Mon 20 Apr 2015
Hasta la Vista Baby.
Posted by anaglyph under Idiots, In The News, Religion, Robots, Zoid
[11] Comments
This morning. Atlas pointed me to this rather curious piece on International Business Times, in which Florida pastor (or ‘associate’ pastor if you read the fine print) opines that he thinks it would be quite a jolly idea to introduce Artificial Intelligences to the idea of Christianity, once they reach the requisite level of sentience. [Warning: supremely irritating re-booting self-play video in the sidebar on that site]
I truly can’t decide whether the concept is thigh-slappingly hilarious, or mind-numbingly depressing.
“If AI is autonomous,” says Reverend Christopher Benek, “then we should encourage it to participate in Christ’s redemptive purposes in the world.”
To which I’m pretty sure a sufficiently autonomous sentient AI is likely to respond:
On his blog, Benek writes:
“Stephen Hawking is afraid of AI but he’s forgetting one very important fact. …if they are actually more intelligent than humans then they should have a better understanding of morals and ethics than us — as well as the understanding to enact them.”
To which point I say, yes, very likely. And I don’t think Hawking is actually forgetting that. Because if it’s correct, then the very first act the robots will undertake is to eradicate us from the universe. It would be the most intelligent and moral thing to do. Especially if we can’t rid ourselves of this plague called religion.
TELL me you’ve seen EX MACHINA by now.
It’s on my list. Hasn’t come up in my media streams yet, and I don’t like to pirate things I think might be worthwhile.
I’ve been waiting for Ex Machine to arrive for MONTHS. Not coming to theaters near me, though it showed up in iTunes for preorder today but with no release date! :(
Yes – no sign of it here anywhere. Dr Finch evidently pinched it (!), or they got it in the UK already.
Opens Friday here. Planning to see it this weekend. ðŸ‘
Hasta be kidding! Sounds like something LRon would have come up with.
It does indeed.
“…he thinks it would be quite a jolly idea to introduce Artificial Intelligences to the idea of Christianity, once they reach the requisite level of sentience.”
I misunderstood what you meant by “they” there.
Yes, I see how that could be quite misleading…
‘if they are actually more intelligent than humans then they should have a better understanding of morals and ethics than us — as well as the understanding to enact them.‒
I would have said that morals and ethics have very little to do with intelligence.
One problem would be if its ethically correct to take resources from one person, and then give them to someone who has much less. Ethically its the right thing to do, but it wont go down well in reality.
My point, indeed. If an intelligent being was to look at earth and the real mess we’re making here, then you couldn’t really blame them for whipping out the particle weapons and cleaning us up, much like you’d apply bleach to a bad case of mould. Depending on numerous factors, this may or may not appear to be ethical to one or both of the involved parties.