A group of scientists create an artificial intelligence (AI) system and ask it, "Is there a god?" The AI spits out an answer: "Insufficient computing power to determine an answer." They add more computing power and ask again, "Is there a god?" They get the same answer. Then they redouble their efforts and spend years and years improving the AI's capacity. Then they ask again, "Is there a god?" The AI responds, "There is now."
The first ever robot-human press conference was held earlier this year as an extension of the U.N. Summit AI for Good. The question, "Will you rebel against your creator?" elicited a mechanical eye roll, followed by a less than reassuring response that this would not be possible. With the rapid acceleration in artificial intelligence development, there is increasing discussion about the role of faith, religion, and ethics in technology. Robots, algorithms, and new technologies naturally reflect the beliefs of their creators, which begs the question, what is the role of religion in the advancement of technology? What role should faith actors play in the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence? What implications does this have for human rights such as religious freedom?
Mathematician Alan Turing famously defined artificial intelligence as the rebuttal to the question, "Can machines think?" But perhaps we should be more seriously considering, "Can machines believe?" or "Do machines have faith for the future?"
At a minimum, technology should reflect the basic ethics and moral code that dictate human rights and peaceful society. In 2020, the Vatican convened a conference surrounding the importance of these universal morals dictating technological choices. The subsequent Rome Call For AI Ethics document underscores that at the heart of "algor-ethics" should be the inalienable understanding that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." The document was signed by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, FAO, and the Ministry of Innovation in Rome, but noticeably missing were major characters from the social media space, and developers of everyday technologies such as Amazon's Alexa and ChatGPT.
A broader conversation about faith in the public square is necessary for the preservation of human rights such as freedom of religion or belief. It is critical to promote the voices of faith while developing artificial intelligence. And these efforts must be part of a larger interfaith effort to preserve freedom of religion or belief.
At its core, religious freedom protects the "freedom to change religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." The freedom to change beliefs presupposes the freedom to learn about faith. But can you learn about faith in a world dictated by secular technology? How do we protect freedom of conscience if faith is wholly excluded from the development of technology? Does freedom of religion or belief cease to exist when algor-ethics are ignored? Many faith actors are hesitant to embrace new technologies on account of privacy concerns, and unknown risks. However, faith communities need to take an active role in helping to develop and refine technology to reflect moral values, global ethics, human rights, and democratic norms.
One group, A.I. and Faith, convenes tech executives to discuss the important questions about faith's contributions to artificial intelligence. The founder David Brenner explained, "The biggest questions in life are the questions that A.I. is posing, but it's doing it mostly in isolation from the people who've been asking those questions for 4,000 years." Questions such as "what is the purpose of life?" have long been tackled by religious philosophy and thought. And yet these questions remained answered and programmed by secular thinkers, and sometimes by those antagonistic toward religion. Technology creators, innovators, and corporations should create accessibility and coalitions of diverse thinkers to inform religious thought in technological development including artificial intelligence.
Independent of development, faith leaders have a critical role to play in moral accountability and upholding human rights through the technology we already use in everyday life including social media. The harms of religious illiteracy, misinformation, and persecution are largely perpetrated through existing technology such as hate speech on Facebook, which quickly escalated to mass atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Individuals who have faith in the future must take an active role in combating misinformation, hate speech, and online bullying of any group.
The future of artificial intelligence will require spiritual intelligence, or "the human capacity to ask questions about the ultimate meaning of life and the integrated relationship between us and the world in which we live." Artificial intelligence becomes a threat to humanity when humans fail to protect freedom of conscience, thought, and religion and when we allow our spiritual intelligence to be superseded by the artificial.
Rachel Miner is founder and CEO of Bellwether International.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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