\u201cIt is frustratingly clear to those who seek to eliminate mystery from life that the spirit and soul bring us right up to the edge of some of the most profound mysteries of our existence.\u201d(1)
\nWhew! This discussion about souls is a heavy one. I confess that I have a healthy fear of AI. I have an even healthier suspicion of any discussion of robot and souls. The root of my fear to embrace AI is that it will replace me, replace us with some robotic version of ourselves. Instinctively, the title, Robot Souls, caused me to think about what actually a soul is. I found a definition that really describes the soul in a comprehensive way, a way that I could connect with.
\n\u201cSoul helps us contain our basic passions in such a way that we can use their energy productively. More generally, we could say that the soul helps us hold our experience. Our joys, our disappointments, our hopes, our fears, our excitement, our confusion, our suffering, and much more all need to be held in awareness.\u201d (2)
\nI will share with you that I have had the privilege of being present when both of my parents took their final breath. They both labored in their final days. Someone described that period as their soul closing all the doors of their life\u2019s journey. It was a painful privilege to be present during this preparation of transitioning from this life to the next. I understood how sacred it was to be with them in their final moments as they were in my first moments. I can share that I absolutely knew the moment the soul left their body. The soul cannot be replicated, I believe that it is impossible to do and foolish to try. I am having difficulty understanding why we (Humans) are so drawn to the idea of replicating life. \u201cBoth Spirit and Soul call us to a journey\u201d(3) So how can a robot, an AI machine understand or possibly replicate this journey? I don\u2019t believe that they can, and I absolutely do not believe that they should. Poole states, \u201cWe must also be alive to the dangers of trying to \u2018switch on\u2019 emotions in entities that have not hitherto been designed for outcomes like happiness.\u201d (4) Attempts to continue to make machines smarter, more alive, and create the ability to replicate human emotions really baffles me. I have difficulty understanding what the end goal is. I also believe that just because you can do something does not mean that you should.
\nMy feelings are just that, my feelings. The progress with AI will continue to evolve regardless of my feelings. In Robot Souls, Eve Poole addresses this progress and the tension between religion and science as it relates to Artificial Intelligence. As Poole shares, \u201cThis certainly supports the argument of the Emergentists that on this logic AI will naturally evolve consciousness at the appropriate time, when the tasks it is given and the complexity of its wiring makes that an inevitability, in order for it to fulfill its function.\u201d(5) AI can adjust and improve as task are given, which replicates conscious thinking. It can mirror the way that humans learn. Poole shares, \u201cHod Lipson\u2019s robots learn to walk in the same way that toddlers do, through learning their bodies by trial and error.”(6) But can AI experience the lessons in the same way that humans do? \u201cIn the field of philosophy of mind, \u2018qualia\u2019 are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience, like experiencing the colour red.\u201d(7) This is where things get weird for me. Can a robot experience things? Can it see a whale tale emerge from the Ocean and experience excitement? Can it have those soul changing experiences and be changed by them? Poole offers, \u201cAI would ultimately be able to experience qualia as data, and appreciate the colour red, because programmed into its logic would be the information it required to set this in context.\u201d(8) I sure hope not.
\nJohn Searle\u2019s Thought experiment, The Chinese Room, \u201csuggests that no matter how intelligently a computer behaves, there is a difference between achieving these results mindfully and achieving them mechanically.\u201d(9) I sure hope that he is right. I hope that the things that make us uniquely human can never be recreated in a lab. Perhaps that I am an idealist, I\u2019m not sure how you would categorize it. But I believe that God created something that can never be replicated and never should. It is an even scarier thought that AI could be considered a person with legal protection under the law. Poole poses this question and possible answer, she states, \u201cDoes this however transform the computer in the Chinese Room into a person? Legally, perhaps: under Bostrom\u2019s rules, as soon as AI is both Sentient and Sapient it merits full moral personality and, in our current culture, full protection in law\u201d(10) This makes me want to go home and destroy Alexa and at least delay the takeover in my own home.<\/p>\n
1. David G. Benner, Soulful Spirituality Becoming Fully Alive and Deeply Human (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2013), 41.
\n2. Ibid.,44.
\n3. Ibid.,42.
\n4. Eve Poole, Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity (Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2024), 117.
\n5. Ibid.,69.
\n6. Ibid.,69.
\n7. Ibid., 44.
\n8. Ibid., 69.
\n9. Ibid., 44.
\n10.Ibid., 69-70.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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