It is starting to seem like perhaps we do have to face those questions after all. Self-driving cars, machines beating the best humans at chess, algorithms getting great at predicting human behaviour -better than fellow humans, the threat of 'white collar' jobs being taken by machines all seem to raise a related bunch of questions about the place of artificial intelligence in God's providence.
It is important, as we begin to think about that to be a bit careful about what we mean by the various aspects of the issue. What might we mean by 'artificial intellingence', what constitutes 'praying'. And then, we might want to recognise that some dimensions of the matter are already entangled with human technologies and could help us to think more about it.
You may be surprised by the idea that human technologies are already in the picture but is so, and some have been involved for a very long time. Perhaps your imagination has already taken you there: what are people doing when lighting a candle in a church or temple? What are prayer flags and rotating prayer gadgets in some versions of Buddhism? Written notes on prayer trees or boards? These all invite us to think about what we mean by prayer in our low-tech strategies.
I month or two back, the Church Times published an article I wrote as part of a special edition on artificial intelligence. It's relevant to put its 700 words here as they address some of the issues raised just.
Will AIs pray for us?
The film Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) dramatically portrays the question of the humanity of artificial humans. I think I’d want to ask, do AI’s pray to Jesus's God? And if they do, might we pray with them? Will they pray for us?
“Pray for us” could mean ”in our stead” as if we could outsource the work of prayer to relieve us of the task; a religious version of AIs taking jobs. It could, however, mean “intercede for us”: to ask them to hold us before God with concern for our wellbeing.
As we start to consider this, let's notice that we tend to think of artificial intelligence as a new issue, but maybe it is not. Amos Young following Walter Wink, interprets the Powers and Principalities as integral social entities having their own mission in God’s economy and having their own intelligence. If that is right, then we have had with us artificial, that is human-made, intelligences for a very long time. We collectively and unwittingly provide the substrate for these beings which emerge from our social interactions with purposes of their own and also a share in the fallenness of humanity. They process information, affect the environment and marshall human effort and allegiance. Scripture, names them “angels” as well as “dominions”, “thrones” and so on. So perhaps when we more purposefully make thinking artefacts, in these principalities, powers and angels, we already have a paradigm to consider their providential provenance.
Perhaps too, prayerful acts such as lighting candles might help us think about AIs praying. Votive lights in some traditions symbolically ask something of God. Presumably, without a human-generated intent, these are merely flames fed by a human artefact. But with a human desire motivating the lighting, they symbolically make that prayer. However, do they continue that prayer when the human has gone away and no longer focuses on it? Similarly we might appraise prayers written and put into a prayer wall.
Perhaps an AI praying might be like a candle or a slip of written-on paper. Either it is a mechanical and ‘soulless’ remainder of a once-live (and human) prayer or the prayer remains in some way alive and active through the burning candle or the script. If there is some way it persists, then maybe that gives reason to think an AI could carry forward a human petition to God even if it didn’t ‘think’.
If we believed that an AI could indeed think and so, perhaps, pray, I hope that we wouldn’t think that it relieves us of having to pray. That suggests a disturbing view of prayer as simply onerous work. Certainly, sometimes, prayer might be hard work, but surely more importantly prayer is the joyous cultivation of relationship with God. Why should AIs have all the fun praying?
Whether they might intercede for us is a different question. This would imply they could relate to God in such a way as to form a request or to hold ‘in mind’ a situation before God (and how would we know?) It would assume Deity would listen, that is in practice, seek to enlist it in God’s mission. It would imply that the AI could seek to align itself with God’s purposes and become aware of what the divine agenda might be. Without these things, I do not think an AI would be capable of prayer in the fuller way we hope for ourselves.
We need also to consider that an AI may not be bodily like us -unless they really were like the replicants in Bladerunner. Without a human-ish body, an AI would sense and live in the world differently and have different priorities. Would it, then, have the capacity to empathise with us to motivate intercession? Would it assess opportunities and threats to God’s reign differently or similarly to us? Would it ‘feel’ that we humans are a major problem and seek to pray and work for our reform or conversion? And what would that look like? Would we catch a glimpse of how an intelligent other might see us?
Some further reading on AIs praying
Clarke, Arthur C. The Nine Billion Names of God. https://urbigenous.net/library/nine_billion_names_of_god.html accessed 7 July 2019
Another possibility is that AI will teach us new things about spirituality that we never considered
Istvan, Zoltan. When Superintelligent AI Arrives, Will Religions Try to Convert It? https://gizmodo.com/when-superintelligent-ai-arrives-will-religions-try-t-1682837922 accessed 7 June 2019
If Christians accept that all creation is intended to glorify God, how would AI do such a thing? Would AI attend church, sing hymns, care for the poor? Would it pray?
Jonathan Merritt. Is AI a Threat to Christianity? https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/artificial-intelligence-christianity/515463/ accessed 7 July 2019
Siri basically responded, “I’m not programmed to do that.” But if a more advanced version Siri were programmed to pray, would such an action be valuable? Does God receive prayers from any intelligent being—or just human intelligence?
Jonathan Merritt, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/artificial-intelligence-christianity/515463/ accessed 7 July 2019 -this in commenting on a classroom thought-experiment by Alistair McGrath.
“they will have such a different Umwelt that we will be completely unable to relate to it from our own subjective, embodied perspective. ”
Penha, Rui and Carvalhais, Miguel, If Machines Want to Make Art, Will Humans Understand it? https://aeon.co/ideas/if-machines-want-to-make-art-will-humans-understand-it?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss-feed accessed 1 July 2019
Further resources
As Artificial Intelligence Advances, What Are its Religious Implications? | Religion & Politics: Religious communities and thinkers are debating AI's moral and ethical issues.
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