AI and Religion
What implications would artificial general intelligence have for religion?
AI and Religion
What implications would artificial general intelligence have for religion?
AI seems to be in the news more and more every day. It used to be something I’d only really read about from more tech-focused news outlets but recently we have even seen the president talking about investing in it, and with the release of Deepseek it’s been all over the news.
As AI advances the question is whether it will become AGI, artificial general intelligence, something that can learn on its own, and think for itself. This raises a lot of questions and concerns because it could in theory begin to learn at an incredible rate and improve itself without the constraints of biology, and essentially be able to evolve itself to newer versions in a short span of time, vastly outpacing us, its creator.
While this brings all sorts of doomsday scenarios to mind I want to focus on another aspect here instead. If we truly do create AGI, and not just something that can imitate it perfectly, what does this mean for religion?
If we’re able to create something artificial that can actually think and experience the world, does it have a soul?
Also, what would this mean for consciousness? Did it randomly arise within the neural network that we created for it? Did the neural network we created make an environment that welcomed into itself a “soul”? Or was it able to tap into the consciousness that permeates all of reality? If that is indeed the case.
Abrahamic religions disregard animals almost entirely as far as souls and their salvation are concerned, but if apes were able to talk and coexist in society alongside us I think that’d be different…perhaps…we have seen the history of racism regarding race and salvation but that’s getting lost in the weeds and a topic for another article.
Self-aware robots would also create this dynamic if they were “living” and working right alongside us. Would they need salvation? We’re made in the “image of God” but what about them? Since we made them would religious groups see this as an affront to God? Or would it make sense to some since we’re made in the image of God and thus could also flex our creative nature and create a new form of life?
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