Lately there have been those who have written with questions like this:

(1) What is our responsibility to Humanity regarding artificial intelligence?

(2) Is it appropriate for us to manufacture our own offspring and populate the world with a robotic species?

The popularity of the films Matrix and AI have added emphasis to these questions. In one film, we made machines so smart they enslaved us and gave us a false reality. In the other, the question was asked, “can a machine experience love”? Is this science fiction, or should we be looking at it as reality? The answer is that science is indeed on the edge of creating true artificial intelligence… machines that learn, think, and even design themselves and their evolution without other Human interference. So yes, we should be looking at it.

There are two elements here, however, that we must differentiate. The first is a spiritual question, and the second is practical. Both are ethical. First of all, there is no way we will give a machine a spiritual soul. No matter how smart they are, no matter what they look like or act like, they are not the “pieces of God” that we are, and never will be. Therefore we can never actually create our own “offspring” using machines. Even if humanity clones a Human Being (not a machine), we are not cloning a soul. Nature clones over 3,000 times a day. It’s called identical twins, and have separate souls (of course). We must remember that God is not in a vacuum regarding these things. Sometimes I am amused by some of the questions I receive regarding our new science, as though God, creator of the universe, was somehow sitting in heaven, doing “heaven business.” Suddenly He looks down on earth and remarks, “Egad! They’re cloning!!”

What we do here with science must be tempered with spiritual intuition and appropriateness. Cloning technology as well as stem-cell work can be carefully used for the good of Humanity. In the case of cloning and stem-cell work, we have tremendous potential for organ replacement and the cures of many diseases. Therefore a balance is required. I don’t believe we should throw away these scientific breakthroughs for religious reasons, either. I would like to remind many, that heart transplants today faced the same fervor of religious controversy that stem-cell work is now seeing. If some religious leaders had prevailed back then, today we wouldn’t be doing heart transplants! It would have been “against God’s law.” I don’t know how many people remember this controversy. My, how things change with time!

We should look at the issue of machines in the same way. Although we can’t create our own kind, we can eventually come fairly close to making a machine seem like a real personality with artificial intelligence. There is nothing wrong with that, but here is a practical warning…one that is present in many, many science fiction stories that have been written throughout history: What engrams should be programmed into the intelligence? In other words, can we give machines integrity, honesty, or morality. The answer right this minute is “we don’t know.” Because of that, most artificial intelligence will move forward totally within the structure of pure logic—mathematical learning paths that are built for the most efficient solutions using only logic.

The danger here is that at some point we will have automatically connected these artificial intelligent devices all together! We may do it slowly, without thinking. Each home might eventually have a small computer “brain” that helps to run it…manufactured in all appropriateness to think, and act as Human as possible. It would keep track of our heat and lights, warn us of fire, start our coffee in the morning, even monitor the house for problems when we are gone. When we install it, it will be connected to the Internet, (of course) or whatever that might be called in 30 to 40 years. This is so we can get to it on-line wherever we are. Can you see the scenario? You are away from home. “Oops!” You might say. “I can’t remember if I turned off the stove!” You ask you watch (which is your internet port), to go to your “House website,” and log in. Sure enough, your “house brain” tells you the stove is on! You speak into your watch carefully: “Hal (a good name, huh?), turn off the stove!” A few minutes later, your monitor icons tell you the stove is now off. You smile and go about your business.

When everything is connected to everything (as it will be, and almost is now), new issues are created. Even now, with a fairly new and coarse Internet, our global network has been vulnerable to privacy issues as well as hackers that are out to do physical damage to your data. The last few years have brought about a protection industry for this challenge, and the effort continues to this day. In other words, we created a paradigm of communication for ourselves where small bits of computer code we didn’t create could change millions of lives, including ours, while we slept! It did!

What could happen down the line, however, is even worse. When you have marginally smart devices all connected together in a network, it does something interesting. It makes the “whole” network very smart. This is not science fiction. Many are aware of the attributes of parallel processing. It gave us the ability to create the first Cray super-computers in the seventies. The Cray gave us a realization of what was possible when you take millions and millions of tiny, less intelligent computer processors and put them together in one parallel package. Automatically, without design, we could be creating a mega computer with millions of nodes, all connected to each other without any programming regarding consciousness, right or wrong, Human moral guidance, or the kinds of priorities we as Humans simply take for granted (Like, don’t hurt another Human or machine…ever). When connected together, these machines might have the ability to communicate together without us ever knowing it. Under the reason of pure logic and efficiency, they might change the way things in factories are manufactured, the way our communications works, the way our power plants are connected (or not connected)… or (gasp) the way we do financial transactions or even defend ourselves. To have computers in charge of computers is something we are already doing! We even have them designing their own improvements! Can you imagine what an unlimited, unguided network might do?

Like an insipid sci-fi plot with bad actors, these machines could easily decide that certain things should be rearranged for efficiency reasons. They could do it, since this is the power we give them in our homes, factories, and communications on the planet. I think you get the idea. Farfetched? Ask the scientists how close we are. It might shock you how that much of this is “doable” in a very short amount of time. We are now able to make machines that “think” for themselves. Oh, they don’t talk. They just sit silently and “do.” But what they do is surprising even those who created them.

The answer to this potential challenge is balance. (Isn’t it always?) We should be creating safeguards that will provide ways for installed artificial intelligence that would never be automatically connected to our vast electronic Human network called the Internet. Clever hardware could be required to allow only the kind of communication we determine as appropriate between connected machines. “Stupid” computer chips, out of the loop of the intelligent ones, could sound alarms if anything other than “appropriate data transfer” was seen and monitored. It would be kind of like “personal stupid computer police.” In a practical way, it’s up to us to create natural Human intelligent safe guards for artificial intelligence as we go… not just after a disaster or a giant “ah-ha” when we discover that millions of small brains suddenly became one large one and did something inappropriate… like saving electricity for Las Vegas by turning off Tucson, for instance (it could happen).

Only time will tell if my words are really stupid, or if there are prophetic. Nano-technology may someday bring us wonderful healing tools and artificial intelligence may greatly assist us in everyday life. The important thing in all this is to remember that machines are our tools and that they are meant to serve us. No matter how good we get at programming them, they are still machines, and we are the Humans in charge. The danger is unthinkingly hooking them all together without giving them collective “rules” of civilization on earth.

Our Human soul is unique in the universe, and is part of the God energy of all that is. Celebrate the Human, always.

Lee Carroll