God In the Machine What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God

by Foerst, Anne

• ISBN13: 9780525947660
• ISBN10: 0525947663
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-16
• Publisher: E P Dutton

Summary

A provocative look at the theological implications of artificial intelligence—and the controversial questions raised by robotics about our very definition of humanity—from the founder of MIT’s God and Computers Project Get ready to meet two remarkable characters, Cog and Kismet. They both enjoy working with others, they’re very attentive, have excellent learning skills, and, according to their colleagues, they’re very charming. And they’re both robots.From Hollywood to the halls of NASA, robots loom large in the popular imagination. But what feelings do these lifelike machines really provoke in us? In God in the Machine, Dr. Anne Foerst draws on her expertise as both a theologian and computer scientist to address the profound questions that robots such as Cog and Kismet raise for us all: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a soul? And what do robots teach us about our relationship with God?God in the Machinechallenges many popular assumptions—about the Bible, about the meaning of community, and especially about the fundamental distinctions between humanity and the artificial” beings we create. Dr. Foerst shares intriguing observations about the ways we define human” versus person” and asks what we must do in order for all humans to be treated as equal persons.Original, controversial, and deeply insightful, God in the Machineilluminates the exciting and little-understood new terrain that lies at the intersection of technology and religion, science and faith.

Author Biography

Dr. Anne Foerst is a former research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where she also founded and directed the God and Computers Project. The only robotics theologian in the country, her work has captured much media attention, including coverage in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Science. She is currently a visiting professor of theology and computer science at St. Bonaventure University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(10)
Chapter 1 Re-creating Ourselves	11	(31)
Chapter 2 Embodied Science	42	(35)
Chapter 3 Embodied Intelligence	77	(35)
Chapter 4 Embodied Community	112	(41)
Chapter 5 The Community of Human and Nonhuman Persons	153	(38)
Bibliography	191	(6)
Index	197

Excerpts

Introduction I have, alas! Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence too, And to my cost Theology, With ardent labor, studied through. And here I stand, with all my lore, Poor fool, no wiser than before. Magister, doctor styled, indeed, Already these 10 years I lead, Up, down, across, and to and fro, My pupils by the nose,—and learn, That we in truth can nothing know!” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I This is the story of a handshake.The handshake occurred in the fall of 1995 between Harvey Cox, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, and the humanoid robot Cog, developed at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Cog is a huge robot, approximately seven feet tall, and somewhat intimidating. It has a massive steel frame. Our culture is infused with science-fiction stories about robots that turn against humans and destroy them. We are also accustomed to factory robots that blindly do their assigned tasks and can accidentally smash a finger or a head. Therefore, Cog induces a mixture of fascination and fear in many people who see it for the first time. But Harvey Cox took the first step. He had devoted his entire life to bringing Christian theology into a dialogue among people with different worldviews, and he didn’t want to stop at a robot. So, when he first realized that Cog’s eyes were following him around the room, he made eye contact. Then Professor Cox tentatively extended his hand, and Cog, after some trial and error, grasped it. There was a collective gasp from the Harvard theologians and MIT scientists present.Cog is the result of one of the first attempts to build a humanoid robot, and in 1996 it had just become very famous. As soon as the media discovered the project, Cog was constantly surrounded by cameras and covered by all the major television networks and newspapers. Building a humanoid robot is a fascinating endeavor, but before the development of Cog, such a project had belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction. At MIT, Rodney Brooks, then associate director of MIT’s famous Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT AI Lab), had the vision of building humanoids. For quite some time, Rod was the enfant terrible in the robotics community; he had played around with techniques and strategies that were completely new to the field, and he was the first to build successful autonomous robots that could navigate real-world environments. This might sound like a very simple task, but before the mid-1980s, nothing like it had ever been accomplished.The traditional metaphor in AI had been that intelligence is a program that is implemented in the wetware of the brain but might just as well be implemented in the hardware of the computer. Traditional AI programs have internal world models that process data in order to plan intelligent” reactions to given stimuli. While these traditional machines are great at playing chess and proving mathematical theorems, they fail as soon as they have to navigate constantly changing environments. They are incapable of reacting effectively to the real world. The assumption in the traditional system is that intelligence is the capability for abstract thought. Humans are so good at it that they can live in the real world. If AI systems become increasingly smart, they might eventually be able to perform as well as we do.Rod broke with this assumption and declared our facility for abstract thinking a mere by- product of our ingenious capability to intentionally shape our respective environments in order to survive. Rod believed that if AI researchers attempt to build intelligent machines, they ought to build embodied entities that interact with the real world. One might not need abstract thought in the beginning—after all, most animals survive pretty well without it, and human newborns don’t have this