Artificial Intelligence, the Imago Dei, and the Age of Spiritual Machines

Artificial intelligence, in a broad sense, is any task performed by a program or a machine that, if a human carried out the same activity, we would say the human had to apply intelligence to accomplish the task. Things like planning, learning, reasoning, problem solving, knowledge representation, perception, motion, and manipulation and even, to a lesser extent, social intelligence and creativity can now all be performed, to a certain extent at least, by artificial intelligence systems.

 

But if we’re able to develop a technology that empowers machines to do anything a human can do, does this mean that the day is coming when humans will become expendable and replaceable?

 

Will the lines between humanity and machine become blurred in the years to come with the development of more advanced artificial intelligence?

 

Will AI evolve to eventually surpass humanity by becoming smarter than us? How as Christians should we treat AI systems? Like slaves or with the same kind of respect and dignity as a human being?

 

And speaking of which, what is that makes us human after all? Are we human because of how “highly evolved” we’ve become- or is there something else God has placed within us that makes us “human”?