This four-part series started with the suggestion that AI can be of real help to theologians, in their attempt to better understand what makes humans distinctive and in the image of God. We have since noted how different machine intelligence is from human intelligence, and how alien-like an intelligent robot could be ‘on the inside’, in spite of its humanlike outward behavior.
For theological anthropology, the main takeaway is that intelligence – understood as rationality and problem-solving – is not the defining feature of human nature. We’ve long been the most intelligent and capable creature in town, but that might soon change, with the emergence of AI. What makes us special and in the image of God is thus not some intellectual capacity (in theology, this is known as the substantive interpretation), nor something that we can do on God’s behalf (the functional interpretation), because AI could soon surpass us in both respects.
The interpretation of the imago Dei that seems to account best for the scenario of human-level AI is the relational one. According to it, the image of God is our special I-Thou relationship with God, the fact that we can be an authentic Thou, capable to receive God’s love and respond back. We exist only because God calls us into existence. Our relationship with God is therefore the deepest foundation of our ontology. Furthermore, we are deeply relational beings. Our growth and fulfillment can only be realized in authentic personal relationships with other human beings and with God.
AI and Authentic Relationality
It is not surprising that the key to human distinctiveness is profoundly relational. Alan Turing tapped right into this intuition when he designed his eponymous test for AI. Turing’s test is, in fact, a measurement of AI’s ability to relate like us. Unsurprisingly, the most advanced AIs still struggle when it comes to simulating relationships, and none has yet passed the Turing test.
But even if a program will someday convincingly relate to humans, will that be an authentic relationship? We’ve already seen that human-level AI will be anything but humanlike ‘on the inside.’ Intelligent robots might become capable to speak and act like us, but they will be completely different from us in terms of their internal motivation or meaning systems. What kind of relationship could there be between us and them, when we’d have so little in common?
We long for other humans precisely because we are not self-sufficient. Hence, we seek others precisely because we want to discover them and our own selves through relationships. We fall in love because we are not completely rational. Human-level AI will be the opposite of that: self-sufficient, perfectly rational, and with a quasi-complete knowledge of itself.
The Quirkiness of Human intelligence
Our limitations are instrumental for the kind of relationships that we have with each other. An argument can thus be made that a significant degree of cognitive and physical vulnerability is required for authentic relationality to be possible. There can be no authentic relationship without the two parts intentionally making themselves vulnerable to each other, opening to one another outside any transactional logic.
A hyper-rational being would likely have very serious difficulties to engage fully in relationships and make oneself totally vulnerable to the loved other. It surely does not sound very smart.
Nevertheless, we, humans, do this tirelessly and often at high costs, exactly, perhaps, because we are not that intelligent and goal oriented as AI. Although that appears to be illogic, it is such experiences that give meaning and fulfillment to our lives.
From an evolutionary perspective, it is puzzling that our species evolved to be this way. Evolution promotes organisms that are better at adapting to the challenges of their environment, thus at solving practical survival and reproduction problems. It is therefore unsurprising that intelligence-as-problem-solving is a common feature of evolved organisms, and this is precisely the direction in which AI seems to develop.
If vulnerability is so important for the image of God as relationship, does this imply that God too is vulnerable?
What is strange in the vast space of possible intelligences is our quirky type of intelligence, one heavily optimized for relationship, marked by a bizarre thirst for meaning, and plagued by a surprising degree of irrationality. In the previous post I called out the strangeness of strong AI, but it is we who seem to be strange ones. However, it is specifically this kind of intellectual imperfection, or vulnerability, that enables us to dwell in the sort of Goldilocks of intelligence where personal relationships and the image of God are possible.
Vulnerability, God, Humans and Robots
If vulnerability is so important for the image of God as relationship, does this imply that God too is vulnerable? Indeed, that seems to be the conclusion, and it’s not surprising at all, especially when we think of Christ. Through God’s incarnation, suffering, and voluntary death, we have been revealed a deeply vulnerable side of the divine. God is not an indifferent creator of the world, nor a dispassionate almighty, all-intelligent ruler. God cares deeply for creation, to the extent of committing to the supreme self-sacrifice to redeem it (Jn. 3: 16).
This means that we are most like God not when we are at our smartest or strongest, but when we engage in this kind of hyper-empathetic, though not entirely logical, behavior.
Compared to AI, we might look stupid, irrational, and outdated, but it is paradoxically due to these limitations that we are able to cultivate our divine likeness through loving, authentic, personal relationships. If looking at AI teaches theologians anything, it is that our limitations are just as important as our capabilities. We are vulnerable, just as our God has revealed to be vulnerable. Being like God does not necessarily mean being more intelligent, especially when intelligence is seen as rationality or problem solving
Christ – whether considered historically or symbolically – shows that what we value most about human nature are traits like empathy, meekness, and forgiveness, which are eminently relational qualities. Behind such qualities are ways of thinking rooted more in the irrational than in the rational parts of our minds. We should then wholeheartedly join the apostle Paul in “boast[ing] all the more gladly about [our] weaknesses […] for when [we] are weak, then [we] are strong” (2 Cor. 12: 9-10).
