Should our AIs and robots have souls?

Unbelievable?

Premier Unbelievable?

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Should we be fearful or make friends with our robot helpers? And how can humans flourish in this brave new world? One of our guests today on Unbelievable believes the hidden power of humans is that we are imperfect yet essential? Roger Bolton hosts this edition of Unbelievable with writer and theologian Dr. Eve Poole and Prof. Beth Singler, a digital ethnographer. Our seemingly irrational qualities, like emotions and intuition, are what Unbelievable guest Dr. Eve Poole calls the "junk" code that define humanity, fostering the reciprocal altruism that sustains our existence. Eve Poole's argument might upset or even offend those with a fairly traditional faith, as she argues that we should consider giving robots 'souls'. But if we give robots, as Eve suggests, the 'junk code' of humans, will that lead to calls to give robots rights? How do we feel about giving rights to a toaster? Eve Poole did her PhD in Theology and Capitalism at the University of Cambridge and is an expert on leadership and education. Professor Beth Singler is a digital ethnographer based at the University of Zurich. Beth explores the social, ethical, philosophical and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. https://bvlsingler.com/ https://evepoole.com/ • Subscribe to the Unbelievable? podcast: https://pod.link/267142101 • More shows, free eBook & newsletter: https://premierunbelievable.com • For live events: http://www.unbelievable.live • For online learning: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/training • Support us in the USA: http://www.premierinsight.org/unbelievableshow • Support us in the rest of the world: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/donate

Transcript

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0:00.0	When we put prayers to end extreme poverty into practice, there's no going.
0:04.7	Back. Yes, thank you, Terry. I was just about to get onto that. You see, when?
0:10.0	When we're trained in new skills, we can provide for ourselves.
0:13.9	Those were my lines. Can I carry on?
0:16.1	We can build our own schools, businesses, homes.
0:20.4	Do you want to do the whole ad?
0:22.1	No, you go.
0:23.8	Tier fund.
0:24.8	Let's practice what we play.
0:26.8	To learn more, search tier funds, no going back.
0:37.4	AI in its generative form is already taking over epistemic tasks, things like writing a letter,
0:43.6	or if you're religious writing a sermon, or demonstrating a particular useful application of AI
0:51.6	that will take over a task previously done by a human being.
0:55.0	So we're already seeing that kind of level of replacement and automation in our systems
1:01.2	that could lead to people losing income.
1:03.7	In robotics and in AI, deep learning gives you the ability to instruct the AI to reprogram itself
1:12.9	if it would help it better meet its objectives.
1:16.0	Now, there are some guardrails and parameters around that, I'm sure, but again, given how hard we're
1:23.1	trying to catch up with exactly how do you give precise instructions that are the ones you really
1:27.4	mean and given how bad we are as that a humans, it's quite difficult to know whether you've
1:32.7	absolutely made that as safe as possible by only giving the right instructions to the AI such
1:37.4	that it would be able to make quotes the right decision, which is this thing about alignment and control.
	...

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