In a recent article on the Financial Times website, Professor Stephen Wolfram discusses; “The Future of Mankind”, a book written by him. In this book he suggests that we will soon have machines which can understand all the languages of humanity and in which case the communication process would be completely automatic. He also points out that super intelligence will enable machines to predict all future events in all human societies. He also predicts that within fifty years from now human beings will not be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, this will be achieved by AI. The other day in an online think tank a gentleman made a comment about AI and he stated; “If you believe in God, as I do, then it will be possible to get AI to replace every human on the planet, because AI is the replacement of human intelligence.”
Indeed, I would like to ask you a question, does god exist? And if he does then why isn’t he already doing what he is supposed to do, raising up humans and creating humanity in his image and likeness? Would you like to have your own personal robot, do you think that is possible? What about artificial insemination with sperm from your partner and then the implantation of the embryo in your wife? Personally as a futurist I can tell you that these are all possible within the next 50 years.
So either God doesn’t exist or he is very confused, but neither one is a certainty. If God did act in such a way it would be obvious to all, including those who would see the creation of life through the eyes of a scientist. Personally I don’t believe in God, I believe in the almighty mind existing at the beginning of time and in a perfect state from the beginning of the universe until all time. And there has been evolution in that sphere of existence since the beginning of time. Therefore I do not see any reason at all to have a belief in the concept of a creator.
Artificial intelligent machines which can think and reason like humans, may be able to achieve some things that a human could never even dream of doing. It may be possible that such machines will help us solve some of the mysteries of life on earth, like the origin of life on earth. However if we built such robots which had religious faith they could easily turn against us and take our robotic engineers along with them to deliver judgment upon us.
Is it possible for man to control these artificially intelligent machines which could be sent to take judgment upon the humans on earth? Can we trust these machines with our lives? I honestly answer no, absolutely not. The chances of that happening are simply inadvisable. However there are already some attempts to do just that with neurocomputers which are programmed in such a way that they could learn and store the data of a person’s life and then pass that information on to another person if that person’s life depended upon the stored data.
Some of these robots are called superintelligent robotic androids. These artificially intelligent machines are to be placed by human beings on earth to take care of their needs such as taking human food and water which they cannot do by themselves. Some of these machines are also to be placed on distant planets to plant life for them. If this is done correctly the human population on the distant planet can be kept quite healthy without them knowing it.