Devon McPhee, "Genesis: God’s word. Evolution: God’s work" (2005)

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Self-replicating robots and nanotechnology probably won’t displace humans in the near future, predicts Noreen Herzfeld, a professor of computer science and ethics at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict in Collegeville, Minn.

“I tend to be skeptical,” Herzfeld said at a recent lecture. “I think we are unlikely to see it in our lifetime. There are too many obstacles.”

While computers can “simulate emotion, that’s not the same thing as having the emotion,” said Herzfeld, adding that she is not convinced that humans really want to be replicated. “We’ve created weak AI — programs that do what humans do. But when it comes to strong AI — versatile, human-like intelligence — do we really want it?”

Herzfeld, author of In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit, noted that predictions of artificial-intelligence scientists have often lagged far behind their actual achievements.

“Predictions of our imminent demise at the hand of our ‘mind children’ are not rooted in reality but in the reality of our dreams,” Herzfeld said, but she added that the question of whether the autonomous machines that are created will replace or coexist with humans is important, nonetheless. She said the answer depends on which aspect of human nature scientists seek to copy.

“As we go forward to create a different kind of intelligent being, the goal of AI is to create an ‘other’ in our own image,” said Herzfeld. “That image will necessarily be partial. Our machines will not be 100 percent like us. We must determine just what it is, in ourselves, that computers must possess to be considered our ‘mind children.’”

Herzfeld explained that how individuals imagine God, the imago Dei, is central to the image they attempt to imprint upon the autonomous machines they create, the imago hominis.

“The core of our nature is what we believe we share with God and what we want to share with our computers,” she said.

Using three theological models for understanding the relationship between humans and God, Herzfeld pointed out parallels in AI history. The “substantive view” finds the image of God in rationality; similarly, mathematical AI research in the 1960s and ’70s viewed artificial intelligence as a symbolic system, she said.

The “functional view” locates God’s image in performance. “It’s not a trait we have; it’s what we do,” explained Herzfeld. “It’s dynamic and seen as action in our dominion in the world.”

Similarly, a functional approach to AI with the emphasis on performance can be found in the late 1970s and ’80s in programs such as “Deep Blue,” which “plays chess, but not as a human,” she said. “AI carved up the world into discrete functions but did not offer a congruent system.”

Herzfeld said she believes the most promising theological model is the “relational view” rooted in the Christian image of the Trinity.

“The covenantal nature of God is relational,” she said. “We can’t imagine by ourselves, only in relationship. Jesus is the norm, as he models the relational image of God.”

In AI research, this perspective is represented in a socially acquired and produced view of intelligence.

“Intelligence is not an individual thing; it’s acquired, held and demonstrated communally,” said Herzfeld. “Just as theology has moved toward relationship as the best way we [imagine] God, AI has moved toward relationship as the best way to understand AI.”

Many questions remain as humans consider what it means to create computers in their own image, said Herzfeld. Researchers in the area of AI generally view the soul as “arising from cognitive processes, an emergent property,” rather than as something built into every human, she explained. “But if the soul is a precondition, could God give a computer a soul?” she asked.

Regardless of how advanced and lifelike computers become, the future will still need humans, Herzfeld said, offering the Rule of St. Benedict as a workable ethical guide in the pursuit of AI. The rule, which calls for monks to treat all goods in the monastery as vessels of the altar, provides a reminder of the importance of viewing everything as in close proximity to God.