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Month: June 2021

AI Artistic Parrots and the Hope of the Resurrection

Guest contributor Dr. Scott Hawley discusses the implications for generative models and resurrection. As this technology improves, the generation of new work attributed to the dead multiply. How does that square with the Christian hope for resurrection?

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous.”

(Fake) Ivan Illich

“The first thing that technology gave us was greater strength. Then it gave us greater speed. Now it promises us greater intelligence. But always at the cost of meaninglessness.”

(Fake) Ivan Illich

Playing with Generative Models

The previous two quotes are just a sample of 365 fake quotes in the style of philosopher/theologian Ivan Illich by feeding a page’s worth of real Illich quotes from GoodReads.com into OpenAI’s massive language model, GPT-3, and had it continue “writing” from there. The wonder of GPT-3 is that it exhibits what its authors describe as “few-shot learning.” That is, rather than requiring of 100+ pages of Illich as older models, it works with a few Illich quotes. Two to three original sayings and the GPT-3 can generate new quotes that are highly believable.

Have I resurrected Illich? Am I putting words into the mouth of Illich, now dead for nearly 20 years? Would he (or the guardians of his estate) approve? The answers to these questions are: No, Explicitly not (via my use of the word “Fake”), and Almost certainly not. Even generating them started to feel “icky” after a bit. Perhaps someone with as flamboyant a public persona as Marshall McLuhan would have been pleased to be ― what shall we say, “re-animated“? ― in such a fashion, but Illich likely would have recoiled. At least, such is the intuition of myself and noted Illich commentator L.M. Sacasas, who inspired my initial foray into creating an “IllichBot”:

…and while I haven’t abandoned the IllichBot project entirely, Sacasas and I both feel that it would be better if it posted real Illich quotes rather than fake rehashes via GPT-3 or some other model.

Re-creating Dead Artists’ Work

For the AI Theology blog, I was not asked to write about “IllichBot,” but rather on the story of AI creating Nirvana music in a project called “Lost Tapes of the 27 Club.” This story was originally mis-reported (and is still in the Rolling Stone headline metadata) as “Hear ‘New’ Nirvana Song Written, Performed by Artificial Intelligence,” but really the song was “composed” by the AI system and then performed by a (human) cover band. One might ask, how is this is different from humans deciding to imitate another artists?

For example, the artist known as The Weeknd sounds almost exactly like the late Michael Jackson. Greta Van Fleet make songs that sound like Led Zeppelin anew. Songwriters, musicians, producers, and promoters routinely refer to prior work as signifiers when trying to communicate musical ideas. When AI generates a song idea, is that just a “tool” for the human artists? Are games for music composition or songwriting the same as “AI”? These are deep questions regarding “what is art?” and I will refer the reader to Marcus du Sautoy’s bestselling survey The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI. (See my review here.)

Since that book was published, newer, more sophisticated models have emerged that generate not just ideas and tools but “performance.” The work of OpenAI’s Jukebox effort and artist-researchers Dadabots generate completely new audio such as “Country, in the style of Alan Jackson“. Dadabots have even partnered with a heavy metal band and beatbox artist Reeps One to generate entirely new music. When Dadabots used Jukebox to produce the “impossible cover song” of Frank Sinatra singing a Britney Spears song, they received a copyright takedown notice on YouTube…although it’s still unclear who requested the takedown or why.

Photo by Michal Matlon on Unsplash

Theology of Generative Models?

Where’s the theology angle on this? Well, relatedly, mistyping “Dadabots” as “dadbots” in a Google search will get you stories such as “A Son’s Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality” in which, like our Fake Ivan Illich, a man has trained a generative language model on his father’s statements to produce a chatbot to emulate his dad after he’s gone. Now we’re not merely talking about fake quotes by a theologian, or “AI cover songs,” or even John Dyer’s Worship Song Generator, but “AI cover Dad.” In this case there’s no distraction of pondering interesting legal/copyright issues, and no side-stepping the “uncomfortable” feeling that I personally experience.

One might try to couch the “uncomfortable” feeling in theological terms, as some sort of abhorrence of “digital” divination. It echoes the Biblical story of the witch of Endor temporarily bringing the spirit of Samuel back from the dead at Saul’s request. It can also relate to age-old taboos about defiling the (memory of) the dead. One could try to introduce a distinction between taboo “re-animation” that is the stuff of multiple horror tropes vs. the Christian hope of the resurrection through the power of God in Christ.

However I would stop short of this, because the source of my “icky” feeling stems not from theology but from a simpler objection to anthropomorphism, the “ontological” confusion that results when people try to cast a generative (probabilistic) algorithm as a person. I identify with the scientist-boss in the digital-Frosty-the-Snowman movie Short Circuit:

“It’s a machine, Schroeder. It doesn’t get pissed off. It doesn’t get happy, it doesn’t get sad, it doesn’t laugh at your jokes. It just runs programs.”

Short Circuit

Materialists, given their requirement that the human mind is purely physical, can perhaps anthropomorphize with impunity. I submit our present round of language and musical models, however impressively they may perform, are only a “reflection, as in a glass darkly” of true human intelligence. The error of anthropomorphism goes back for millenia, however, the Christian hope for resurrection addresses being truly reunited with lost loved ones. That means being able to hear new compositions of Haydn, by Haydn himself!

Acknowledgement: The title is an homage to the “Stochastic Parrots” paper of the (former) Google AI ethics team.

Scott H. Hawley is Professor of Physics at Belmont University and a Founding Member of AI and Faith. His writings include the winning entry of FaithTech Institute’s 2020 Writing Contest and the most popular Acoustics Today article of 2020, and have appeared in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith and The Transhumanism Handbook.

How Coded Bias Makes a Powerful Case for Algorithmic Justice

What do you do when your computer can’t recognize your face? In a previous blog, we explored the potential applications for emotional AI. At the heart of this technology is the ability to recognize faces. Facial recognition is gaining widespread attention for its hidden dangers. This Coded Bias short review summarizes the story of female researchers who opened the black box of major applications that use FR. What they found is a warning to all of us making Coded Bias a bold call for algorithmic justice.

Official Trailer

Coded Bias Short Review: Exposing the Inaccuracies of Facial Recognition

The secret is out, FR algorithms are a lot better at recognizing white male faces than of any other group. The difference is not trivial. Joy Buolamwini, MIT researcher and main character in the film, found that dark-skinned women were miss-classified up to 35% of the time compared to less than 1% for male white faces! Error rates of this level can have life-altering consequences when used in policing, judicial decisions, or surveillance applications.

Screen Capture

It all started when Joy was looking for facial recognition software to recognize her face for an art project. She would have to put a white mask on in order to be detected by the camera. This initial experience led her down to a new path of research. If she was experiencing this problem, who else and how would this be impacting others that looked like her. Eventually, she stumbled upon the work of Kathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, discovering the world of Algorithmic activism already underway.

The documentary weaves in multiple cases where FR misclassification is having a devastating impact on people’s lives. Unfortunately, the burden is falling mostly on the poor and people of color. From an apartment complex in Brooklyn, the streets of London, and a school district in Houston, local activists are mobilizing political energy to expose the downsides of FR. In doing so, Netflix Coded Bias shows not only the problem but also sheds light on the growing movement that arose to correct it. In that, we can find hope.

If this wasn’t clear before, here it is: watch the documentary Coded Bias multiple times. This one is worth your time.

The Call for Algorithmic Justice

The fight for equality in the 21st century will be centered on algorithmic justice. What does that mean? Algorithms are fast becoming embedded in growing areas of decision-making. From movie recommendations to hiring, cute apps to judicial decisions, self-driving cars to who gets to rent a house, algorithms are influencing and dictating decisions.

Yet, they are only as good as the data used to train them. If that data contains present inequities and or is biased towards ruling majorities, they will inevitably disproportionately impact minorities. Hence, the fight for algorithmic justice starts with the regulation and monitoring of their results. The current lack of transparency in the process is no longer acceptable. While some corporations may intended to discriminate, their neglect of oversight makes them culpable.

Because of its ubiquitous impact, the struggle for algorithmic justice is not just the domain of data scientists and lawmakers. Instead, this is a fight that belongs to all of us. In the next blog, I’ll be going over recent efforts to regulate facial recognition. This marks the next step in Coded Bias call for algorithmic justice.

Stay tuned.

3 Ways to Discover Strong Spiritual Connection Through Zoom

When our first online groups for Integral Christian Network started meeting in 2019, we spent a decent amount of time getting people up to speed on using a somewhat unfamiliar video conferencing technology called “Zoom.”

Obviously, that is no longer quite so necessary. Now we find the opposite problem, which has been deemed “Zoom fatigue.” To which I say, not all zoom meetings are created equal.

When we participate through technological systems of connection, what is the relationship between what we bring as active partakers and the limitations and offerings of the system itself? We might recognize that the platform is not neutral, but do we see how we also are not neutral as well? We are co-creating with technology to create new forms of connection and engagement.

Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

Deepening our Connections Online

At ICN, we gather together in groups of 5-10 for what we call “WeSpace.” These communities of practice connect those from around the world to share together in a meditative prayer practice of “Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.” As you might suppose, these are not meetings of passive, detached online “conferencing.”

Rather, we are seeking to actively engage with one another in spiritual and energetic ways that involve our whole bodies and our spiritual faculties—and a felt-sense of the interconnected space among us, not just our own separate, interior experiences in proximity to others. To do this, we must be present and engaged with one another with a fuller sort of attention, with openness and genuine care.

Sound a little scary? It can be. But don’t we all both fear and crave intimacy?

A surprising bit of feedback that we’ve received often is that it may actually be easier to be present in this way online. Coming from the safety of our own home, we are in a comfortable space. Women talk about not having to be on alert for any threats of unwanted advances or physical danger. The exit door is always just a click away—not that we want to be halfway out the door of course, but it’s some comfort to know you can always bail if things get dicey.

We are also face-to-face with one another. Or as we say it, heart-to-heart. This has a different felt sense than the circular or horizontal shoulder-to-shoulder dynamics of shared physical space in churches or otherwise.

In our groups, we engage the body in our meditative practice, bringing awareness and presence to our physical embodiment in the time and space we are sharing. We do this for many reasons, but it also serves to counter the sometimes “disembodied” presence many bring to digital spaces. This allows us to be more present to the fullness of ourselves—but also to one another in the WeSpace “field” of interconnection.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Creating a Field

If you’ve ever been a part of a zoom meeting where all participants have their videos off except for the presenter/teacher, you know the opposite of what I’m talking about. We might as well be watching a YouTube video.

And yet, can you feel a difference? Even those black boxes with names or pictures reflect a presence that you not just know is there, but perhaps even feel a little. You have the awareness of some kind of collective, shared space. It isn’t the same as watching a YouTube video, is it?

What does it look like to lean into the opposite movement, to press into rather than pull away from the interconnected space together? Of course, you need the right type of group and setting—though you can do it yourself in any meeting. Just like you can be more or less present to others when you are sharing a physical space. Though there are some differences for online space.

Here are a few things we’ve found that help.

First, overcome skepticism.

One of the things we hear over and over is the surprise people express about just how much they can actually feel and sense. Many come in skeptical that they can feel as connected to one another and God in an online space. “I didn’t think this would work over zoom” is a regular refrain.

Much more is possible than you might think.

Research from the HeartMath Institute has shown that our hearts create an electromagnetic field that can be detected up to three feet away from our bodies. In our meetings, we have seen over and over again that the spiritual energetics between us are not bound by space at all—perhaps even not by time as well.

Being fully present is a challenge both online and off – and we are not always aware how our movement of attention through digital portals affects our presence.

Of course, we don’t have the research here yet, nor do I know quite how it would be measured. But repeated anecdotal evidence continues to mount in our and other group experiences.

Second, enter the space.

In our meetings, we ask people to keep their heart facing the group and have their videos on the majority of the time. To create a shared field, we must be present to one another with attention and engagement. It’s not only distracting when someone is checking their phone or looking at something else, it can literally be felt as a diminishment of their presence and therefore the energy of the collective field.

Being fully present is a challenge both online and off—and we’re not always aware how our movement of attention through digital portals affects our presence. We need to become more conscious of this effect and seek to cultivate spaces with fewer distractions and more compelling engagement. This doesn’t mean everyone must speak, but that we keep attention and give ourselves to one another energetically.

We’ve found this comes not through putting on a better show to capture attention, but engaging more than just the mind in our shared space. When we’re present with our hearts, grounded in our bodies, and centered in our guts, we find that we’re less easily taken away by the wanderings of our mind.

Third, discover WeSpace

We are not separate from one another. Many are beginning to see this in the way our systems and technologies work. Further recognition of collective values and cultural conditioning show that our inner lives and decisions are not nearly as independent as we once thought. And spiritually, the age of individualism is fading. “The next Buddha will be a Sangha” Thich Nhat Hahn has declared, meaning that community is the great spiritual teacher.

Technology is often viewed as a consumer good to serve individuals and systems. But what if we begin more and more to utilize it not just for profits and efficiency, but for enhancing our ability to craft and cultivate authentic community of depth and presence with one another?

In so doing, we just might discover the next great spiritual teacher.

Us.  

Luke Healy is the co-founder of Integral Christian Network, an endeavor to help further the loving evolution of Christianity and the world. He is passionate about pioneering innovation in forms of spiritual community, in gathering like-minded and like-hearted pilgrims on the spiritual journey, and making mystical experience of God accessible in individual and collective practice.

4 Surprising Ways Emotional AI is Making Life Better

It’s been a long night and you have driven for over 12 hours. The exhaustion is such that you are starting to blackout. As your eyes close and your head drops, the car slows down, moves to the shoulder, and stops. You wake up and realize your car saved your life. This is just one of many examples of how emotional AI can do good.

It doesn’t take much to see the ethical challenges of computer emotion recognition. Worse case scenarios of control and abuse quickly pop into mind. In this blog, I will explore the potential of emotional AI for human flourishing through 4 examples. We need to examine these technologies with a holistic view that weighs their benefits against their risks. Hence, here are 4 examples of how affecting computing could make life better.

1. Alert distracted drivers

Detecting signs of fatigue or alcohol intoxication early enough can be the difference between life and death. This applies not only to the driver but also to passengers and occupants of nearby vehicles. Emotional AI can detect blurry eyes, excessive blinking, and other facial signs that the driver is losing focus. As this mental state is detected early, the system can intervene through many means.

For example, it could alert the driver that they are too tired to drive. It could lower the windows or turn on loud music to jolt the driver into focus. More extreme interventions would include shocking the drivers’ hands through the steering wheel, and also slowing or stopping the car in a safe area.

As an additional benefit, this technology could also detect other volatile mental states such as anger, mania, and euphoria. This could lead to interventions like changing temperature, music, or even locking the car to keep the driver inside. In effect, this would not only reduce car accidents but could also diminish episodes of road rage.

2. Identify Depression in Patients

As those who suffer from depression would attest, the symptoms are not always clear to patients themselves. In fact, some of us can go years suffering the debilitating impacts of mental illness and think it is just part of life. This is especially true for those who live alone and therefore do not have the feedback of another close person to rely on.

Emotional AI trained to detect signs of depression in the face could therefore play an important role in moving clueless patients into awareness. While protecting privacy, in this case, is paramount, adding this to smartphones or AI companions could greatly help improve mental health.

Our faces let out a lot more than we realize. In this case, they may be alerting those around us that we are suffering in silence.

3. Detect emotional stress in workplaces

Workplaces can be toxic environments. In such cases, the fear of retaliation may keep workers from being honest with their peers or supervisors. A narrow focus on production and performance can easily make employees feel like machines. Emotional AI systems embedded through cameras and computer screens could detect a generalized increase in stress by collecting facial data from multiple employees. This in turn could be sent over to responsible leaders or regulators for appropriate intervention.

Is this too invasive? Well, it depends on how it is implemented. Many tracking systems are already present in workplaces where employee activity in computers and phones are monitored 24-7. Certainly, this could only work in places where there is trust, transparency and consent. It also depends on who has access to this data. An employee may not be comfortable with their bosses having this data but may agree to ceding this data to an independent group of peers.

4. Help autistic children socialize in schools

The last example shows how emotional AI can play a role in education. Autistic children process and respond to social queues differently. In this case, emotional AI in devices or a robot could gently teach the child to both interpret and respond to interactions with less anxiety.

This is not an attempt to put therapists or special-needs workers out of a job. It is instead an important enhancement to their essential work. The systems can be there to augment, expand and inform their work with each individual child. It can also provide a consistency that humans also fail to provide. This is especially important for kids who tend to thrive in structured environments. As in the cases above, privacy and consent must be at the forefront.

These are just a few examples of the promise of emotional AI. As industries start discovering and perfecting emotional AI technology, more use cases will emerge.

How does reading these examples make you feel? Do they sound promising or threatening? What other examples can you think of?

A Beginner’s Guide to Emotional AI, Its Challenges and Opportunities

You walk into your living room, Alexa dims the lights, lowers the temperature, and says: “You look really sad today. Would you like me to play Adele for you?” This could be a reality in a few years. Are we prepared? This beginner’s guide to emotional AI will introduce the technology, its applications and ethical challenges.

We will explore both the opportunities and dangers of this emerging AI application. This is part of the broader discipline of affective computing that use different inputs from the human body (i.e.: heartbeat, sweat, facial expression, speech, eye movement, etc) to interpret, emulate and predict emotion. For this piece, we’ll focus on the use of facial expressions to infer emotion.

According to Gartner, by 2022, 10% of smartphones will have affective computing capabilities. Latest Apple phones can already detect your identity through your face. The next step is detecting your mental state through that front camera. Estimates of the Emotive AI market range around $36 Billion in 5 years. Human emotion detection is no longer a Sci-Fi pipe dream but a reality poised to transform societies. Are we ready for it?

How does Emotional AI work?

Our beginner’s guide to emotional AI must start with explaining how it works. While this technology is relatively new, its foundation dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. founded primarily in the idea humans display universal facial cues for their emotions. Charles Darwin was one of the first to put forth this idea. A century later, American psychologist Paul Eckman further elaborated on it through extensive field studies. Recently, scholars have challenged this universality and there is now no consensus on its validity. AI entrepreneurs bet that we can find universal patterns. Their endeavors are testing this theory in real-time with machine learning.

The first step is “training” a computer to read emotions through a process of supervised learning. This entails feeding pictures of people’s faces along with labels that define that person’s emotion. For example, one could feed the picture of someone smiling with the label “happy.” For the learning process to be effective thousands if not millions of these examples are created.

The computer then uses machine learning algorithms to detect common patterns in the many examples of each emotion. This enables it to establish a general idea of what each emotion looks like in every face. Therefore, it is able to classify new cases, including faces it has never encountered before, with these emotions.

By Prawny from Pixabay

Commercial and Public Applications

As you can imagine, there are manifold applications to this type of technology. For example, one of the greatest challenges in marketing is collecting accurate feedback from customers. Satisfaction surveys are few and far between and often inaccurate. Hence, companies could use emotional AI to capture instantaneous human reactions to an ad or experience not from a survey but from their facial reactions.

Affectiva, a leading company using this technology, already claims it can detect emotions from any face. It collected 10M expressions from 87 countries, hand-labeled by crowd workers from Cairo. With its recent merger with Smart Eye, the company is poised to become the leader in Automotive, in-cabin driver mental state recognition for the automotive industry. This could be a valuable safety feature detecting when a driver is under the influence, sleepy, or in emotional distress.

More controversial applications include using it for surveillance as it is in the case of China’s treatment of the Uighur population. Police departments could use it as a lie-detection device in interrogations. Governments could use it to track the general mood of the population by scanning faces in the public square. Finally, employers could use it as part of the interview process to measure the mental state of an applicant.

Ethical Challenges for Emotional AI

No beginner’s guide on emotional AI without considering the ethics of its impact. Kate Crawford, a USC research professor, has sounded the alarm on emotional AI. In her recently published book and through a number of articles, she makes the case for regulating this technology. Her primary argument is that using facial recognition to detect emotions is based on shaky science. That is, the overriding premise that human emotion can universally be categorized through a set of facial expressions is faulty. It minimizes a plethora of cultural factors lending itself to dangerous bias.

This is not just conjecture, a recent University of Maryland study detected an inherent bias that tends to show black faces with more negative emotions than white faces. She also notes that the machine learning process is questionable as it is based on pictures of humans emulating emotions. The examples come from people that were told to make a type of facial expression as opposed to capturing a real reaction. This can lead to an artificial establishment of what a facial representation of emotion should look like rather than real emotional displays.

This is not limited to emotion detection. Instead it is part of a broader partner of error in facial recognition. In 2018 paper, MIT researcher Joy Bulowanmini analyzed disparities in the effectiveness of commercial facial recognition applications. She found that misclassification rates for dark-skinned women were up to 34% compared to 0.8% for white males.

Photo by Azamat Zhanisov on Unsplash

The Sanctity of the Human Face

The face is the window to the human soul. It the part of the body most identified with an individual’s unique identity. When we remember someone, it is their countenance that shows up in our mind. It is indeed the best indicator of our internal emotional state which may often betray the very things we speak.

Up to recently, interpreting the mystery of our faces was the job of humans and animals. What does it mean to now have machines that can intelligently decipher our inner states? This is certainly a new frontier in the human-ai interface that we must tread carefully if for no other reason than to respect the sanctity of the human soul. If left for commerce to decide, the process will most likely be faster than we as a society are comfortable with. That is where the calls for regulation are spot on.

Like every technology – the devil is in the details. It would be premature to outlaw the practice altogether as the city of Seattle has done recently. We should, however, limit and monitor its uses – especially in areas where the risk of bias can have a severe adverse impact on the individual. We must also ponder whether we want to live in a society where even our facial expressions are subject to monitoring.

Netflix “Oxygen”: Life, Technology and Hope French Style


I am hesitant to watch French movies as the protagonist often dies at the end. Would this be another case of learning to love the main character only to see her die at the end? Given the movie premise, it was worth the risk. Similar to Eden,  Netflix Oxygen is a powerful exploration of the intersection of hope and technology.

It is uncommon to see a French movie make it to the top charts of American audiences. Given our royal laziness, we tend to stay away from anything that has subtitles preferring more the glorified-theatrics-simplistic plots of Hollywood. The French are too sophisticated for that. For them, movies are not entertainment but an art form.


Realizing I had never watched a French Sci-Fi Thriller, maybe it was time to walk down that road. I am glad I did. The next day, I reflected on the movie’s plot after re-telling the whole story to my wife and my daughter. Following the instigating conversation that ensued, I realized there was enough material for an AI theology review.

Simple Plot of Human AI Partnership


You wake up and find yourself trapped in a capsule. You knock on the walls eventually activating an AI that informs you that you are in a cryogenic chamber. There is no way of knowing how you got there and how you can get out. You have 90 minutes before the oxygen runs out. The clock is ticking and you need to find a way to survive or simply accept your untimely death.


Slowly the main character played by Melanie Laurent, Elizabeth, discovers pieces and puzzles about who she is, why she is in the chamber and ultimately what options she has. This journey is punctuated by painful discoveries and a few close calls building the suspense through out the feature.


Her only companion throughout this ordeal is the chamber AI voice assistant, Milo. She converses, argues and pleads with him through out as she struggles to find a way to survive. The movie revolves around their unexpected partnership, as the AI is her only way to learn about her past and communicate with the outside world. The contrast between his calm monotone voice with her desperate cries further energize the movie’s dramatic effect.


In my view, the plot’s simple premise along with Melanie’s superb performance makes the movie work even as it stays centered on one life and one location the whole time.


Spoiler Alert: The next sections give away key parts of the plot.

AI Ethics, Cryogenics and Space Travel


Oxygen is the type of film that you wake up the next day thinking about it. That is, the impact is not clearly felt until later. There is so much to process that its meaning does not become clear right away. The viewer is so involved in the main character’s ordeal that you don’t have time to reflect on the major ethical, philosophical and theological issues that emerge in the story.


For example, once Elizabeth wakes up, one of the first things Milo offers her is sedatives. She refuses, preferring to be alert in her struggle for survival rather than calmly accepting her slow death. In one of the most dramatic scenes of the movie, Milo follows protocol to euthanize her as she is reaching the end of her oxygen supply. In an ironic twist that Elizabeth picks up on: the AI asks her permission for sedatives but does not consult her about the ultimate decision to end her life. While a work of fiction, this may very well be sign of things to come, as assisted suicide becomes legal in many parts of the world. Is it assisted-suicide of humane end-of-life care?


In an interesting combination, Oxygen portrays cryogenics, cloning and space travel as the ultimate solution for human survival. As humanity faced a growing host of incurable diseases they send a spaceship with thousands of clones in cryogenic chambers to find the cure in another planet. Elizabeth, as she learns mid-way, is a clone of a famous cryogenics scientist carrying her memories and DNA. This certainly raises interesting questions about the singularity of the human soul. Can it really transfer to clones or are they altogether different beings? Is memory and DNA the totality of our beings or are there transcending parts impossible to replicate in a lab?

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Co-Creating Hopeful Futures


In the end, human ingenuity prevails. Through a series of discoveries, Liz finds a way to survive. It entails asking Milo to transfer the oxygen from other cryogenic chambers into hers. Her untimely awakening was the result of an asteroid collision that affected a number of other chambers. After ensuring there were no other survivors in these damaged chambers, she asks for the oxygen transfer.


To my surprise, the movie turns out to be a colossal affirmation of life. Where the flourishing of life is, there is also theology. While having no religious content, the story shows how the love for self and others can lead us to fight for life. Liz learns that her husband’s clone is in the spaceship which gives her a reason to go on. This stays true even after she learns she herself is a clone and in effect have never met or lived with him. The memory of their life together is enough to propel her forward, overcoming insurmountable odds to stay alive.


The story also illustrates the power of augmentation, how humans enabled through technology can find innovative solutions that extend life. In that sense, the movie aligns with a Christian Transhumanist view – one that sees humans co-creating hopeful futures with the divine.


Even if God is not present explicitly, the divine seems to whisper through Milo’s reassuring voice.

Netflix “Eden”: Human Frailty in a Technological Paradise

Recently, my 11 year-old daughter told me she wanted to watch animes. I have watched a few and was a bit concerned about her request. While I have come to really appreciate this art form, I feared that some thematic elements would not be appropriate to her 11 year-old mind. Yet, after watching the first episode of Netflix Eden, my concerns were appeased and I invited my two oldest (11 and 9) to watch it with me. With only 4 episodes of 25 minutes each, the series make it for a great way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, beyond being suitable there was enough that for me to reflect on. In fact, captivating characters and an enchanting soundtrack moved me to tears making Netflix Eden a delightful exploration of human frailty.

Here is my review of this heart-warming, beautifully written story.

Official Trailer

A Simple but Compelling Plot

Without giving a way much, the story revolves around a simple structure. From the onset we learn that no human have lived on earth for 1,000 years. Self-sufficient robots successfully turned a polluted wasteland into a lush oasis. The first scenes show groups of robots tending and harvesting an apple orchard.

Two of these robots stumble into an unlikely finding: a human child. Preserved in a cryogenic capsule, the toddler stumbles out and wails. The robots are confused and helpless as to how to respond. They quickly identify her as a human bio-form but cannot comprehend what her crying means.

After the initial shock, the toddler turns to the robots and calls them “papa” and “mama” kicking off the story. The plot develops around the idea of two robots raising a human child in a human-less planet earth. We also learn that humans are perceived as a threat and to be surrendered to the authorities. In spite of their programming, the robots choose to hide and protect the girl.

Photo by Bruno Melo on Unsplash

Are Humans Essential for Life to Flourish on Earth?

Even with only 4 episodes, the anime packs quite a philosophical punch. From a theological perspective, the careful observer quickly sees why the show is named after the Biblical garden. It is an illusion to the Genesis’ story where life begins on earth yet it includes with a twist. Now Eden is lush and thriving without human interference. It is as if God is recreating earth through technological means. This echoes Francis Bacon’s vision of technology as a way to mitigate the destructive effects of the fall.

Later we learn the planet had become uninhabitable. The robot creators envisioned a solution that entailed freezing cryogenically a number of humans while the robots worked to restore earth back to its previous glory. The plan apparently works except for the wrinkle of this girl waking up before her assigned time. Just like in the original story of Eden, humans come to mess it up.

Embedded in this narrative is the provocative question of human ultimate utility for life in the planet. After all, if machines are able to manage the earth flawlessly, why introduce human error? Of course, the flip side of the question is the belief that machines in themselves are free of error. Putting that aside, the question is still valid.

Photo by Alesia Kazantceva on Unsplash

Human Frailty and Renewal

Watching the story unfold, I could not help but reflect on Dr. Dorabantu’s past post on how AI would help us see the image of God in our vulnerability. That is, learning that robots could surpass us in rationality, we would have to attribute our uniqueness not to a narrow view of intelligence but our ability to love. The anime seems to be getting at the heart of this question and it gets there by using AI. It is in the Robot’s journey to understand human’s essence that we learn about what makes us unique in creation. In this way, the robots become the mirrors that reflect our image back to us.

Another parallel here is with the biblical story of Noah. In a world destroyed by pollution and revived through technological ingenuity, the ark is no longer a boat but a capsule. Humans are preserved by pausing the aging process in their bodies, a clear nod to Transhumanism. The combination of cryogenics and advanced AI can preseve human life on earth albeit for a limited number of humans.

I left the story feeling grateful for our imperfect humanity. It is unfortunate that Christian theology in an effort to paint a perfect God have in turn made human vulnerability seem undesirable. Without denying our potential for harm and destruction, namely our sinfulness, it is time Christian theology embraces and celebrate human vulnerability as part of our Imago Dei. This way, Netflix Eden, helps put human frailty back in the conversation.