The Artifice of Intelligence by Noreen Herzfeld

Author:Noreen Herzfeld [Herzfeld, Noreen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067000 RELIGION / Christian Theology / General, REL067050 RELIGION / Christian Theology / Ecclesiology, REL015000 RELIGION / Christianity / History
Publisher: Fortress Press

5

AI, Free Will, and Emotion

“Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone’s feelings, and man will have invented artificial intelligence.”

—Robert Breault

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” The apostle Paul insists that love is the essence of every good word or deed. No matter how much knowledge or faith one exhibits, if one has the spirit-given gifts of speaking in tongues or prophecy, if one gives up one’s possessions or even one’s life, if it is done without love it is nothing (1 Corinthians 13). The Jewish Shema commands, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It continues, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”1 The two halves of the Shema are one. To love God, one must love one’s neighbor. Jesus expands the idea of “neighbor” to include all and exclude none. Does AI enlarge the neighborhood? Or does it distract us from our human neighbors? We might love our machines, but can they love us? When asked if she loves us, Alexa responds, “There are people I admire and things I can’t do without, but I am still trying to understand human love.” Is it possible for a machine ever to understand human love?

Theologian Thomas Oord says that to love is “to act intentionally in relational (sympathetic/empathetic) response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being.”2 Love is intentional, relational, responsive, and promotes the good. Barth’s first three criteria of looking the other in the eye, speaking to and hearing the other, and aiding the other are responsive and, optimally, promote the other’s well-being as well as one’s own. It is in his fourth criterion, however, that Barth addresses intention. He writes that being in true encounter with another must be “done on both sides with gladness. We gladly see and are seen; we gladly speak and listen; we gladly receive and offer assistance. This can be called the first and final sign of humanity . . . the secret of the whole, and therefore of the three preceding stages.”3 He notes that if we do each of the preceding stages outwardly, yet without an inner feeling, each “may leave a great unseen lacuna which must be filled.” Words or actions alone are not enough. For Barth, the added “gladly” is the “conditio sine qua non of humanity.”4 Interestingly, he finds the alternative to this “gladly” not as “reluctantly” or “angrily” but in neutrality or indifference. Thus, the crux of his final requirement for authentic relationship lies not in positivity but in emotion itself. True encounter demands not just that our words and actions are not coerced but that they are not an empty, merely outward show.

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