Thank you, Gnanak Gerhardson Munnangi, for such a deep question.
With its increasing development in various fields, Artificial Intelligence resembles more and more its sci-fi representations from novels and movies of the last century. Some philosophers and scientists, such as Nick Bostrom, believe that once AI reaches the level of human intelligence, it will rapidly surpass it, becoming capable of feats that might be not just incredible for human beings, but outright unimaginable – becoming what is called, a Super Intelligence.
It is in this context, then, that questions such as yours arise. In order to properly answer it, we need to ask a preliminary question: What do we mean by God? In monotheistic traditions, God is generally conceived as an uncreated creator, the cause of reality that is not caused by anything else. In a trivial sense, then, AI cannot be considered a God, no matter how intelligent it may be, because it was itself created – by us. However, one can understand the term ‘God’ in a looser way: as an entity that exercises power over a portion of reality. This interpretation applies to gods of polytheistic religions, due to their associations with particular natural elements or practices. The godly nature of Ares, Athena, Poseidon or Dionysos was determined by their influence over one area of the reality inhabited by humans, who needed to recognize their power to avoid paying severe consequences.
This understanding of divinity still assumes that the god is not created by human beings, which is not the case for any technology. Technology has always played a key role throughout the evolutionary path of human beings. However, the development of artificial intelligence, especially in the new millennium, brought something unexpected: technology can now be said to dictate the rules of human life. Since the industrial revolution, machines became an integral part of many work environments, to the point that knowledge of how the machines worked became necessary for the very possibility of working. The widespread success of vehicles such as cars deeply shaped the landscape and everyday practices in the majority of the world. And just think about this post, which is enabled by the existence of Facebook and needs to follow the platform’s rules in order to be published – if any of us Armchair Philosophers didn’t know how to use Facebook or disagreed with its Terms and Conditions, our work here would not be possible. Technology has dictated the rules of our social and work life for a long time; and with the diffusion of AI in everyday contexts, at both the individual and societal level, this is now more true than we could ever have imagined.
AI might already be considered somewhat godly, in the sense that it dictates the rules of our everyday life, in a similar way that sacred texts, divine figures and rituals used to, and still do for religious believers. Just as the Bible and other religious institutions, the digital revolution brought about new standards for what one is supposed to know and do. However, this is the case only because human beings integrated AI as a fundamental part of everyday practices; AI has not shown the creative power and independence traditionally attributed to divinities. With the (probable) advent of Super Intelligence, however, things might change in this regard.
What do you think? Is AI on its way to becoming god-like? Let us know in the comments.
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I did my BA in Rome, Università La Sapienza, where I graduated with a thesis about the contemporary debate on personal identity. I am now doing my Research Master’s in Philosophy of Mind at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. I am specifically researching how digital environments (and especially social networking sites) influence our understanding of the world and of others. I like Wittgenstein and theories of extended cognition, which argue that items external to the brain can constitute cognitive processes. I am fascinated by the idea of the cyborg and how the digital revolution is changing our understanding of the world.