Forgive me, Alexa, for I have sinned…
Some years ago, I happened to catch most of an episode of a series called Year Million on the National Geographic Channel. I thought it was pretty interesting, but the content raised some difficult questions. I find both fascinating and disturbing the potential for nanobots to repair our broken bodies from the inside out, the pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality, designer children, and the notion of extending our life expectancy (quixotic as it may be) hundreds of years or more; however, I cannot see how humans will ever achieve a perfect — or even near-perfect — existence.
What is most disturbing to me is the concept of one's self (as opposed to the pronoun “oneself”) as a commodity, rather than a unique entity — that particular episode I caught offered a hypothetical glimpse into the far-flung future, where present-day manifestations of human imperfection will no longer exist or even be a threat. Cancer, addiction, Alzheimer's. All physical evils will be eradicated, like smallpox. There was even talk of uploading one's mind — memory, knowledge, skills — to something referred to as a "Matrioshka brain," an AI repository for one's consciousness. Theoretically (though lightyears away from realistically), a person — and I use term loosely — could reside forever in a virtual reality world.
But what makes us who we are, sentient creations aware of our surroundings, singularly different than others with whom we share so many commonalities? Humans have a brain, but also a mind. Each of us has a unique genetic signature, as well as a unique personality. Predilections, phobias, abilities, and faith vary greatly among our species. Who is to decide what, exactly, constitutes human perfection (or, to rephrase more secularly, the perfect human)?
Each person on this Earth has a consciousness and, if you are willing to believe, a soul (that ineffable part of a human unlimited by the body). Tinkering with genes is one thing, but how can a person's mind, with or without consciousness (if that's even possible), be transferred into some virtual realm minus the soul? It's all sounds very sketchy to me, yet I must admit, again, that the content of that episode did pique my curiosity. (And what will happen to faith if the world actually believes that Man has succeeded in creating Heaven — even if only a SimCity version — rather than the other way around?)
Mind Matters News posted an article online entitled Will we outsource religion and spirituality to AI?, a question raised by Professor David O’Hara of Augustana University in South Dakota. An excerpt:
“One church in Germany developed Bless U 2, a robot to pronounce blessings, but that seems to have been intended as a provocation to thought: ‘We wanted people to consider if it is possible to be blessed by a machine, or if a human being is needed.’ O’Hara mentions that the government of Dubai’s cultural and Islamic affairs agency has launched the first-ever Virtual Ifta (ifta is Arabic for ‘give an explanation’) but all it does is provide formula answers to frequently asked questions. So, it doesn’t really seem as if the idea of robotic clergy is catching on outside of Japan where robots already have a special cultural significance… (a) robot chants at Buddhist funerals, but then some people in Japan also hold funerals for robotic dogs.”
Deus in machina. The dawning of AI casts an eerie glow on the advent of a new discipline: theochnology. Sadly, someday there might just be an app for that (“Forgive me, Alexa, for I have sinned…”).
But back to the future. There’s just something about an existence in the year Million that has a lightning bolt scar on its forehead and bolts in its neck — the kind of stuff that turns heads and draws crowds, but at the same time repulses basic human sensibility and places God closer to the vanishing point.
And the way I see it, we can get rid of death or we can get rid of God, but we can’t get rid of both.
Pastor E.B. Holschuh serves at Zion Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Alamo. He is a retired Navy Senior Chief and former English and Russian teacher and always looking for new ways to reach people; people can reach him in English or Russian at pastor@zionalamo.org. Check out “Fear or Faith?," the official podcast of Zion Lutheran Church (episodes in English, Spanish, and Russian) at zionlutheranalamo.podbean.com or Apple, Spotify, Audible, and Google.