1. Roger Spendlove says:

    Already, just about everybody calls Siri, Cortana, and Alexa (speaking on their iOS, Windows, and Amazon devices) a “she.” My 14-yo son and I have a running discussion about this, and we’ve tried to vow not to ever call our devices “she” or any other human pronoun. We try to always call them “it” but we frequently slip up. It helps, though, that we keep the Siri function turned OFF. But if we use Google Maps and want it to speak the directions, we’re forced to listen to “Assistant” (interesting that the Google device/robot doesn’t have a cute marketing name), whose female voice still makes us call it a “her.”

  2. This is such a good post and there are all kinds of thoughts running through my head but I’ll keep focused on just three:

    I actually think this side of us, the side that doesn’t like to see a robot kicked over by a guy, is indicative of the fact that we generally have a view that life of all forms is valid. It’s strange though that we’ll say it’s wrong to kick a robot over, or fall in love with a robot who isn’t real is perfectly okay but we will not protect the children inside of our wombs.

    If you’re a fan of Black Mirror, the episode of USS Callister was intriguing in that they dealt with the idea of sentient computer code. Fascinating stuff but how is it we ended up caring about the sentient code than the guy who created the code?

    Is this a trend toward caring about the finite aspects of life as opposed to eternal consequences of our soul?

  3. Travis Perry says:

    If a robot/android wanted to go to church and talked about knowing Christ, I would want to know why. Assuming it could have a conversation, I would ask it to explain its reasons. I believe I would kind of assume that something was wrong with its programming, but I would not send it away. If it wanted to worship, I would let it.

    I think I would be wondering if God had not interfered in the robot’s programming providentially so it could be a witness to human beings. I would by no means deny it the right to attend a church service and would argue against a fellow human at the church who would tell it to “go play music” or something. Even though I would consider it an “it” and not a full human being…

  4. Travis Perry used a very interesting phrase to me: he said “If it wanted to worship, I would let it.” While I’m a little wary of the word “wanted” for something that’s actions are determined by its coding, I do think this is a valid statement: after all, even the stars are said to worship and Christ tells us that if we do not, the very rocks will cry out. Nature and inanimate objects worship all the time, proclaiming the glory of God — possibly less hindered than humans, because of a lesser spiritual impact from the Fall.
    Which I guess leads me to my automatic next question: would churches accept a robotic song leader or preacher? Even now, we’re already comfortable with the idea of learning through technology and I’ve read of schoolrooms taught by a robotic professor — if it has all the doctrine of history in its microchips, might a robotic preacher be accepted? (Not pastor, that’s a different role, a caregiving role. But in purely a teaching role…)
    As for a worship leader, I’ve been in worship services where there was no “leader,” merely a CD playing or group song. Would having a robot conducting be that different?
    I literally have never considered the implications of robots and church before — thanks for the food for thought.

  5. linda carver says:

    What about clones?

    • Mark Carver says:

      That’s a real sticky issue. I hope we never get to that point in our society.

    • Travis Perry says:

      Science fiction clones are usually duplicates of human beings, but real cloning of a human would be simply taking a cell and getting it to grow into a person without using the regular reproductive cells. Clones as such would have to grow up the same as a human being and learn bit by bit the same as regular humans and would in every way be like a regular human, except they would be genetically identical to another human being, kind of like identical twins separated in time. Because of that, clones are not in the same category as an artificial life form.

      CYBORG humans do raise some interesting questions, though…

  6. Luke says:

    Actually, explaining the gospel to a really advanced AI could be good practice.

  7. P A Baines wrote a fantastic book about an AI that became a believer. It’s called Alpha Redemption.

What do you think?