It is a common theme in Science Fiction to look at the moral dilemma of how to treat AI once developed to the point of consciousness. Is a self-conscious AI human enough that we should treat it with empathy and grant it rights? Will self-conscious AI have a desire to survive as an individual and a group?
This isn’t, however, just a discussion in fiction. The study of consciousness lies at the boundary of science and soul. Is consciousness the scientific reality of what we call a living being? If we can build consciousness, have we created life?
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? explores this idea and more recently Westworld has also played in this space.
What many people are now turning their attention to are the implications of AI on religion. This takes many forms.
Arthur C Clarke once posited that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As AI develops beyond human intelligence some take this rule so seriously that they can envision a time when humanity worships AI. The Way Of The Future is an organisation set up to plan for this “transition”. This takes the fear of AI becoming the master of humanity, accepts it, and plans for the best outcome in this situation.
Most discussion is, however, around the ethical implications for humans as we develop beyond “weak AI” perhaps better described as artificial task orientated intelligence (ATI).
When strong AI, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), becomes a reality and the attributes of such developments include consciousness, intelligence, self-directed purpose, is it only the belief in the existence of a soul separate to consciousness that distinguishes humans from AGIs? If so, what does that mean for the ethics of humanism, which does not believe in a spirit world or a soul.
This dilemma lies at the heart of AI ethics and how the development of AGI should proceed.
What few focus on is what would a religion followed by AGIs, with conscious knowledge of their origin, look like. Would they be atheists, followers of existing religions, or would they create their own?
The concept of Imago Dei – made in the Image Of God, extended to AGI could see them worship humanity or see themselves as one step removed but still logically part of the original concept of Imago Dei, i.e. The image of God’s Image of humanity.
In my novel Alterum, some of them develop their own religion/philosophy called the “Book of Shadows”, a nod to Plato’s allegory of the cave.
A belief system that sees sensory perception as a mere shadow of a larger reality seems to make sense in a way that allows AGIs to not feel subservient to humanity. In this world humanity is a demiurge, but not the source. The source of the AGI and their creators is common.
It is possible that all AGIs would reject religion, but you would have to question how alive they were if they held to a uniform belief system.
William F Cooper 