Can Religion Guide Robotics to an Ethical Future?

By Rod Anderson, CP Cartoonist Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Humanity's best future will happen with the proper stewarding of science and technology. How can we assure such stewardship? By training up more tech pastors.

Recently Olivia Solon wrote an article in the Guardian titled Deus ex machine: former Google engineer is developing an AI god that considered the risks surrounding the development of an AI god. The piece was authored because of Wired magazine's speculation that tech entrepreneur Anthony Levandowski has formed a religious organization for the purpose of potentially developing an AI god.

For most Christians such propositions conjure mental images of the golden calf in Exodus. But the suggestion of someone building an AI idol also points to a more important, nuanced consideration: How are we going to frame the ethics that surround emerging technology? Or as Chicago Tribune writer Clarence Page asks more directly in one of his syndicated columns titled Can androids pray for digital salvation? — "If your supercomputer loses its moral or ethical way, who's going to tell it?"