The Big Questions About God Sýnishorn

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace God?

My son is studying to be a software engineer, and he has an interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Recently we discussed whether artificial intelligence (AI) would ever replace the need for God.

Since then, Anthony Levandowski in Silicon Valley founded an AI church a little while back. It was called Way of the Future. The church's core teaching was that human minds would soon be uploaded to a computer, which would be the path to humanity's immortality. This computer would include the most "super-intelligent" AI software ever developed, with machine learning that would allow it to learn faster than any human brain.

There's nothing much that's new in this for Christians. We already know super-intelligence exists. That's God. We already know the way to immortality. It's by accepting God's gift of eternal life through what His Son did on the cross.

Science doesn't take God out of the equation. One of the most powerful evidences for the existence of God, who created the universe, is based on mathematics. It can be understood through scientific inquiry.

Just because a person believes artificial intelligence exists doesn't rule out God exists either. As Professor John Lennox says, it would be like saying you don't believe automobiles are real if you don't believe Henry Ford was real.

You see, to worship artificial intelligence is a rather odd thing. It's worshipping your own creation. Humanity's ability to develop artificial intelligence and understand science is powerful evidence of God's existence because it tells us there is conscious intelligence in the universe.

This brings me to another big topic: consciousness. To a certain extent, self-awareness is part of it; so is free will, but science can't define what consciousness is, let alone create a conscious entity. No matter how many algorithms a computer can run in one second or how much it can learn, it still isn't conscious. It follows the rules, no matter how complex they might be, written by the programmers.

I do not doubt that computers will become more innovative and artificial intelligence will become more intelligent. Still, there is a clue in the very name "artificial intelligence": it's artificial, which means someone made it.

The question is, "Can anything made ever ultimately be better than its maker?" I don't think so. It's quite illogical to me.

Artificial intelligence may simulate some human capabilities, and probably impressively so, but could that extend to replacing God, the one who made the maker of the artificial intelligence? I think not.

– Eliezer Gonzalez