How should Christians view artificial intelligence? - With Dr. John Lennox - Podcast Episode 76

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Welcome to the

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Got Questions podcast and today we're going to be discussing a very interesting topic, definitely not something that we've discussed so far on the podcast, but our special guest today is

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Dr. John Lennox. John Lennox is a professor of mathematics at the

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University of Oxford, a fellow in mathematics and the philosophy of science, and a pastoral advisor at Green Templeton College in Oxford.

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He's the author of numerous books on science and the big questions, as well as the intellectual defense of Christianity.

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He has lectured extensively around the world and has debated many public intellectuals and cultural commentators that include

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Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Singer among others. So Dr.

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John Lennox, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be on it and I like your logo,

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Got Questions. Thank you. That's what we do. In reading your books and hearing you speak,

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I know you, one of God's callings on your life is to answer some of the big questions out there. So today we're actually going to be discussing your most recent book, 2084, which is about artificial intelligence.

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So let me lead off with a question to get us started. So what is artificial intelligence? Why should we care about it?

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And why is there so much fascination about artificial intelligence? Well, that's three questions.

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So let's try and remember to take them in order. Artificial intelligence has two forms and they're really very different.

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The first form, which is called usually narrow AI, is the artificial intelligence systems that are up and running and used all over the place.

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So let's me describe a typical AI system consists of a computer, a powerful computer, a large database and software that recognizes patterns.

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So for instance, suppose we are interested in diseases of the lung, coronavirus hitting us or something like this.

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Our database may consist of half a million x -ray pictures of people's lungs and they're labeled with the diseases that they represent by top medical people.

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And then they take a picture of my lungs and the AI system compares the picture of my lungs with the 500 ,000 in the database and it matches the nearest one and it puts out a diagnosis.

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And these days that is used all the time and will give you usually a better diagnosis than your local hospital would.

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So it's a highly useful tool being used in diagnostics.

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Another example is connected with our smartphones. We have various AI systems.

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One of the simplest and most obvious is the tracker that tracks our purchases say on Amazon and then we find a little pop -up that says people that bought what you've just bought also were interested in so -and -so.

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And that's a very common mechanism. Now there are all kinds of pluses and minuses.

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We'll get into those in a little while. But the second kind of AI, which is artificial general intelligence, is very different.

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And the way to see the difference is to realize that the AI systems that are now up and running all do one thing and one thing alone that it normally requires human intelligence to do.

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That's why it's called artificial intelligence. It's not real intelligence. The system doesn't know what it's doing.

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It simulates intelligence doing something that it normally takes human intelligence to do.

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One thing. Now, AGI is the aim, because it's not been achieved yet, to produce a system that will do anything that a human intelligence can do, but much quicker and much better.

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And there are two directions in AGI research. The first is to take existing human intelligence and enhance it.

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Enhance it either by biological engineering, by drugs, or by cyborg inserts.

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That is combining humans with technology. That's one aim. So that's aiming for a human superintelligence.

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So a human with add -ons. The other way is to get rid of the biological dependence and start with material like silicon.

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And it's in that area we hear of people, futuristic notions of designing systems where we'll be able to upload the contents of our brain and we live forever and all that kind of thing.

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Now, artificial general intelligence, as you can immediately realize, is a playground for science fiction writers.

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But we have to take it seriously because some of the leading thinkers on our planet are taking it seriously.

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And some of the scenarios that they have developed are not at all encouraging.

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And so it's something that we do need to think about. But we need to remember that for all the talk by people like Ray Kurzweil, who's a pioneer in this area, of the singularity that is the time when the machines will take over, so to speak.

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All talk, every time I read about it, it's always at least 30 to 50 years in the future.

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So we're not there yet. But that's basically what it is.

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Now, what was your second question? Why should we care? And question three, why the fascination with it?

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Well, fascination, of course, with technology. And there's increased fascination when the technology turns out to be immensely powerful.

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And we're thinking now of a trillion dollar business, actually, is a huge amount of money being poured into this.

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And we should care because it has huge implications for the way we live.

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And we'll see that there are ethical downsides to it, which means we need to care in two directions.

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One, care because there are developments that are very positive, like the one I mentioned, and care because there are developments that invade our privacy and are very negative.

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So there's every reason for people in general to care, and for Christians in particular to care, because particularly with the

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AGI scenarios, it impacts on our concept of what a human being is, because some of the research is geared to altering human beings.

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So that's my brief answer to your question. So you mentioned earlier that we're not there yet.

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So where exactly are we in the development of AGI? And what's your viewpoint on how far are we away from actually achieving some of the things that they're aiming for?

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Well, I don't claim to be a prophet. And asking a question of where we are would involve in a sense of knowing exactly where we're going to be, and we don't know answer to those questions.

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But what we know is that the technology is powering ahead. If you follow on any news server, the news and artificial intelligence, there are dozens of articles every day, and we're powering ahead in various areas, in medicine, in face recognition and its use in the criminal setting, and for other reasons, which we'll explore in a moment, in medicine, in consumer tracking, and all that kind of thing.

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And it's outpacing our ability to think. And in particular, as many people have noticed, the

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AI is developing so rapidly that it is developing much more rapidly than the ethics needed to control it.

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And that raises questions itself. But how far away we are from these landmark ideas like singularities,

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I just wouldn't have any idea, because there are very different opinions about it. Some feel it's just around the corner.

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Others feel it isn't. And what I see is a massive question. And here it is.

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You see, Alan Turing, the genius that solved the problem of the

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Enigma machine and shortened World War II, he saw a day when perhaps the machines, as he thought, would take over.

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But he realized, and many other people have realized afterwards, that we could perhaps construct machines that would do the tasks that human intelligence normally was required for, but without them being conscious.

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Now, here's a very interesting area to me, because in humans, God, I believe, has created intelligence connected with consciousness.

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But since nobody knows, from a scientific perspective, what consciousness is, then the whole idea that we're going to create a conscious entity, a conscious machine,

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I think is off the scale at the moment, simply because we don't even know what we would be trying to create.

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So I would be very cautious. And there are leading thinkers, philosophers, medics, and scientists in the world who would urge a word of caution.

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Other people are cautious for other reasons, because they're afraid of what we might develop. But that's another story.

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So having grown up in my generation, it seemed like every movie that would come out that involved machines becoming self -aware, the singularity, the omega point, or whatever you wanted to call it.

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The next step is the machines deciding to kill all the human beings. So whether it's the Terminator franchise, or the

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Matrix, or even most recently, the Avengers Ultron movie, where as soon as the machines become self -aware, things go very poorly for humanity.

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So are you a techno -optimist or a techno -pessimist? Well, I'm both, actually, depending on what we're thinking about.

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And you're quite right. It's very interesting noticing scenarios not that come from films, although many of the film scenarios come from science fiction.

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And science fiction tends to be attached to science. But take a genuine scientist like Max Tegmark of Princeton.

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It's very interesting. He lists a whole lot of scenarios in his book Life 3 .0.

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And most of them have a negative attitude towards humanity. And Stephen Hawking, the late

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Stephen Hawking, a brilliant physicist, he said the problem with artificial intelligence in this sense is competence.

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It would be so much more competent than human beings. And he said, fine, if whatever its ethics are, if that makes sense, are in line with ours, well, we may be

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OK. But what happens if it doesn't? Then we're in serious trouble. And some people have even suggested that if we ever make an ultra -intelligent machine, which by definition would be able to make everything else in the future, it'll probably be the last act of humanity.

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And there are various negative scenarios. C .S. Lewis saw it brilliantly years ago.

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And I'm old enough to have listened to him lecture in Cambridge all those years ago in his book

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That Hideous Strength, the final book of his trilogy. Why I would be pessimistic in one sense is because the

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Bible itself is not neutral on this issue. And the book of Revelation, combined with the plain straightforward statements of Paul, indicate that in the end times, whenever they shall be, there will be a world government and it will be led by an entity, whatever it is.

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But Revelation indicates it's a human being, but with extraordinary powers. And it's very interesting.

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And I mentioned this in my book, that Tegmark, the thing he concentrates on most, that is his scenario that he gives maximum exposure to, is of a world government called

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Prometheus. And this government effectively controls the economy of the planet by forcing everybody to wear a bracelet that if you don't obey the government, it injects you with a lethal poison and you die.

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Now, the book of Revelation is something very similar, and that is a mark that is on a person's forehead and is an identification mark.

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And of course, we are moving towards that very rapidly. I have a smartphone that uses facial recognition to recognize my face.

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I've got a unique marking, so to speak. So I believe, and this is what I often say to people, look, if you're prepared to think and take seriously scenarios like the ones you mentioned coming out of those films or Max Tegmark scenarios, then

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I would ask you, before you dismiss Christianity, to have a look at the scenario that it sets forward.

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Because we need to take that, I believe, very seriously. Because as distinct from the

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AGI scenarios of the science fiction people, the biblical scenario has far more evidence going for it.

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So what makes us human? I really enjoyed your discussion in 2084 of this conversation, and why does it matter in relation to artificial intelligence?

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Well, I think the dignity of human beings is conveyed in a statement that Jordan Peterson in a lecture on the book of Genesis said was the foundation of Western values and civilization.

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And that is the fact that human beings, according to the biblical worldview, are made in the image of God as moral and intelligent beings.

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And this gives us immense value and dignity. The Bible tells us that the universe shows the glory of God.

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And I love watching the stars through my telescope in my back garden. But the heavens, although they show

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God's glory, they weren't made in his image. We are. And that gives us huge dignity.

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But it also means that if we start to mess about with the fundamental constitution of human beings, now that's distinct from repairing a broken leg or giving me glasses so that I can see you clearly.

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If we start to mess around with the germline so that we specify the kind of human beings that will come out in the future,

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I see as Lewis points out, they won't be human at all. They'll simply be human artifacts. Then I think when we start to play

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God, we're playing with some very dangerous fire. And it would seem that there are quite a number of people around this world who argue simply if it can be done, it should be done, and they'll do it.

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So we can see some fairly horrific things developing, human chimeras and so on.

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So it seems to me that in this whole debate, it is very important for Christians to be totally comfortable with the biblical worldview.

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And I always say one thing that we often have forgotten is how human beings are so special that God could become one.

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Because the central statement, the central claim of Christianity is that God became human.

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The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now, if humans are that special, we need to be very careful what we do to them.

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And that ought to be a basic line we shouldn't cross ethically.

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Yeah. So aside from the implication is artificial intelligence mixing with humanity and so forth, what are some of the other moral and ethical dilemmas that you anticipate or that you even see happening now that Christians need to be aware of on this issue?

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Oh, we all can see them now. For example, let's take one example with two applications.

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Facial recognition or human body movement recognition, because these cameras now are so sophisticated, they can recognize you from the way you move.

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And so they can tell you from behind and not simply in front. Now, facial recognition technology is clearly very useful to a police force to pick out terrorists in a baseball crowd.

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But unfortunately, it's being used by certain regimes in the world to persecute minorities.

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And particularly, as far as we understand among the Uyghur population in China, it has reached an incredible degree of suppression.

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And that is a very scary development, especially when you read expert commentators on China saying, just remember, you folks in the

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West, that all the technology needed to do this is already in the

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West. And some people are calling for it to be used more widely. And the point they make is the only difference between East and West is that in the

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West, it is not yet under full state control.

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So there's that. I often call that, in the book, I called it surveillance communism.

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But then there's a surveillance capitalism. And all of us, and here we voluntarily wear our smartphone trackers that are following all we do and maybe following all we say.

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And all that information that we feed into them is being stored. And what many of us do not realize, it is being sold without our permission to third parties, to huge corporations.

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And that is what is called surveillance capitalism. And there's a book with that title by a brilliant MIT retired professor

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Shoshana Zuboff. And it has come to the attention of some of the world's leading thinkers who say that is one of the most important books that recently have been written.

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So there are two sides, intrusion of privacy and giving us security.

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And the dilemma that many people and governments are up against, how much are we prepared to allow our privacy to be invaded in order to assure our security?

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And this, of course, is going to be a running sore for a very long time and an increasing sore for a long time to come.

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So there are pluses and there are minuses, which is why I think we need to have especially thoughtful Christians who are science nerds or buffins going into this field to develop the good stuff, but also to know the subject from inside so they can comment intelligently on developing the ethics necessary.

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This is not an area to keep out of. It's an area to get into, but doing it in the right way.

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So this is a Got Questions podcast with Dr. John Lennox on his book, 2084,

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The Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. So for our final question, I strongly encourage our listeners to purchase the book.

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It's a great read. It's amazing how you transition in the book from discussing the issues we have to a more biblical focus at the end.

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So my final question to you, how does our aims with AI pale in comparison to what

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God has already accomplished through Christ? Well, that's a very important question, and what it hints at is that there's an irony about all these developments.

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Take, for example, a world bestselling book, Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari, an

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Israeli historian. He's not a scientist, but he's grasped worldwide attention by his book,

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Homo Deus, which is Latin for the man who is God or a God man. And he says that there are two major agendas for humanity for the 21st century.

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Number one is conquering physical death so that humans, although they may die, they don't have to die.

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He says death is simply a technical problem, and it will have a technical solution. The second thing is to enhance human happiness, and his program for doing that is by drugs, genetic engineering, all this kind of thing, making new man and transferring man from the animal from which he's come, according to Harari, from Homo sapiens into Homo Deus, in other words, turning humans into a kind of God.

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Now, the interesting thing about that is that's a very ancient agenda. It starts on page two or three of the

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Bible. When the temptation came to the first humans, they were told by God's enemy that God actually wanted to suppress them and didn't want them to realize their full potential, so they should eat of the forbidden fruit, and then they'd be as gods.

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There you are, the man who is God, knowing good and evil. And they did not realize it would be a half truth because the knowledge of good and evil is not knowledge you want to have.

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And ever since, the lie has been spread about by all kinds of philosophers, thinkers, and even religious people, that God is trying to suppress you.

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If you want to rise to your full potential, the best way is to get rid of God, be autonomous, and realize that you can be a

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God. And now, with all this addition. Now, it's very interesting that this is a human attempt to become as God.

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The Christian message is the exact opposite of that. It tells us that we can't do it.

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The attempts to do it have been absolutely catastrophic. For instance, in the eugenics of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the attempt to make a new man led to the death of millions of people.

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We can't reach God, but God can reach us. The Christian message is the opposite of the

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AGI message. It's not that you can reach God by all this technology, but it's

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God can reach you by becoming human. The word became flesh.

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Now, Harari's agenda is to conquer physical death.

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And when people mention that to me, I say, well, he's far too late. And they say, what do you mean?

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I said, the problem of physical death has actually already been solved 20 centuries ago by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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And here's the good news. What that implies is that Christ is still alive today.

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And if we're prepared to trust him and repent of the mess we've made of our own lives and those of others, if that's what has happened, he's prepared to receive us and do what?

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Give us what the Bible calls eternal life, a new life and a new power that will survive death.

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His resurrection guarantees the resurrection of the believer. So as I speak to you on this podcast,

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I am utterly sure that one day if I die in the meantime, because I believe that Christ will return at some stage, if I die in the meantime,

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I will be raised from the dead. I don't have to go into a cryogenic freezing chamber and wait in the hope that someone will be able to upload my brains.

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All these things are so speculative. But I believe in the Christian message because there's powerful evidence for it, in which

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I've argued that many of my books, videos, know all this kind of thing. And we can't do today. But as a scientist and as a

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Christian believer, I'm utterly convinced that Christ has the solution to the problem of physical death and to the ultimate enhancement.

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Because when he returns and raises believers from the dead, this will be the ultimate upload.

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And when I realized that here in Scripture is the true version of what is parody and artificial intelligence,

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I sensed that I had something to say to the Christian community to encourage them that they have something to say into this world where AI is a major buzzword.

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So again, John, thank you for being on the show today. It's a privilege. It's an honor. I've read many of your books and watched countless videos.

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Some of your debates with some of the prominent atheists have been hugely impactful for me and the ministry.

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I got questions and helping equip us to know how to answer some of these objections. So I will include links to videos, your books, and so forth on the show notes for this episode, also at the description when we publish this on YouTube, and then also at podcast .gotquestions

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.org. I just wanted to close by reading the final paragraph of 2084, where it says,

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The wonder is that we can, if we desire, become part of this unending story and live in eternal fellowship with the infinitely intelligent and compassionate

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Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Nothing artificial can compare with that reality.

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So Dr. Lennox, it's been great having you on the show. I truly appreciate your time today. Thank you very much indeed.

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And God bless you and guide you to what he has next for you. So this has been the

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Got Questions podcast. Got questions? The Bible has answers. And we'll help you find them.