N
newton3003
Guest
Does God allow for morality to be assigned to artificial intelligence?
I present this question because I came across an article in the Opinion section of Friday’s Wall Street Journal, under their ‘Houses of Worship’ column. The article is found at
https://www.wsj.com/articles/evange...5-4c21-494c-808d-28c47ed31620#comments_sector
The article seems to challenge a statement made by The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in their “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles.” The statement, according to the article, essentially says that “’ moral decision-making’ is the exclusive responsibility of humans.” The article seems to challenge that statement by saying, “Yet artificial intelligence can maneuver a Tesla. In an accident, THE CAR MAY NEED TO MAKE MORAL DECISIONS. Risking the safety of its passengers, should the vehicle dangerously swerve to avoid a pedestrian?”
I think most of us would think that you cannot assign morality to a machine, even to one with artificial intelligence. It is ironic that the WSJ would publish this article in the ‘Houses of Worship,’ with the writer making the above statement without any basis in the Bible. But just to be sure, I looked to see what the Bible may say about the matter and keeping in mind that ALL Scripture is breathed out by God for teaching, reproof, training and correction. And some of the passages I found may also lay waste to the notion, asserted by many religious groups, that you cannot make and use what God didn’t give you, such as immunizations and even the telephone.
First of all, God in Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and OVER ALL THE EARTH and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Well, with such a charge of dominion comes responsibilities. In the area of responsibility, man cannot put the blame on anything other than himself. He cannot imply that the fault lies with a machine for his not getting something done. Yes, the machine may have broken down, but whose responsibility was it to make it workable and to maintain it as such and to check to see that it works? Because man has dominion over “all the earth,” man is responsible.
As to the question of whether man is prohibited from using things that God didn’t make, thereby implying that man would need to create these things in order to use them, recall in Genesis the people who built the city of Babel in Genesis 11, tower and all. Babel didn’t exist when God created Adam and Eve. All that existed was the Garden of Eden, the physical earth and living things. No cities, no towers, no telephones, no artificial intelligence.
What was God’s reaction to the building of the city of Babel? Did He rain fire and brimstone on the inhabitants? Genesis 11:5-8 says, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.’ So, the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.”
Well, where does that leave the inhabitants? They are still alive and intact, but now they are so from different parts of the world, where they built other cities. And God did nothing further to them, until the evil He saw in cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did God destroy, say, Sodom? Genesis 13:13 says, “Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD.” They couldn’t have sinned because of Sodom, which wasn’t around in Adam and Eve’s time, was built later, for other cities existed when Sodom existed. And nowhere in passages before 13:13 does it say that building things, creating things in and of themselves, which serve to advance mankind in accordance with God’s command to Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful,” is a sin.
So, to the extent that things we create, like immunizations and the telephone, and artificial intelligence, serve to advance mankind, we can create all we want and avail ourselves of what we create. But inasmuch as we have dominion over all the earth, the moral responsibility of what we create rests with us.
And to say that a decision a self-driving automobile may make, which may cost the lives of either the inhabitants in the car or the pedestrians if the car chooses to hit them to avoid injury to its inhabitants, is not a moral decision that the car makes. It is a decision programmed into the car by man, who, as having dominion over the earth, must take total moral responsibility for having created such an automobile in the first place.
And to be sure, the Bible exerts a measure of morality on man. Passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:33 which says, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals,’” Shows that God would not be concerned with the existence of morals if they weren’t mentioned in the Scriptures.
I present this question because I came across an article in the Opinion section of Friday’s Wall Street Journal, under their ‘Houses of Worship’ column. The article is found at
https://www.wsj.com/articles/evange...5-4c21-494c-808d-28c47ed31620#comments_sector
The article seems to challenge a statement made by The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in their “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles.” The statement, according to the article, essentially says that “’ moral decision-making’ is the exclusive responsibility of humans.” The article seems to challenge that statement by saying, “Yet artificial intelligence can maneuver a Tesla. In an accident, THE CAR MAY NEED TO MAKE MORAL DECISIONS. Risking the safety of its passengers, should the vehicle dangerously swerve to avoid a pedestrian?”
I think most of us would think that you cannot assign morality to a machine, even to one with artificial intelligence. It is ironic that the WSJ would publish this article in the ‘Houses of Worship,’ with the writer making the above statement without any basis in the Bible. But just to be sure, I looked to see what the Bible may say about the matter and keeping in mind that ALL Scripture is breathed out by God for teaching, reproof, training and correction. And some of the passages I found may also lay waste to the notion, asserted by many religious groups, that you cannot make and use what God didn’t give you, such as immunizations and even the telephone.
First of all, God in Genesis 1:26 says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and OVER ALL THE EARTH and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Well, with such a charge of dominion comes responsibilities. In the area of responsibility, man cannot put the blame on anything other than himself. He cannot imply that the fault lies with a machine for his not getting something done. Yes, the machine may have broken down, but whose responsibility was it to make it workable and to maintain it as such and to check to see that it works? Because man has dominion over “all the earth,” man is responsible.
As to the question of whether man is prohibited from using things that God didn’t make, thereby implying that man would need to create these things in order to use them, recall in Genesis the people who built the city of Babel in Genesis 11, tower and all. Babel didn’t exist when God created Adam and Eve. All that existed was the Garden of Eden, the physical earth and living things. No cities, no towers, no telephones, no artificial intelligence.
What was God’s reaction to the building of the city of Babel? Did He rain fire and brimstone on the inhabitants? Genesis 11:5-8 says, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.’ So, the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.”
Well, where does that leave the inhabitants? They are still alive and intact, but now they are so from different parts of the world, where they built other cities. And God did nothing further to them, until the evil He saw in cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did God destroy, say, Sodom? Genesis 13:13 says, “Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD.” They couldn’t have sinned because of Sodom, which wasn’t around in Adam and Eve’s time, was built later, for other cities existed when Sodom existed. And nowhere in passages before 13:13 does it say that building things, creating things in and of themselves, which serve to advance mankind in accordance with God’s command to Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful,” is a sin.
So, to the extent that things we create, like immunizations and the telephone, and artificial intelligence, serve to advance mankind, we can create all we want and avail ourselves of what we create. But inasmuch as we have dominion over all the earth, the moral responsibility of what we create rests with us.
And to say that a decision a self-driving automobile may make, which may cost the lives of either the inhabitants in the car or the pedestrians if the car chooses to hit them to avoid injury to its inhabitants, is not a moral decision that the car makes. It is a decision programmed into the car by man, who, as having dominion over the earth, must take total moral responsibility for having created such an automobile in the first place.
And to be sure, the Bible exerts a measure of morality on man. Passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:33 which says, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals,’” Shows that God would not be concerned with the existence of morals if they weren’t mentioned in the Scriptures.
