1. Kessie says:

    I’ve seen numerous books tackle this question. It’s always a very interesting ride.

    • Paul says:

      Hi Kessie,
      Thanks for commenting. Sorry for the late response. I’ve been preparing my next book for the editor….
      AI is always intersting. What I tried to do with Alpha was to explore the idea what an AI would do if it learned about God and, one step further, actually believed in Him. It’s a stretch of the imagination, but that’s what spec-fic is all about.
      Paul

  2. Galadriel says:

    I think it’s a similar issue to that of alien lifeforms coming to believe in Christ, expect even more complicated. Because if we can “make life,” what does that make us compared to God?

    • Paul says:

      Hi Galadriel,
       
      Thanks for commenting.
      I see AI as being in the same broad arena as cloning in this respect. Cloning is not so much the creation of life as its duplication, but the question still applies.  One day it may just happen that someone somewhere clones a human being. What then? Does that person have a soul? And what if that person believes in God? These are big questions that need exploring.
      Paul

  3. T'mas says:

    The question of artificial intelligence has continued to be a thought-provoking idea. However, I personally do not believe that we will ever achieve it. Creating a complex machine capable of many humanoid functions is one thing; allowing it to have self-awareness is another. Here is the major difference between we humans as creators and God as Creator. We are finite; He is infinite. An Infinite mind is capable of creating finite intelligence (or infinite if He so chooses). But a finite mind is not capable of creating itself. As to the other issue of whether an AI could acknowledge God’s existence and come to believe in him, it is not a possibility. Just because something is self-aware does not automatically allow it to believe in God. Suppose we were to neurologically augment an animal (like in Planet of the Apes) to the point of self-awareness. Would that self-aware animal automatically now be able to believe and accept Jesus Christ? Absolutely not! The one key ingredient still missing is an eternal soul. Humans possess souls; we do not understand their origin, but they are quintessential to our nature and existence. A self-aware animal (or AI) does not automatically spawn a soul as soon as it reaches self-awareness. These are my thoughts on the subject. As far as speculative fiction goes, it’s a great idea; if applied to real life, however, you run into a whole lot of problems.

  4. Paul says:

    Hi T’mas,
     
    Thanks for the comment.
     
     
    Personally, I see the whole thing as a bit of a can of worms, but an interesting one for the purposes of writing spec-fic. Scientists storm ahead and do things just to see if they can, but without asking if they should, or really considering the consequences.
     
    I have to disagree with you on the idea of a created being not being able to believe in God. To me, it’s just a question of faith and we use faith all the time. Everything we do requires at least some faith in something. We believe in gravity,for example. Without that belief, we could not function normally. We have faith that our senses are reliable, and that something that happened yesterday really did happen, or last year, or at the point of Creation.  I think that an intelligent being, on studying the available facts, can choose to believe how the universe began. I don’t see a difference between believing it just happened, or it was created. If they choose to believe the universe was created then that, by definition, requires a belief in a Creator. 
     
     
    Paul

What do you think?