Online Conversation | Understanding Transhumanism

you to today's online conversation on understanding transhumanism with richard now and rosalind picard i'd also like to thank our friends at biologos as well as the templeton religion trust whose support has helped make this program possible as well as our co-collaborators in this the good folks from church of the advent ably led by tommy henson the rector there so many thanks to our partners for making today's discussion possible i'd also just like to say how good it is to be back after a hiatus of a few weeks and we'd especially like to welcome the many people who are joining us today including our more than 200 first-time guests as well as our many international guests joining us from at least 34 different countries that we know of ranging from argentina to zimbabwe let us know where you're joining from if you haven't already done so you may see that in the chat feature many of our different viewers are letting us know where they're from and if you are especially one of those uh people joining us from across many miles hope that you'll make yourself known uh in there if you are one of those 200 or so first-time guests or are new to the work of the trinity forum we seek to provide a space to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith and offer programs such as the one today like this online conversation to do so to come to better know the author of the answers we hope that you'll get a taste of that from our discussion today this is actually our 60th online conversation that we have hosted since the pandemic began over the last year and a half of these online conversations we've delved into a wide variety of topics reflecting on the pleasures and consolations of great literature and quarantine the power of poetry the rise of conspiracy thinking the challenge of christian nationalism new ways of reading jane austen the possibilities of redeeming a cultural contempt and the role of cult of story and shaping culture we'd love for you to check out many of these conversations at our website on wwtf.org but today we are wrestling with a very different topic looking at the implications of technological advances that some believe have the power to enhance improve even remake what it means to be human new discoveries made within the fields of artificial intelligence or ai as well as within biotechnology holds thrilling promise for everything from reducing global poverty the creation of entirely new industries the development of more sustainable agriculture and the reduction of hunger the elimination of certain diseases the enhancement of certain of human performance and massive improvements in health wealth human performance and even cognition but with any technology or extraordinary tool of extraordinary power there's also the potential for disruption or distortion in the biomedical world the technology that can help eliminate cystic fibrosis can also be used to alter the gene line of future generations and even potentially create new hybrid creatures and the ai advances that have brought us such incredibly helpful friendly assistants like siri and alexa may according to some thinkers like ray kurzweil lead potentially to the possibility of merging with or even being mastered by a superior machine intelligence such that our very idea of what it means to be human is transformed in many ways some have said that we stand at the precipice of a brave new world and like the characters in aljus huxley's novel it's all too easy to remain distracted from the serious questions that our technologies pose and so it's a real privilege to welcome our guest today both of whom thought long and deeply about both the promises of new ai technology the hopes and the philosophies that guide its development from their various and respective positions as a scientist inventor in one case and a philosopher and theologian in the other to help us think more wisely and faithfully about the inevitable questions that are raised by life and society altering new technologies so i'm so pleased to introduce first richard mau richard is a theologian philosopher and senior research fellow at the paul henry institute for the study of christianity and politics at calvin college and previously served as the president of fuller seminary for over 20 years he has written many many works i think it's at least 19 possibly more including uncommon decency christian civility in an unchristian world or an uncivil world rather pluralisms and horizons he shines in all that's fair praying at burger king calvinism at the las vegas airport and many others he served as the president of the association of theological schools and six years as the co-chair of the reformed catholic dialogue and has been awarded the abraham kuiper prize for excellence in reformed theology and public life by princeton seminary joining rich is rosalind picard and rosalind is a scientist and engineer a professor at the mit media lab where she is also the founder and the director of the effective computing research group she's also co-founded two companies including effectiva which provides emotion ai technologies now used by more than a quarter of the global fortune 500 as well as in pottico which provides wearable sensors and analytics to improve health and created the first fda approved smart watch for epilepsy patients a company where she also serves as chief scientist as well as chairman of the board she has helped launch the field of wearable computing has authored or co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles spanning effective computing ai and digital health is an elected member of the national academy of engineering serves on the board of advisors for scientific american is an active inventor with numerous patents and a sought after speaker whose ted talk has generated more than 2 million views so rich and rosalind welcome it's great to have you here it's such a pleasure absolutely well we'll just sort of dive in at the very beginning and because i've just thrown around a number of terms effective computing and transhumanism all of which could probably use better definition rossum i just love to hear from you first of all more about your field of effective computing what it is what ai means what transhumanism means and how they all relate to each other thanks sherry uh that's a that's a tall order affective computing is computing that relates to arises from or deliberately influences emotion uh very practically it's been motivated by trying to give computers more of the skills of emotional intelligence social emotional intelligence not just the mathematical and verbal kinds of intelligence with the goals of making interactions with computers being a lot less stressful and less frustrating and annoying the transhumanism is a topic that actually in my area of research we don't usually use that term but my understanding is it's kind of a loosely defined movement that does encompass a lot of what we do build where i work at mit in the media lab and in the fields of ai and and affective computing the main loose definition i might give is a movement that is inspired by trying to improve the human condition curing or eradicating disease trying to eliminate unnecessary suffering and augment ourselves in ways that in our lab have been focused mostly on alleviating a lot of the challenges of disability but when we may we may start with a physical prosthesis or a cognitive prosthesis or an emotional prosthesis and from there we may go from simply giving a person who doesn't have legs legs to walk to giving a person legs to run faster than any person can run so in some cases it can enhance human performance and then sometimes we talk well beyond that with a bit of rhapsody about how we might uh augment humans and we use a lot of technical jargon or geeky jargon like upgrading ourselves or human 2.0 um and making us into something that is more than what we uh are today and that may not just be enhancing these abilities but maybe there's some kind of superhuman future uh and you know could would that be an ai would that be some kind of combination of us and ai uh and then on top of that i hear from a lot of my colleagues especially non-religious colleagues a real interest in prolonging life and achieving something like eternal life but without god uh so it ranges from everything from you know giving somebody legs to you know and one might even look at a wheelchair as a kind of transhumanism where you're adding to a human and going on to something that exceeds us now that is fascinating you know you indicate there that you know at some in some quarters there's even a discussion about immortality and eternal life and transhumanism while uh dealing with technology has been called in many ways a philosophy and so rich i'd love to hear from you as someone who is a philosopher as well as a theologian very uh concerned with questions of immortality and eternal life how you became interested in um in this philosophy and what the implications are um you know as a theologian yeah thanks jerry it's just great to be be with you and uh yeah i i did my phd at the university of chicago back in the late 60s before many of those who are listening and watching us today were born but uh in those days and my area of specialty was the philosophy's uh philosophical understandings of human consciousness and all of this was generated in the larger social scientific world by b.f skinner and behaviorism uh that there are no such things as minds over and above over behavior uh that also got picked up in the philosophical world as the uh discussion that was kicked off by gilbert ryall a book called the concept of mine in which he says we no longer believe in a ghost and a machine some kind of scent consciousness that is non-physical that is at somehow the center of things and a later version of that discussion was uh something called central state materialism or uh brain mind identity theory where whatever we we ordinarily refer to as mental events are really uh sort of electronic firings in the brain and this kind of thing you know uh so there was a lot of interest in what what we philosophical uh discussions often talked about the the the nature of human composition of what a what is a human being made and composed and in those days uh some of the practical questions were raised in a fascinating discussion that were well well beyond now but mines and machines there were books written on that there were projects to vote after that and uh dealing with questions like this can a can a computer really play chess that was a big issue in a seminar that i took in grad school there were some philosophers there was a well-known philosopher at berkeley hubert dreyfus who argued that minds uh there are minds there is consciousness in that human beings play games in a different way than a machine could ever play a game in fact strictly speaking machines don't play games they they consider options and go through various possible moves and eliminate once until they finally have one that works but but human beings just look at the board and and we just see what an appropriate move would would would be uh in that so that was an interesting discussion in those days and it got me thinking about a lot of this theologically as later on i i got into the world of theological education taught courses of theological anthropology the theology of human nature and one of the big issues in in theology has been the debate over whether whether human beings are totally bodily anticipating a bodily resurrection or whether there's a part of us that goes to be with the lord even when our body dies and all those kinds of questions and a lot of debates over how you understand passages of scripture and all that but really getting at many of the same issues and that is how do we explain uh our conscious lives metaphysically theologically in light of what the bible teaches and i continue to be very fascinated by that transhumanism uh is is really opening up the possibility that uh and much of it is kind of materialistic or physicalistic and that is that that that there is nothing there's not kind of an extra physical outside of the physical consciousness but that our brain states are replicatable or at least parallel states in a computer program in fact we might eventually be able to upload our brains into a computer program and achieve a kind of eternal life that way so the metaphysical issue of whether we're purely physical beings or whether there's something over and above the physical i think is is one of the issues at stake in the kinds of thinking that rosalind so so nicely summarized for us that is fascinating i mean you um you refer to you know the potential at some point to essentially upload our brains and achieve immortality and um you know there's certainly kind of a recurring science fiction theme of you know the idea of runaway technology you know of kind of going into crazy territory of being dominated by or even destroyed by our tools or trying to become god in this way uh and there there does seem to be at least some real life basis for this sphere you know technology does seem to have its own imperatives at times it certainly seems to have an orientation towards multiplying and scale and in applications sometimes outside of humane uh considerations um and there are some sane as well as mad scientists who seem to buy the idea that if it can be done it should be done um and so starting with you rosalind i'd be really interested in uh how optimistic or hopeful you are that around the chances of our humanely stewarding our own technologies this is about optimism and um human behavior which is very unpredictable i i'm an optimist in general i also see a lot of uh variety of behavior and i think it's important that we really i guess educate the whole person not just educate people about technology and my university at mit and places you know you come in you learn a whole lot about math and science and and technology uh and engineering you tend to learn a little bit less although mit is really good about demanding a lot of humanities but a lot of technological universities a little bit less about asking the big why kinds of questions and recently there is a bit more of a movement toward trying to understand uh you know if we're trying to make the world better what does that mean we talk at the media lab about trying to invent a better future and then we put a period there and now we're trying to think more about what you know what does that really mean and that means not just ethical behavior but it means really identifying a bunch of values and trying to promote those and then when we start to look at those we start to say gee are we just building this because we can or are we thinking about what the world might really need or what we could do uh as kind of an opportunity cost right instead of just building this thing because we can incrementally make it higher faster or better uh what are we not building that maybe we should be thinking about building that the world might be even better off if we did so we're trying to promote that kind of thinking now also and there we really need partnerships with people with everybody in society not just other academics not just certainly not just other engineers but everybody who's on this call could have something valuable to say to this yes you know rich you mentioned earlier the um kind of a resting prospect of downloading our minds into immortality which um certainly grabs the attention uh and you know it makes one thing you know as a theologian you know that the first temptation the oldest temptation in the world was the temptation to be like god um you know to basically take control of one's own destiny and so it it seems you know relatively easy uh to to realize like that is not what we should be doing but i'd love to ask you about just how um you're the line between playing god and perhaps just creative um and wise stewardship um you know downloading our brain to immortality seems a pretty clear-cut case but one could also argue that so many really exciting technological advances antibiotics vaccines um wearables and the like you know are in a way all human enhancement um you know and as a philosopher and a theologian do you see um you know a clear guideline for when we know whether we are attempting to play god yeah yeah thanks yeah i i i appreciate your going back to genesis 3 on this because in many ways in genesis 3 in the first three chapters of genesis we we see the fundamental choice and what what the godless version of transhumanism holds is that human beings are on the way to something greater uh that uh our present state uh isn't what we will end up to be or or what we were meant to be in terms of an evolutionary process and in many ways that parallels a biblical teaching that were created in the very image of god and adam and eve were created the human race was created to grow more and more into the image of god i mean first john 3 has this wonderful promise it does not yet appear what we shall be but when he shall appear we shall be like him we're on the way to something and adam and eve already were on the way to something and if they were to flourish in that something it would be acknowledging that they aren't god's but they are created in the image of god as the likeness of god and then the tempter comes along and he says you can be your own guy you know just sit on the throne and run the show yourself and those are two very different images uh growing into the image of god or trying to be our own gods and uh you know the the the fallenness of of the human race so trying to control things trying to be our own gods is by god's grace uh also produce some really good things roslyn mentioned wheelchairs i mean you know who would want to go back to days when people who lost the control of their legs really couldn't move around they couldn't get any place and so there are those ways of improving human nature promoting human flourishing that scientific technology over the centuries has has developed and produced that we thank god for but it's when we see ourselves as moving uh beyond our present finite state our present limited selves as creatures of god into something bigger than we are uh not guided by god's commands by god's revelation to us and our biblical understanding of who we are we're we're not animals and we're not gods we're someplace in the middle there and uh sometimes we define ourselves down and we try to act like animals but there's also the the sin of finding ourselves up uh defining ourselves up nietzsche who had this this german phrase the uber match that the over man's the beyond our present uh and and and for him that was a i mean from our point of view was a very bad thing that we could grow into something more like what we used to think of as god according to nature and that's a very dangerous thing and so as rosalind is much clearer and better on this than i am but the things that enhance our understanding of who we are in the light of our understanding of god's will for human flourishing versus those sinful tendencies to want to create or create ourselves in in some brand new way and the big danger technically was realized actually a couple years ago by the the chinese scientists who edited genes and tried to create a different kind of human being and that was generally at least thus far has been seen as an inappropriate form of transhumanism that's fascinating um rosalind i'd love to kind of ask your thoughts about this um in that you know the vision of of human flourishing that rich has just articulated you know the christian understanding and sort of philosophical assumptions one of the things that uh sociologist neil postman talked about is that every technology includes some kind of epistemological political or social bias within it you know so for example it's very difficult to do philosophy by smoke signal you know the the very technology itself kind of precludes kind of abstract reasoning um you know certain social media platforms predispose us towards a certain way of both understanding and interaction as someone who has kind of immersed herself and you know has made incredible advances within sort of the field of effective computing and ai are there kind of philosophies embedded within the technology itself that you have had to contend with uh in the course of your work or um have you found it to be more neutral so it's a great question and a bunch of great points too lately we've been revisiting some of the language that we're using in ai and artificial intelligence and in the in the origins of it when john mccarthy first proposed the term uh i believe those herbs simon had proposed an alternative term complex information processing which is actually much more accurate for what ai is today but the term ai won out and i think not because it was more accurate because it's not really but because it's more aspirational and there's something about a term that we can't achieve that inspires people to want to think beyond the limits of what is uh you know known with existing constraints and um and imagine uh we are i think we're made in the image of god and we are made as makers also we are makers um we have makers in our lab who want to make things that make things and when when one of the things we might be able to make is an intelligence uh and you know maybe we call it artificial intelligence that even though we're not really making that it's there's something that draws people to that and that's the that's the attraction of something aspirational and with that we have started to use language like oh the machine learns oh the machine thinks uh some take a look at my work and say oh the machine feels and i'm like no no cross that out of the headline it does not feel in fact we also should be very careful to say it does not think and i love rich mentioning dreyfus's comment it does not play it does not it it is not being in the way that we are being it is not experiencing anything it is not experiencing play it is not experiencing thought it is not experiencing feeling it doesn't have any consciousness or awareness when we flip it off it's ethical to flip it off uh to turn off the switch even if the machine we just switched off uh just got a 50 000 honorarium for showing up on the tonight show as a female robot looking like it had emotions right and um got citizenship in saudi arabia i'm referring to the sofia robot uh you know it can it can be accorded all of these rights almost like a publicity stunt but it doesn't actually learn think play feel no experience anything it's not a living being it is a simulation of these things that we as makers made in the image of the ultimate maker um you know are making so i think the fact that we reuse this language that refers to us and we use it for machines gets us in a lot of trouble it leads people to think oh wow if machines can learn now and they're learning faster and given you know once they could add they could do math faster than all of us uh you know if they can do this then people start extrapolating and they're afraid now that sofia's on the tonight show cracking jokes and saying she's funnier than the tonight show host uh then why can't a machine replace all of us um should i just be building an ai that replaces me and builds other ais and as we use that language it makes it very easy to extrapolate and i i think we create a lot of danger with that if we had stuck with complex information processing and just described you know simulations and all uh people wouldn't be so worried um on the other hand it wouldn't um inspire as much uh trying to understand humans and ultimately we are you know we use the phrase fearfully and wonderfully made um it's even more awesome than that the more we get into how people are made you know you just i just become speechless we are so incredible it's amazing that we work at all that our bodies work at all and of course sometimes when they don't work we appreciate that uh but we are so amazing how we work and it just remains this um aspirational thing for us so we adopt that language and that language gets us in a lot of trouble brings a lot of background browsing a question um rosalind we've come a long way since the discussion of whether uh computers can win chess game just matches uh and they they do win i mean they the human beings lose the game as it were and i think you you want to say yeah but dude are they rejoicing in winning do they get satisfaction out of that and and one of your examples in your writing uh just fascinates me there's a robot in the kitchen and you come down uh you and you you're gonna make coffee and the robot says good morning rosalind uh how are you this morning and and you kind of grumpy give a grumpy answer and then you uh you spill some coffee and you you say uh a word that a christian is allowed to say when you're you're you're and in the computer the robot under sees that you aren't in a very good mood and changes its and uh and and the pace with which it responds and tries to initiate conversations with you and and you we can imagine that that activity taking place that that robotic behavior occurring but you want to say that robot isn't really concerned about you that robot isn't really caring about you and and i'm with you on that but i i need help why not yeah i mean yeah and we can call that artificial caring artificial empathy and the crazy thing is when the machine does it and a person even who programs it and knows how it works receives it it works in the sense that it can alleviate frustration it can help you regulate your emotion it can help you feel better and it doesn't really understand it i i can liken it to two other quick examples one is when a human therapist is talking to another human therapist and therapist b is using a technique that therapist a knows and it helps therapist a feel better even though therapist a knows that therapist b is just using this technique uh and might just be simply thinking okay i'll say this to her and we'll have this empathetic exchange and then she'll feel better right it becomes almost like running a program to do that uh it can it can be done with true human compassion and caring it can also be kind of simulated even when the person might be thinking about lunch now i would argue it's more effective when it's real and a real human being is is doing this uh and in fact we've had people rate empathetic responses uh and the only difference in one batch is that they're told they come from machines and in the other batch they're told they come from people and they rate the ones that come from people higher than the ones from machine even though they're worded the same so there are these um there are these biases we we bring more to our content and our message and the interaction than just the transcript of it if you will there's there's more there uh when the computer executes this kind of artificial caring without really caring or understanding our feelings uh sorry the second example the first example is the two therapists the second is a person who has a dog and they come home at the end of the day and they are maybe you know kind of miserable they open the door but their dog is happy to see them you know tails wagging jumping up on them then the dog sees that the dog's owner is miserable or you know bad day um and what does the dog do the dog puts his ears back its tail down you know kind of looks sort of sad and then the owner starts to feel a little more understood by the dog feels better now the dog has just done something very powerful showing a kind of dog-like empathy but do we think the dog understands our feelings knows the definition of emotion knows what empathy is any of this stuff no no it doesn't know this um what does it know compared to people well it's at least alive right we think it has a whole lot more going on inside it than a machine uh we truly believe that at the same time we recognize this huge difference between it and us and yet it can perform a service that helps a person regulate their emotion and feel better so i put the robot kind of in that category of something that doesn't really know but we can tune it uh like a like a like man's best friend the dog um has been domesticated uh to do certain things that that help people feel better [Music] you know somebody on facebook a christian their dog just died recently and and just said that this person was very sad to lose this wonderful pet and another christian is just put a remark on saying well you'll be together again someday you know uh i i don't rebel against that as a christian uh but i wonder uh is there even a difference with a robot that your your robot friend uh you will probably not ever see that robot again when it breaks down and dies yeah will we be happy to you know uh just get a totally new robot or does it need to be up and and also and i i don't know if we're allowed to ask each other questions but rich you know people like you who studied so much more of this immortality uh you know some of my geek friends who are christians have likened it to you know god backing us up right backing up who we are if we know god it's sort of like god getting to know us and backing us up uh except that we're not just simply a digital backup and then being given um an imperishable body at some point right with something different it may look like this but be fundamentally different and you know is that like backing up the machine you know uh getting new hardware you know people uh make these metaphors and maybe these are just our very imperfect lacking knowledge way of trying to approximate something we don't fully understand right before you answer that i'm going to label on some of our audience questions as well so we're have a bunch of audience questions that have come in and uh some of them are right on the theme of what rosalind has just asked you so we'll ladle one on top of um of rosalind's and this comes from john tung and john uh asked it seems like the that only theology has maintained an important distinction between god the human by pointing out the creator and creature distinction would it help in how we think about computers by likewise maintaining an important distinction between humans and their creation such as computers so sort of combining um rosalinds and jung's what would you say well i i yeah i think that's a very helpful way to put it i do think that in our rosalind said earlier you know we're created to be makers uh not supreme makers but makers under the the rule and the guidance of god and i do think that when we make things like robots we might learn some metaphors or analogies to god's creative activity uh in certain ways it will always be incomprehensible to us but there may illuminate certain things so i would have no problem saying for example that uh god might someday um that god might be backing us up and that the resurrection would be uniting the backup with a new physical body it's not something i'd preach at a funeral though i i think it's just an interesting kind of intellectual exercise to play around with many of these metaphors and analogies uh insofar as they help us as we're thinking theologically and philosophically about that i'm not sure they're pastorally uh very helpful to people i just think uh what we have to say is uh you know you you'll go to be with the lord and you will be raised up and uh and yet we can have good discussions about what robotics might even uh illuminate about that yeah so roswell this next question is from you from jonathan pavlick and he asked does there exist any momentum in the transhumanist community about how to transcend the common human spirit it seems like transhumanism has to date focus principally on physical and mental enhancements but our human composition includes a spiritual dimension as well yeah i agree it includes a spiritual dimension as well and among my science and engineering colleagues they don't talk about that from what i've seen in fact they'll kind of look at you like you have two heads if you even bring it up they uh while practicing science and engineering a lot of science most scientists and engineers act like materialists um some go so far as to believe in materialism like that's all there is i don't think there's any evidence that's all there is that's a faith position so um it's it's unnecessary myopic faith position but it is a commonly held position so a lot of people would say you know we are mind we are a body um we've i've gotten in lots of conversations many of them who thought emotion either should just be completely ignored or didn't really exist to at least include not only physical and cognitive but affective and i believe there's also a spiritual side of us and we just don't know how to deal with it we don't have the material tools for it we don't have any we don't really know what it does functionally and we need functional descriptions to implement code for things so the best we could kind of do right now is have a program print out and say of course i have a spirit you know like you know which is completely meaningless right it's just a program executing uh printing out something we might think someone with a spirit would say so we just really don't know how to deal with that if anybody on this call has ideas how to deal with that i'd love to hear your input rich i'll direct this next question to you from elizabeth jennings and she says you'd love to hear thoughts on the relation of huxley's brave new world to today's technological developments a conclusion of that book is that the elimination of suffering is the elimination of our humanity what are your thoughts yeah thank you that's a wonderful question and i'm not sure i have very profound thoughts on it but you know and jim stumpf is in on this uh too and biologos has really struggled with this this whole issue of a certain expression of transhumanism uh specifically the kind of transhumanism that sees everything as evolving without any divine purpose in in all abyss uh has a a kind of very optimistic view of the future that we're that that all of this technology can be a way of moving to a new stage of of our humanity what rosalina was just saying about the spiritual dimension also has to take into a fact that uh made very effectively i think in a in a film that uh those of us who those of people here who aren't in their 20s yet might want to go back and look 2001 a space odyssey uh where hal the computer actually rebelled against its programmers and uh i destroyed that i mean you know and and that idea of being spiritual also means being able to rebel against god and that's an issue that many of us have to take seriously uh how does sin enter into human consciousness and how does it enter into how might it enter into artificial intelligence and with with razon i i don't think a robot could ever uh rebel against its programming for example uh and and but but the the brave new world idea is really uh i mean i'm not saying this is huxley's idea but the brave new world concept uh fits into a certain kind of transhumanism that sees that we're moving toward the elimination of suffering and i don't want to say that suffering is essential to human life because that that gets into all questions about the garden of eden and the resurrected state but i do think that having challenges to overcome and learning patience and endurance and trust these are the kinds of virtues that i think are are very precious to the christian in our relationship to god and so we really need to if we're going to really push this discussion of transhumanism we have to ask uh if we ever get beyond the capacity or the need to trust the need to endure uh the need to show patience a need to show caring for other people in their suffering would we have lost something about uh our god-given humanity yeah that's fascinating uh rosalind the next questions are from you they're from eva nappier and eva asked if you could share about the most ethically questionable human enhancement idea that may have the possibility of being played out in the near future as well as where you would draw the line between between creating as faithful subcreators imagining god and his creative nature and creating that is far more grasping for godhood actually can you repeat that last part yes where would you draw the line between creating as a faithful subcreator or grasping for godhood small order yeah golly um whoo lots of stuff here it's funny there are some ethical lines in my own work that very few people know about and i don't actually i find myself not wanting to talk about them because i don't want people to take them and do them i don't know any way to prevent people from doing them probably the best public ethical line is the uh engineering of one's children to want to go in and modify uh you know the embryo and build a child who might be enhanced in certain ways and i'm really troubled by what's going on there i'm troubled by a lot of what's going on inside these these cases and modifying our human race we do have a lot of people who like who develop crispr and things like that who are the gene editing technologies that are very ethically minded and trying really hard to build tools to prevent uh disastrous things from happening and you know they're on this but it is the case that ultimately these powerful tools that we have can be put in the hands of people who use them to enhance their own power to enhance their own godlikeness if you will versus use them and again this comes back to what kind of people are we educating and shaping in our society versus seeing other needs around them that are greater and putting their brains and and minds and imaginations and hands into serving greater needs greater causes rather than self-enhancement and self-promotion and self-power which is what seems to be what's driving some of these worst uses of technology whether it's a gene editing technology or an affect sensing and recognition or regulation technology uh and or an ai when it's used to just you know build the power of someone who already has a lot of power like some national leaders are extremely interested in doing uh to preserve their power then that's pointing to a real problem uh and sometimes it doesn't have to be the most advanced technology um to enable great evil to be done either right we saw what hitler was able to do uh with gas chambers right and regular uh weapons so the power of ai and these technologies to just amplify and scale uh evil is is huge and but it's not the cause of the evil it's the tool of it i think so i think you know we need to address the whole the whole issue there um when it comes to the latter part of the question the creating versus grasping for for godhood um you know i i think it's important to get each individual who's a creator to reflect on why they're creating what are they creating for uh and try to get people past their resumes you know thinking about greater causes and not just creating an isolation really getting community input i think everybody here should be willing to ask the creators they know around them the makers around them you know why are you building that why are you interested in that why do you think that's important where do you think that could go that's good where do you think that could go that's a problem and let's hold each other accountable and help our society as a whole listen and hear and understand our needs and that none of us is god i'm reminded of this great poster a friend of mine had the business school of all places uh but we need it in schools besides the business school the poster on her wall right when you walked in uh said there is a god and you are not him how many business school faculty needed to see that i think we all need to be reminded of that and especially those of us who are making very powerful things thanks russell and that's actually a wonderful lead-in to what will probably have to be our last question which i'll direct to you first rich and rosalind if you have anything to add please do this question comes from an anonymous viewer and they ask what advice would you give to someone who is intimidated by this field but desires to engage in this kind of conversation as a christian where can one start well i think great question and i think a place to start really has to do with the nature of god i mean yeah we're created also to be creators of things but only god creates ex nihilo out of nothing and uh but god creates out of nothing as a loving god as a as a a faithful god uh john 3 16 god so loved the cosmos the whole creation john m 17 sent the son into the cosmos not to condemn the cosmos but that the whole creation might be redeemed that god created the world as a loving god as a as an arena for the flourishing of human life and of other kinds of of life and when we lose sight of that and you know this often doesn't get said about the fall but uh it isn't just that adam and eve rebelled against god but they they they accepted a false theology of god you know because the tempter says to eve did god say that ah you don't have to believe him you know he's just trying to control you but god is not a not a controller in that sense he's a loving god who creates us lovingly to flourish as people created in his image and we rebel against him and and god lovingly saves us and it's so important in this discussion then to start with the right kind of god with the right kind of creator and and to to say yes we want to take advantage of all of this technological advance and anything that can promote human flourishing but human flourishing as understood within the purposes of god our awareness of god's purposes and god's revelation to us about how god wants us to to be his creatures and stewards of his creation thank you rich and rosalind this has been absolutely fascinating um and in just a moment i'm going to give rich and rosalind the last word of our online conversation but first a few things just to communicate right after this online conversation ends we'll be sending around an online feedback form we're really grateful for your thoughts we read everyone we try to incorporate your suggestions in terms of making these online programs ever more valuable to you and as a special incentive for filling out that survey we will give you a free a trinity forum reading download of your choice one that we would write well two that we'd recommend in particular is both algis huxley's uh brave new world uh but also the term transhumanism itself is derived actually from dante's uh the divine comedy and so we would also i encourage you to avail yourself of the divine comedy also for those of you who signed up immediately after this online conversation is over you can participate in a breakout discussion group to kind of further dig into some of the things that you have heard if you've not yet signed up there should be a link on the chat feature where you can do so and for those of you who are in the dc area a church of the advent will also be sponsoring an in-person discussion group and dinner to further dig into some of these issues there should be more information on that in the chat feature as well we highly encourage you to take advantage of that opportunity we'll also be sending around a video link tomorrow to all those who signed up to attend today's event i would love for you to share this uh this video with others start a conversation we'll also be sending along with within that video link additional resources and recommended readings to help aid your understanding in addition we'd love to invite each of you to become members of the trinity forum society which is the community of people that helps make programs like this possible we attempt to try to provide a space and resources to engage the big questions of life in the context of faith and would love your collaboration towards that mission there's also many benefits of being a member of the trinity forum society including a subscription to our quarterly readings where we take the best of literature and letters provide an introduction which gives background and context as well as discussion questions at the end to make it essentially function like a book club in a bag our podcast our daily list of what we're reading a list of curated reading recommendations and as a special incentive to those of you who either join today or with your gift of 100 or more we will send you our technology and flourishing reading collection which includes brave new world uh the short story the birthmark and on being human and then finally as we discussed we'd love to get the last word from rich and rosalind so roslyn maybe we can start with you i'm actually just going to read some of the last words from uh saint paul in the letter in his letter to the corinthians the one that most people pay most attention to the first words of um at weddings uh first corinthians 13 but i'm going to start with uh verse 12. actually i'm just going to read verse 12. for now we see only a reflection as in a mirror then we shall see face to face now i know in part then i shall know fully even as i am fully known thanks for everyone rich thank you uh that captures exactly what i want to emphasize as well i i do think that i i want to say i think we're living i think this is a this an exciting discussion and that we we as christians should not be intimidated we don't have to be intimidated by this we want to take advantage of all that the new technologies and discussions of artificial intelligence have to offer us in the light of our understanding of god's will for humankind and so i'll uh i'll add the voice of the apostle john to this it does not yet appear what we shall be but when he shall appear we shall be like him and i think it's very important to focus on jesus as the one who reveals to us what flourishing humanity is really all about and as long as we keep our eyes on jesus uh we're not going to be not going to be drawn aside into deviations and to other kinds of ends or purposes or talloy of of human human prospects but uh everything that honors the god who sent jesus into the world uh in the goal of promoting human flourishing we are we're on the side of all of that and we're also aware of our fallenness and the dangers of not looking to jesus thank you rich thank you roslyn it's been really a pleasure to talk with you both thank you to each of you for joining us have a great weekend [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Trinity Forum

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Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021