One Christian philosopher says the truth is probably not nearly as dramatic.
Spencer Klavan, author of the upcoming book 'Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith,' sat down on Ben Shapiro's podcast to talk about, among other things, Artificial Intelligence. First off, he says, attributing to it godlike powers is one of the oldest errors in the book.
“Let's build a machine that has the outward appearance of a human being, then let's attribute to it consciousness and allow it to rule our lives. That is the literal description of how idols are built in Psalm 115. This has been a tendency forever, and every time it happens the excuse is the same. It's ‘oh, this time we actually have the tech, though.’
Klavan says what strikes him is how wildly disconnected the reality was from what people were saying about the technology.
“We can certainly trick ourselves into believing that it's thinking, but that's the thing that's going to bring disaster … not the machine running out of hand and figuring out how to turn us all into paper clips, but us believing that this object is going to be our Savior.”
He says the route forward lies, instead, in a recovery of our uniqueness as opposed to the machines. What are the things that we do that they don't, like experience, like see colors, like feel love?
“For a long time we've thought of ourselves as the smartest things in the world. That may be changing, but one nice thing about the bible is it actually never defined humanity as the smartest entities on earth. It defined us as being in the image of God.”
