AI will make religion obsolete soon?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 9, 2015

Artificial Intelligence, News}

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Within our lifetimes, according to Daily Dot’s Dylan Love:

Neal VanDeRee, officiator at the Church of Perpetual Life: I believe that it is inevitable that the arrival of a superintelligence is bound to happen, and when looking at the current course of AI, this should be within our lifetime. I would imagine that it could very nearly replicate life as we know it now, but without pain, suffering, and death.

Naturally, time will tell.

Lincoln Cannon: For practical and moral reasons, I trust in our opportunity and capacity as a human civilization, to evolve intentionally into compassionate superintelligence. I don’t think it’s inevitable, and I do think there are serious risks. But I do trust it’s possible, particularly if we put aside passive, escapist, and nihilistic attitudes about our future and work to mitigate the risks while pursuing the opportunities.

What about sin?

John Messerly: Thinkers disagree about this. [Founder of the Transhumanist political party] Zoltan Istvan thinks that we will inevitably try to control SIs and teach them our ways, which may include teaching them about our gods. Christopher J. Benek, co-founder and chair of the Christian Transhumanist Association, thinks that AI, by possibly eradicating poverty, war, and disease, might lead humans to becoming more holy. But other Christian thinkers believe AIs are machines without souls and cannot be saved.

Of course, like most philosophers, I don’t believe in souls, and the only way for there to be a good future is if we save ourselves. No gods will save us because there are no gods—unless we become gods. More.

Become gods? Been tried. See also: sin 😉

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Comments

EvilSnack @10, Of course, AI is possible. We already have many intelligent machines all around us, even if they are only intelligent in narrow domains. Even the lowly thermostat has a modicum of intelligence. And yes, I agree that humans are very sophisticated machines, the result of advanced design. It's just that they have something else that machines will not have, a soul.Mapou_{August 9, 2015
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AI is itself impossible. We can understand machines, but it's been proven (via the Halting Problem) that machines cannot understand machines. You cannot get around this by claiming that humans are merely very sophisticated machines; that is an unproven assertion.EvilSnack_{August 9, 2015
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He also created Adam and Eve.
He only created their bodies, not their spirits. Bodies (matter) cannot sin because morality is a spiritual concept, not physical. Your spirit is your own. Spirits can neither be created nor destroyed. They just are.Mapou_{August 9, 2015
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A perfect God...
This, too, is a lie, the work of the devil. It’s not even wrong.Mapou_{August 9, 2015
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God is omniscient by definition.
This is a lie, the work of the devil, IMO. Worse, it's not even wrong.Mapou_{August 9, 2015
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or perhaps this one:
Turing Test - cartoon http://static.existentialcomics.com/comics/turingTest.jpg
As to this claim from the article in the OP:
"The simple fact is that the authors of ancient scriptures in all religious traditions obviously knew nothing of modern science. Thus they couldn't predict anything like a technological singularity."
Actually, besides the fact that modern science was born out of the proper epistemological basis that was provided by Christianity, (i.e. rational creatures made in the image of God who could therefore apprehend the rational basis in which God had created the universe), the fact of the matter is that the Bible predicted, i.e. prophesied, 'knowledge shall be increased' long ago:
Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Of related interest to the prophesied 'knowledge shall be increased' is this amazing prophesy that was recently fulfilled by Israel last century:
Daniel 12:4 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Restoration Of Israel and Jerusalem In Prophecy - Chuck Missler (Doing The Math) – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8598581/
Entire Chuck Missler video may be viewed here:
Chuck Missler - Prophecy 101 - 2 of 4 - Prophecy Past - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZnO6RVmEI
Although Missler said that he 'cheated' and ‘backed into the calculation’, none-the-less, the preceding start date, used in his prophecy calculation, is confirmed by the archaeological record:
Bible Prophecy Fulfilled - Israel 1948 - article Excerpt: Although July 15, 537 B.C. can not be verified by outside sources as the exact day of Cyrus's proclamation, we do know that 537 B.C. was the year in which he made it. As such, we can know for certain that the Bible, in one of the most remarkable prophecies in history, accurately foresaw the year of Israel's restoration as an independent nation some two thousand five hundred years before the event occurred. http://brittgillette.com/WordPress/?p=16 SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT Excerpt "In late years several cuneiform tablets have been discovered pertaining to the fall of Babylon which peg both Biblical and secular historic dates. The one tablet known as the "Nabunaid Chronicle" gives the date for the fall of Babylon which specialists have ascertained as being October 12-13, 539 B.C., Julian Calendar, or October 6-7, 539 B.C., according to our present Gregorian Calendar. This tablet also says that Cyrus made his triumphant entry into Babylon 16 days after its fall to his army. Thus his accession year commenced in October, 539 B.C. However, in another cuneiform tablet called "Strassmaier, Cyrus No. 11" Cyrus’ first regnal year is mentioned and was determined to have begun March 17-18, 538 B.C., and to have concluded March 4-5, 537 B.C. It was in this first regnal year of Cyrus that he issued his decree to permit the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. (Ezra 1:1) The decree may have been made in late 538 B.C. or before March 4-5, 537 B.C. In either case this would have given sufficient time for the large party of 49,897 Jews to organize their expedition and to make their long four-month journey from Babylon to Jerusalem to get there by September 29-30, 537 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month, to build their altar to Jehovah as recorded at Ezra 3:1-3. Inasmuch as September 29-30, 537 B.C., officially ends the seventy years of desolation as recorded at 2 Chronicles 36:20, 21, so the beginning of the desolation of the land must have officially begun to be counted after September 21-22, 607 B.C., the first of the seventh Jewish month in 607 B.C., which is the beginning point for the counting of the 2,520 years." http://onlytruegod.org/jwstrs/537vs539.htm
Related video:
The Miracle of the Restoration of the Nation of Israel - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydwxy9yqhzM
Verse and Music:
2 Peter 1:19 So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. Mandisa - Waiting for Tomorrow - (lyrics) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ezrFxWjyZQ
bornagain77_{August 9, 2015
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Of related interest: Computers will never be able to 'compute consciousness':
Consciousness Does Not Compute (and Never Will), Says Korean Scientist - May 05, 2015 (based on his 2007 paper) Excerpt: "Non-computability of Consciousness" documents Song's quantum computer research into TS (technological singularity (TS) or strong artificial intelligence). Song was able to show that in certain situations, a conscious state can be precisely and fully represented in mathematical terms, in much the same manner as an atom or electron can be fully described mathematically. That's important, because the neurobiological and computational approaches to brain research have only ever been able to provide approximations at best. In representing consciousness mathematically, Song shows that consciousness is not compatible with a machine. Song's work also shows consciousness is not like other physical systems like neurons, atoms or galaxies. "If consciousness cannot be represented in the same way all other physical systems are represented, it may not be something that arises out of a physical system like the brain," said Song. "The brain and consciousness are linked together, but the brain does not produce consciousness. Consciousness is something altogether different and separate. The math doesn't lie." Of note: Daegene Song obtained his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Oxford http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consciousness-does-not-compute-and-never-will-says-korean-scientist-300077306.html
Song defends his work here:
Reply to Mathematical Error in "Incompatibility Between Quantum Theory and Consciousness" - Daegene Song - 2008 http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/download/176/176
Here is another angle in which computers were, again, shown to be mathematically incompatible with consciousness:
Sentient robots? Not possible if you do the maths - 13 May 2014 Over the past decade, Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues have developed a mathematical framework for consciousness that has become one of the most influential theories in the field. According to their model, the ability to integrate information is a key property of consciousness. ,,, But there is a catch, argues Phil Maguire at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. He points to a computational device called the XOR logic gate, which involves two inputs, A and B. The output of the gate is "1" if A and B are the same and "0" if A and B are different. In this scenario, it is impossible to predict the output based on A or B alone – you need both. Crucially, this type of integration requires loss of information, says Maguire: "You have put in two bits, and you get one out. If the brain integrated information in this fashion, it would have to be continuously haemorrhaging information.",,, Based on this definition, Maguire and his team have shown mathematically that computers can't handle any process that integrates information completely. If you accept that consciousness is based on total integration, then computers can't be conscious. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25560-sentient-robots-not-possible-if-you-do-the-maths.html#.U3LD5ChuqCe
Of related note: Computers have no free will to create new algorithmic information, nor do they have conscious awareness so as to be able to take the overall context of a situation into consideration:
Algorithmic Information Theory, Free Will and the Turing Test - Douglas G. Robertson - 1999 Excerpt: Chaitin’s Algorithmic Information Theory shows that information is conserved under formal mathematical operations and, equivalently, under computer operations. This conservation law puts a new perspective on many familiar problems related to artificial intelligence. For example, the famous “Turing test” for artificial intelligence could be defeated by simply asking for a new axiom in mathematics. Human mathematicians are able to create axioms, but a computer program cannot do this without violating information conservation. Creating new axioms and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomenon: the creation of new information. “… no operation performed by a computer can create new information.” http://cires.colorado.edu/~doug/philosophy/info8.pdf The danger of artificial stupidity – Saturday, 28 February 2015 “Computers lack mathematical insight: in his book The Emperor’s New Mind, the Oxford mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose deployed Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem to argue that, in general, the way mathematicians provide their “unassailable demonstrations” of the truth of certain mathematical assertions is fundamentally non-algorithmic and non-computational” http://machineslikeus.com/news/danger-artificial-stupidity What Is a Mind? More Hype from Big Data - Erik J. Larson - May 6, 2014 Excerpt: In 1979, University of Pittsburgh philosopher John Haugeland wrote an interesting article in the Journal of Philosophy, "Understanding Natural Language," about Artificial Intelligence. At that time, philosophy and AI were still paired, if uncomfortably. Haugeland's article is one of my all time favorite expositions of the deep mystery of how we interpret language. He gave a number of examples of sentences and longer narratives that, because of ambiguities at the lexical (word) level, he said required "holistic interpretation." That is, the ambiguities weren't resolvable except by taking a broader context into account. The words by themselves weren't enough. Well, I took the old 1979 examples Haugeland claimed were difficult for MT, and submitted them to Google Translate, as an informal "test" to see if his claims were still valid today.,,, ,,,Translation must account for context, so the fact that Google Translate generates the same phrase in radically different contexts is simply Haugeland's point about machine translation made afresh, in 2014. Erik J. Larson - Founder and CEO of a software company in Austin, Texas http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/what_is_a_mind085251.html
And since computers have no free will to create new algorithmic information, nor conscious awareness so as to be able to take the overall context of a situation into consideration, then a fairly easy way to defeat the Turing test is to simply tell or invent a joke:
“(a computer) lacks the ability to distinguish between language and meta-language.,,, As known, jokes are difficult to understand and even more difficult to invent, given their subtle semantic traps and their complex linguistic squirms. The judge can reliably tell the human (from the computer)” Per niwrad https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/artificial-intelligence-or-intelligent-artifices/ For Artificial Intelligence, Humor Is a Bridge Too Far - November 13, 2014 Excerpt: The article reminded me of an exercise in one of my first programming books that made me aware of the limits of computers and AI. I've forgotten the author of the book, but the problem was something like the following: "Write a program that takes in a stream of characters that represent a joke, reads the input and decides whether it's funny or not." It's a perfect illustration of Erik's statement, "Interestingly, where brute computation and big data fail is in surprisingly routine situations that give humans no difficulty at all." Even when my grandchildren were very young I marveled at how they grasped the humor of a joke, even a subtle one. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/11/for_artificial_091211.html
Such as this joke:
Turing Test Extra Credit – Convince The Examiner That He’s The Computer – cartoon http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/turing_test.png
bornagain77_{August 9, 2015
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As to this claim from the article in the OP:
"The singularity is a hypothesized time in the future, approximately 2045, when the capabilities of non-living electronic machines will supersede human capabilities. Undismissable contemporary thinkers like Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Ray Kurzweil warn us that it will change everything."
As Twain would have said, the reports of the death of our God given human capabilities is greatly exaggerated. Godel proved as such with his incompleteness theorem. This following video is very interesting for revealing how Godel’s incompleteness theorem was brought about:
BBC-Dangerous Knowledge - Part 1 https://vimeo.com/30482156 Part 2 https://vimeo.com/30641992
Georg Cantor’s part in incompleteness is briefly discussed here in this excerpt from the preceding video
Georg Cantor - The Mathematics Of Infinity – video http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/66285/George_Cantor_The_Mathematics_of_Infinity/
Kurt Godel's part in bringing the incompleteness theorem to fruition can be picked up here in this excerpt:
Kurt Gödel - Incompleteness Theorem - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/8462821
A bit more solid connection between Cantor and Godel's work is illuminated here:
Naming and Diagonalization, from Cantor to Godel to Kleene - 2006 Excerpt: The first part of the paper is a historical reconstruction of the way Godel probably derived his proof from Cantor's diagonalization, through the semantic version of Richard. The incompleteness proof-including the fixed point construction-result from a natural line of thought, thereby dispelling the appearance of a "magic trick". The analysis goes on to show how Kleene's recursion theorem is obtained along the same lines. http://www.citeulike.org/group/3214/article/1001747
An overview of how Godel’s incompleteness applies to computers is briefly discussed in the following except of the video:
Alan Turing & Kurt Gödel - Incompleteness Theorem and Human Intuition - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/8516356/
As to the implications of his incompleteness theorem, Godel stated it bluntly as such:
"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine." Kurt Gödel - As quoted in Topoi : The Categorial Analysis of Logic (1979) by Robert Goldblatt, p. 13
Here are a few more notes in extension to Godel's incompleteness theorem:
The Limits Of Reason – Gregory Chaitin – 2006 Excerpt: Unlike Gödel’s approach, mine is based on measuring information and showing that some mathematical facts cannot be compressed into a theory because they are too complicated. This new approach suggests that what Gödel discovered was just the tip of the iceberg: an infinite number of true mathematical theorems exist that cannot be proved from any finite system of axioms. http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/sciamer3.pdf Conservation of information, evolution, etc - Sept. 30, 2014 Excerpt: Kurt Gödel’s logical objection to Darwinian evolution: "The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation]." As quoted in H. Wang. “On `computabilism’ and physicalism: Some Problems.” in Nature’s Imagination, J. Cornwall, Ed, pp.161-189, Oxford University Press (1995). Gödel’s argument is that if evolution is unfolding from an initial state by mathematical laws of physics, it cannot generate any information not inherent from the start – and in his view, neither the primaeval environment nor the laws are information-rich enough.,,, More recently this led him (Dembski) to postulate a Law of Conservation of Information, or actually to consolidate the idea, first put forward by Nobel-prizewinner Peter Medawar in the 1980s. Medawar had shown, as others before him, that in mathematical and computational operations, no new information can be created, but new findings are always implicit in the original starting points – laws and axioms. http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2014/09/30/conservation-of-information-evolution-etc/ Evolutionary Computing: The Invisible Hand of Intelligence - June 17, 2015 Excerpt: William Dembski and Robert Marks have shown that no evolutionary algorithm is superior to blind search -- unless information is added from an intelligent cause, which means it is not, in the Darwinian sense, an evolutionary algorithm after all. This mathematically proven law, based on the accepted No Free Lunch Theorems, seems to be lost on the champions of evolutionary computing. Researchers keep confusing an evolutionary algorithm (a form of artificial selection) with "natural evolution." ,,, Marks and Dembski account for the invisible hand required in evolutionary computing. The Lab's website states, "The principal theme of the lab's research is teasing apart the respective roles of internally generated and externally applied information in the performance of evolutionary systems." So yes, systems can evolve, but when they appear to solve a problem (such as generating complex specified information or reaching a sufficiently narrow predefined target), intelligence can be shown to be active. Any internally generated information is conserved or degraded by the law of Conservation of Information.,,, What Marks and Dembski prove is as scientifically valid and relevant as Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics. You can't prove a system of mathematics from within the system, and you can't derive an information-rich pattern from within the pattern.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/06/evolutionary_co_1096931.html
bornagain77_{August 9, 2015
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God is omniscient by definition.
1- Which means God knows ALL possible outcomes 2- God is not beholden to our definitions
A perfect God doesn’t make mistakes.
1- God is not beholden to our definitions 2- It doesn't follow that even if God is perfect that did not mean God had to make a perfect creation
And even if it was an offense against His law, while it might be just to punish the offenders, how is it just to punish their descendants?
By allowing them into Heaven if they led a proper life. IOW the reward justifies everything.Virgil Cain_{August 9, 2015
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I think we have a long way to go before that happens - if it ever does.
Definition of SIN 1 a : an offense against religious or moral law [...] 2 a : transgression of the law of God
No God, no God's law, no sin. That whole story of the Fall just makes no sense at all, in any case. If God didn't want Adam and Eve to have knowledge of good and evil, why put the tree there in the first place? As a test? That makes no sense either. You run a test because you don't know what the outcome might be. God is omniscient by definition. He would have know exactly what Adam and Eve would do. For certain. In advance. He had no need of a test. He also created Adam and Eve. A perfect God doesn't make mistakes. If they behaved in a certain way, that is how He designed them to behave, that is how He intended them to behave, that is how He knew they would behave? So how was it their fault if they did what He designed them to do? And even if it was an offense against His law, while it might be just to punish the offenders, how is it just to punish their descendants? In perpetuity?Seversky_{August 9, 2015
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If a computer is 10,000 times smarter than a human, then won't it already have deduced with certainty which, if any, religion is true?
Computers do not possess knowledge as such. Computers receive human inputs and perform calculations/comparisons more quickly and consistently than humans. But computers do not have a reason for their own existence. Therefore, they cannot recognize a simple distinction between what is good and what is bad, unless they're programmed with a human philosophy to distinguish that. Given most futurists are materialists, most computer intelligences are built on materialist understandings of good and evil (therefore incoherent understandings).
I would imagine that it could very nearly replicate life as we know it now, but without pain, suffering, and death.
This assumes that pain, suffering and death are things that should be eliminated. Computers cannot know that unless someone tells them. And without God, humans cannot know that either.Silver Asiatic_{August 9, 2015
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