Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:04:41.883Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - The Eschatological Future of Artificial Intelligence

Saviour or Apocalypse?

from Part II - Social and Moral Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2024

By
Noreen Herzfeld
Edited by
Beth Singler  and
Fraser Watts
Beth Singler
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Fraser Watts
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

While we call programs that are new and exciting ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI), the ultimate goal – to produce an artificial general intelligence that can equal to human intelligence – always seems to be in the future. AI can, thus, be viewed as a millenarian project. Groups predicting the second coming of Christ or some other form of salvation have flourished in times of societal stress, as they promise a solution to current problems that is delivered from outside. Today, we project both our hopes and our fears onto AI. Utopian visions range from the personally soteriological prospect of uploading our brains to a vision of a world in which AI has found solutions to our problems. Dystopian scenarios involve the creation of a superintelligent AI that slips from our control or is used as a weapon by malicious actors. Will AI save us or destroy us? Probably neither, but as we shape the trajectory of its future, we also shape our own.

Keywords

millenarian AIsalvationsuperintelligenceSingularityFermi’s paradox
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence , pp. 148 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography

BBC. 2014. “Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind.” www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30290540.Google Scholar
Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, Rodney. 2018. “My Dated Predictions.” https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/.Google Scholar
Devlin, Hannah. 2018. “Killer Robots Will Only Exist if We Are Stupid Enough to Let Them.” The Guardian, 11 June. www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/11/killer-robots-will-only-exist-if-we-are-stupid-enough-to-let-them.Google Scholar
Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Viking.Google Scholar
Dubash, Manek. 2010. “Moore’s Law Is Dead, Says Gordon Moore.” Techworld. 13 April. https://hothardware.com/news/moores-law-is-dead-says-gordon-moore.Google Scholar
Gates, Bill. 2008. “A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century.” Speech at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 24 January. www.networkworld.com/article/2282669/microsoft-s-bill-gates---a-new-approach-to-capitalism-in-the-21st-century-.html.Google Scholar
Goertzel, Ben. 2013. “Artificial General Intelligence and the Future of Humanity,” in The Transhumanist Reader, ed. More, Max and Vita-More, Natasha. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kissinger, Henry. 2018. “How the Enlightenment Ends.” The Atlantic, June. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/.Google Scholar
Lanier, Jaron. 2010. “The First Church of Robotics.” New York Times, 9 August. www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09lanier.html.Google Scholar
Loizos, Connie. 2017. “This Famous Roboticist Doesn’t Think Elon Musk Understands AI.” TechCrunch, 19 July. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/19/this-famous-roboticist-doesnt-think-elon-musk-understands-ai/.Google Scholar
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1941. The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, Vol. 1, Human Nature. Scribner’s.Google Scholar
Peters, Ted. 2016. “H-: Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future: Will Technological Progress Get Us There?.” Metanexus. www.metanexus.net/essay/h-transhumanism-and-posthuman-future-will-technological-progress-get-us-there.Google Scholar
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. 1959. The Phenomenon of Man, trans. Bernard Wall. Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Yapching, Mark. 2015. “Fear of Death is the Reason behind Religious Fait: Larry King.” Christian Today, 28 February. www.christiantoday.com/article/fear.of.death.is.the.reason.behind.religious.faith.larry.king/48939.htm.Google Scholar

Further Reading

Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brockman, John, ed. 2019. Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. Penguin.Google Scholar
Delio, Ilia. 2020. Re-enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion. Orbis.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Noreen. 2002. In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit. Fortress.Google Scholar
Kaku, Michio. 2014. The Future of the Mind. Doubleday.Google Scholar
Kurzweil, Ray. 2006. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Viking.Google Scholar
Moravec, Hans. 1988. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, Stuart. 2019. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking.Google Scholar
Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Knopf.Google Scholar
Tippler, Frank. 1994. The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. Doubleday.Google Scholar
Trothen, Tracy, and Mercer, Calvin, eds. 2017. Religion and Human Enhancement: Death, Values, and Morality. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and Its Successors. Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×