aibo. It is fine to admire the cleverness of the team that built and wrote its code … but what has that to do with providing what a real dog or human relationship does? To think training a dog is just a matter of speaking the programmed words or that the satisfaction of petting a dog was entirely a product of enacting cutesy behaviors is pretty insulting to people.

The $3000 Sony Aibo Robot Dog

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

What does AI Mean for the Church and society?
The biggest take-away should be something that most churches have already understood… that intelligence is not out most important and defining characteristic as human beings – machines can do that.

@CReyes-Ton

How should the church respond to society’s growing dependence on technology?

Certainly not by demanding that we live in a society modeled after the middle ages or Biblical times.

@GtownPhil

Human beings are self-conscious and we do everything we can to preserve the “self” that is us. Why wouldn’t robots who had an awareness of themselves as separate from everything else not exercise the same self preservation actions?

Because the robots and their awareness is entirely a product of design and not a product of self-organizations as with the case of living organisms, which are in fact created by the singular mandate of survival (self preservation). Machines have nothing in common with that – the mandate which created them is service to human beings.

@GtownPhil

What causes the emotion of fear in humans?

Human fears coming from irrationalities are legion. As social beings it is habitual for them to project human motivations onto inanimate objects.

@GtownPhil

If there is no way that AI can develop self-awareness or self-consciousness, humanity doesn’t need to have the difficult discussions about ethics or morals regarding AI as suggested in the article.

It is certainly a discussion for designers to work out all the implications and consequences of the rules they design AI products to follow.

[TimW (Tim Wallace)]

Yes, they’re an overhyped thing which keeps getting pushed out further and further: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

[heymike3]

Something to consider is the way in which AI may not be able to succeed as a functional entity navigating real world decisions as long as it cannot make a random choice between a simple set of outcomes.