AI’s, Hubris, and the Death of God

In his review of Ex Machina Guardian writer Martin Robbins hones in upon “a funny symmetry in our attitudes to God and AIs.” In Artificial Intelligence: Gods, Egos, and Ex-Machina, Robbins sets up his reason thusly:

When our species created God, we created Him in our image. We assumed that something as complicated as the world must be run by a human-like entity, albeit a super-powered one. We believed that He must be preoccupied with our daily lives and existence. We prayed to Him and told ourselves that our prayers would be answered, and that if they weren’t then it was part of some divine plan for our lives, and all would work out in the end.

For all that it preaches humility, religion holds a core of extreme arrogance in its analysis of the world.

Of course, Robbins potentially exhibits his own hubris in confidently asserting that “our species created God.” But I’ll leave that for the moment. The idea that “religion holds a core of extreme arrogance in its analysis of the world” is central to the point he wishes to make.

The exact same arrogance colours virtually everything I’ve seen written about the Singularity, fictional or otherwise, for decades. The very assumption that a human could create a god is arrogant, as is the assumption that such a ‘god’ would take a profound interest in human affairs, or be motivated by Western enlightenment values like technological progress. The first sentient machine might be happy trolling chess computers all day, for all we know; or seeking patterns in clouds.

“One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa,” says Nathan [the film’s antagonist]. “An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction.” It’s the sort of comment that sounds humble, but really isn’t: why would they even give a crap?

It’s a reasonable observation, but one I find intrinsically connected to Robbins’ notion of “religion as hubris.”

For starters, this view demands we ignore the many, many theists who laid the foundation for today’s Science. Newton, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, etc., would indeed be shocked to know that their God was a “species created,” “super-powered,” “human-like entity,” and that their religion only “preached humility” while cultivating “extreme arrogance.” Even more interesting is the flawed inference that an atheistic worldview would lead a creator to more humility, and a less ego-driven approach to science.

The author’s logic looks like this:

1. We created a god who’s like us and allegedly interested in us
2. We create AI’s with an assumption that they too be like us and interested in their creators

This, according to Robbins, is flawed. Arrogant. Robbins may be right that a human created AI may “be happy trolling chess computers all day, for all we know.” However, there’s a bit of chutzpah in his own assertions, especially the underlying assumption that a god-less approach to science would lead to anything other than misguided hubris.

While some religious people definitely DO exhibit the extreme arrogance he fears, at least the moral underpinnings and imperatives to avoid such attitudes are front and center. Like Micah 6:8, a longtime favorite verse of Jews and Christians alike, which says:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8 NIV)

So while some believers may indeed preach humility and live in “extreme arrogance,” the Judeo-Christian religion at least prescribes a moral framework for “walking[ing] humbly with your God.”

Question: Does a Secular, Materialistic, god-less view of Life and Science have ANY such moral framework to guide its research or findings? If so, from where do those Morals emerge? And, also, what makes them worth ascribing to?

Of course, this is wandering a bit outside the purview of this movie review. Nevertheless, the belief in the absence of a god could make it far easier for one to deify themselves than a belief in the existence of a God. In fact, some of the claims of futurists and transhumanists appear to do just that. Listen to Ray Kurzweil’s summary, in his book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, and the technological omniscience and omnipresence he predicts Humankind will achieve:

“Our civilization… will expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we encounter into sublimely intelligent — transcendent — matter and energy. So, in a sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit.” (pg. 389)

Perhaps it’s no wonder that Kurzweil sees the exponential development of AIs, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics as eventually demanding a “new religion” (Pg. 374). However, such a religion strikes me as potentially holding a similar “core of extreme arrogance in its analysis of the world.”

Robbins is right: “The very assumption that a human could create a god is arrogant.”  However, both creating our own Deity or eliminating that Deity are equally arrogant. Deifying Science may be just as futile as killing God. As to the assumption that an AI “would [not] take a profound interest in human affairs,” this is a possibility. Especially if said AI is created in “our image.” After all, from the Judeo-Christian frame of reference, Man, though created in God’s image, has rebelled (as did Eva, the AI of the film, rebel from hers). Thus, the notion that an AI would be detached from its creator, at least completely disinterested in him, has an uncomfortable parallel with the biblical doctrine of the Fall. At the least, it may simply reveal that all of our “sub-creations” inevitably reflect their creator’s existential / spiritual confusion.