On 21st May at 1pm Dr Marius Dorobantu will give a seminar entitled ‘The Quest for Human-Level AI and its Implications for Theological Anthropology’.
A light sandwich lunch will be provided from 12:30 in the Healey Room, Westminster College, Madingley Road Cambridge.
Abstract: The developments taking place in the field of artificial intelligence are relevant for a science-engaged theology of the human being. In its attempt to endow computers with human-level intelligence, the field of AI is running before our eyes an intriguing large-scale experiment, which promises to respond to one of the questions that have fascinated humanity since immemorial times: can something like us be built through technological means? Whichever way this experiment goes, the implications are tantalizing. In my lecture, I will outline what the current successes and failures of AI might mean for theological anthropology. My thesis is that the ongoing AI revolution can serve as a catalyst for the clarification and refinement of our theological anthropology, not unlike how evolutionary theory did over the past two centuries. If a human-level intelligence is indeed possible without a humanlike underlying structure and phenomenological experience, this has profound consequences for how we can interpret theologically notions like human distinctiveness and the image of God, and how we understand our place and our peculiar dis-/abilities in a world shared with intelligent machines.
