World leaders are gathering this week in Davos, Switzerland, for a meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), but at least one breakout session tackled a much more spiritual topic.
Yuval Noah Harari is a distinguished research fellow for the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, who has also lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s history department. At the WEF, he spoke at a breakout session and informed the audience that AI already handles words better than most humans. Therefore, anything made of words will be taken over by AI.
“If laws are made of words, then AI will take over the legal system. If religion is built from words, then AI will take over religion,” says Harari.
Need to study a text? Harari says that AI can do it better than a pastor.
“What happens to a religion of the book when the greatest expert on the holy book is an AI?” asks Harari.
He points out that all the Abrahamic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- claim to be religions of the book. However, AI will not just be stopping there.
“Suppose some AI persons create a new religion which gains the faith of millions of people. That should not sound too far-fetched because, after all, almost all previous religions in history have claimed that they were created by a non-human intelligence,” states Harari.
Seminary professors say that AI will never replace the inspiration Christians get through the Holy Spirit when studying the Word of God. But Harari means to warn humanity of what is coming.
“Ten years from now, it will be too late for you to decide whether AI should function as persons in the financial markets, in the courts, in the churches. Somebody else will already have decided it for you,” says Harari.
