Can Singularity and Christianity coexist?
by Jason E. Summers
Artificial intelligence (AI) is back in the news with a game-show win against humans to add to its scorecard.
Among the loudest voices expounding on the win are those who see in it a harbinger of the Singularity – a moment when AI surpasses human intelligence. Media outlets from The Atlantic to PBS’Charlie Rose are trying to unravel the claims of that movement’s most prominent proponent, Ray Kurzweil, for a confused public. Christians in particular may wonder whether their theology allows for Singularity and how to respond to Kurzweil’s claim that it will lead to eternal life.
In a recent Time cover story Lev Grossman argues, “[y]ou may reject…the Singularitarian charter, but you should admire Kurzweil for taking the future seriously. Singularitarianism is grounded in the idea that change is real and that humanity is in charge of its own fate.” This reduction of the movement to its core aspirations formulates the primary question Christians should ask: is this quintessentially humanist manifesto as compelling and admirable as Grossman believes it is?
Coined by Vernor Vinge and popularized by Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity has ebbed and flowed in public interest, buoyed by high-profile displays of artificial intelligence (AI) such as the recent win on “Jeopardy!” by IBM’s Watson computer. Borrowing language from astrophysics, Vinge and Kurweil describe the Singularity as that moment in time at which technological progress effects such a significant paradigm shift it creates an event horizon. This shift, they claim, will result from AI that exceeds human intelligence, which will so radically alter what is possible that later events cannot be predicted. Moreover, Kurzweil argues that the Singularity is certain, an inevitable consequence of exponential increases in technological capacity….
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