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Tag: Travelers

Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac: How Travelers Re-visits the Biblical Story Through AI Theology

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together. Gen 22: 6-8.

One of the most powerful narratives of the Hebrew Bible is the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. The book of Genesis tells us that God, after promising and delivering a son to Abraham at old age, one day asked him to sacrifice him as an offer back to God. The absurdity of the request is matched by Abraham’s unquestioning obedience.

As he is taking Isaac to the place of sacrifice, the young boy asks where was the animal to be sacrificed. In a prophetic statement, the father of the Hebrew faith simply answered: “God will provide.” The agony and suspense continues as Abraham ties his sleeping son and raises the knife to end the young boy’s life. That is when God intervenes, relieving Abraham from the unbearable task of killing his own son. It was a gruesome test, but Abraham passed. Thinking of my 16 month-old boy, I cannot imagine ever coming this close.

Episode 3 of the third season of Travelers tells a story with too many parallels to the Old Testament story to ignore. For those not familiar with the show, let me give you a quick overview of its plot. Travelers are people from the a distant apocalyptic future whose consciousness travel to the present and take on bodies of those who are about to die. They work in teams to complete missions that are meant to change the course of history. They take their orders from an advanced AI that has the ability to work out the best alternative in other to improve the future. They refer to it simply as the Director. 

In episode three, Mack (Erick McCormack) the team leader, tries to re-trace their last mission. Waking up with a gap in his memory, he suspects that his team altered his memory for some unknown reason. The episode unfolds as Mack pieces together the events from the previous day.

Misguided Good Deeds Lead to Unintended Consequences

In season one, we met an adopted boy called Alecsander. As the team is executing their mission, the historian (the team member who knows the future),  throws a curve ball by sending them to save this little boy. He knew that the boy was in an abusive situation and therefore creates the intervention to save him. Seems like a noble action except that this was not in the Director’s plan. Travelers were trained to never deviate from the plan. Therefore, even though they are able to rescue the boy, the implications of this deviation are unknown.

Fast forward to episode three of season three, we eventually find out the team’s mission for the previous day. The Director, knowing that Alecsander was destined to become a psychopath, task the team to eliminate him. A reckless good deed, operating outside the director’s plan had created bigger problems for the future. It was time to course-correct.

Mack, the team leader, draws the responsibility to himself. They pick up the boy in his current foster home and their fears are confirmed. The boy was growing recluse and disturbingly violent with animals – early signs of a troubled adulthood to come.

Mack takes the boy to a deserted woods with the intention of killing him. . While walking in the woods, they find a struggling coyote who is facing a painful end of life. Mack ends his misery with a shot.

Next, they share a meal around the fire, cooking a rabbit the boy had previously caught. There, they have a heart-to-heart conversation where Mack demonstrates to the boy that he is seen, known and understood. Mack becomes the father that Alecsander never had. All of this only heightens the tension as these tender moments contrast with Mack’s dreadful mission. Just as Abraham, Mack agonizes over his assignment while also showing love to the troubled boy.

As the climactic scene begins, they dig a hole to bury the dead coyote. The altar is ready for the sacrifice. Once they place the dead animal in the designated place, Aleksander asks to say a prayer. As the boy is praying in memory of the dead animal, Mack steps back reluctantly. He pulls out his gun as he see the designated time of boy’s death approaches. He points the gun and prepares to pull the trigger. At that moment, just like Yahweh in Genesis, the director intervenes. Instead of an angel, the AI speaks through the boy : “mission abort.” Just like Isaac, the boy is spared.

Later in the episode, Mack’s teammates inform him that the director had a change of plans. Apparently, Mack’s heart-to-heart conversation with the boy changed his future. The assurance of love from a father figure was enough to halt a future of serial murders.

New Avenues of Meaning

There is so much to unpack in this episode that I can’t hardly do justice in a few paragraphs. As stated above, the episode draws some clear parallels with the biblical story but does not re-tell it outright. I honestly even wonder if the writers had the biblical story in mind when formulating the episode. Yet, using the Biblical story as a backdrop allows us to reflect deeper into the many themes addressed here.

One underlying theme throughout the show is the conflict between the AI’s plan and human action. Often times, travelers struggle to follow through with the mission as conditions on the ground change. At its core, it explores the philosophical debate between free-will and determinism. 

Classical theism resolves this tension on the side of determinism, often referred to as “God’s will.” In its extreme forms, this thinking paints the picture of a detached God whose plans and will cannot be altered. Hebrew Scripture does not always support this script as it contains some examples where Yahweh changed his mind. Yet, this idea of God’s immutability made its way into Western Christian thought early on and has persisted to our time. For many, God is the absolute ruler that controls every aspect of the universe while also demanding blind loyalty from humans. 

For the most part, the same is true in the relationship between the travelers and the Director. Mack, especially, is often the one who claims and demands unquestioning loyalty to the Director’s mission. This episode illustrates this well as Mack showed complete willingness to carry out the unthinkable mission of killing the young boy.

Yet, the emphasis of the episode is not on Mack’s loyalty but in how by showing love to the boy, he altered his future. Mack’s actions changed the director’s plans. It suggests that human action can bending the will of a greater being (or technology in this case).

Sacrificial love can alter divine plans.

Hence, this well-written Science-Fiction series challenges us to re-think our relationship with the divine. Is it possible to move the heart of God or is our job simply to accept his will? Do humans have real power to shape their future or is it all pre-determined by a higher power? 

What do you think?

Travelers Theology: Wrestling With a Powerful AI God

Recently, I was browsing through new shows on Netlflix when I stumbled upon Travelers. The premise seemed interesting enough to to make me want to check it out. From the very first episode, I was hooked. Soon after, my wife watched the first episode and it became a family affair. Starring Erick McCormack (Will & Grace) and directed by Brad Wright (Stargate), Travelers is a show about people from a distant future that come to the 21st century in an effort to change history to re-write their present.

You may wonder “Nothing new here, many shows and movies have explored this premise.” That is true. What makes Travelers unique is how they arrive in the present and how they explore emerging technologies in a thoughtful and plausible way. They travel back to time by sending the consciousness of people from the future into the bodies of those who are about to die in the 21st century. Having the benefit of knowing history allows them to pintpoint the exact time for arrival which makes for some pretty interesting situations (a wife about to be killed by her husband’s abuse, a mentally-challenged woman about to be attacked by robbers and a heroin-addict about to be overdose). The travelers then continue the life of their “host” making those around belief that they are still the same person that died.

Spoiler alert – the next paragraphs will openly discuss plots from the show

By the end of first season, we learn about the pivotal role AI plays in the plot. Throughout the first episodes, the travelers keep talking about “the director” who has a “grand plan.” That becomes their explanation for carrying out missions when they cannot understand why they are doing what they are told. They also follow 6 rules to ensure their behavior limits their interference in the past. At first, the viewers think they are talking about a person who is leading the effort. In the last episode of season 1, we learn that “the Director” is actually a Super Computer (a Quantum Frame) who is able to consider millions of possible scenarios and therefore direct travelers to their assign missions. We are really dealing with AI God, who is quasi-omniscient and demands human’s trust and devotion.

Exploring Rich Religious Imagery

While the show explores religious imagery throughout, this aspect comes to the forefront in episode 8 of Season two. In it, one of the travelers (aptly and ironically named Grace), is to be judged by three judges (programmers). The setting for that: a church. As they gathered in the sanctuary, the “Trinity” of programmers initiates proceedings under the watchful eye of the Director (through a tiny camera that records the event). Grace, an obnoxious traveler who is devoid of social skills, is charged with the crime of treason for taking action on her own initiative in direct challenge to the grand plan.

As the judgement unfolds, scenes that juxtapose the programmer judges with an empty cross in the background reinforce the explicit religious connection the writers are making here. Throughout the hearings, Grace insists that her actions, even if unorthodox, were only to save the Director. Yet, she is surprised to learn that the Director itself had summoned her judgment. She seems disappointed at that, wondering how would the Director judge her if it knew her intentions. This is an interesting assertion because it implies that the director actually knew her thoughts, raising it to the level of a god.

Grace is found guilty by the programmer trinity and is handed over to the director for her sentencing. They speculate that she will be overwritten. That is the worse punishment, which means she would not only die in the 21st century but her consciousness would cease to exist. It is the theological equivalent to eternal death or annihilation.

The next scene is probably one of the most profound and provocative of the whole show so far. Grace goes to a small room where she faces three large screens from where the Director will speak directly to her. This is the first time in the show where the audience gets to see the Director in action by itself rather than through messengers.

While she is no longer in the sanctuary, the room still has an empty cross in the background and evokes the idea of a confessional booth. At that point, I was really curious to know how they would portray the director. What kind of images would she see? Would it be of the machine itself or something else?

No machine but human faces show up in the screen. They are all older and seem to be in some type of life support. At times, they seem to represent Grace’s parents but that was not clear. In this climatic scene, Grace finds forgiveness from the Director and is not overwritten. The machine communicate divine qualities through human faces. Grace finds peace and absolution and re-affirms her trust and devotion to the Director. In short, she experiences a theophany: a watershed personal moment that reveals a new facet of the divine being to a human receiver.

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash
Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

A New Perspective on Omniscience

What to make of this? I must say that when I first learned of Levandowski’s efforts to create an AI religion, I discounted as sensational journalism. Surely there is a fringe of techno-enthusiasts that would follow that path. Yet, I could no see how such idea could be appealing to a wider audience. Seeing Traveler’s religious treatment of AI have made me re-think. Maybe an AI religion is not as far-fetched as I originally thought. An advanced AI bolstered by powerful hardware and connected to a vast digital history of information could indeed do a great job in optimizing timelines. That is, it could consider a vast amount of scenarios in ways that are unfathomable to the human mind. This could make it quasi-omniscient in a way that could elicit a god-like trust from humans. One could say such arrangement would be the triumph of secular science replacing a mythical god with a technological one.

From a Judeo-Christian perspective, an AI god would be the epitome of human idolatry. People worshiping idols except that for calf images are replaced by silicon superstructures that actually can hear, speak and think faster than any human. This would be an example of idols in steroids. As a firm believer in the benefits of AI, I do worry about human inclination towards idolizing tools. As a Christian, I owe my allegiance to a transcendent God. AI can only be formidable tool but nothing more.

Yet, the prospect of an AI god is still interesting in that it may helps us understand a transcendent God better. How so, you may ask? Religion is often defined by powerful metaphors. For some monotheistic faiths, God is a father. Such metaphor has obvious benefits as it elicits image of authority, provision and comfort. I wonder if using a powerful AI as a metaphor could reveal part of divinity that we have not explored before.

In a previous blog, I suggested that AI offered a paradigm of partnership for religion as opposed to blind obedience. Reflecting on Travelers’ portrayal of an AI God sheds light into the aspect of God’s omniscience and wisdom. A timeless being with infinite “processing capacity” could very well consider all the possible alternatives and come up with the best one that leads to the best outcome (to whatever that best is defined). In computer science terms, the best is defined by an objective function – basically the goal you are trying to achieve.

How is that different from previous views of omniscience and wisdom? In the past, omniscience was seen as the idea that God knows what decision  we will make and therefor ultimately knows the future. In some traditions, this idea was amplified into the concept of Predestination. The problem with such approach is that it limits God to one outcome and makes humans “automatons.” In other words, there is really no choice or risk – everything is pre-determined from the beginning. I suspect this view of God was heavily based on our own human mind that cannot consider more than 1 scenario for the future at a time.

What if God’s omniscience was more like the Super AI knowledge that is able to simultaneously consider multiple outcomes and then guide towards the better one or correct it when that path is undermined? Wouldn’t that be a fuller view of omniscience? This scenario allows for human choice while still attributing superior knowledge and control to God. Furthermore, this metaphor reveals a “smarter” God that is not bound by the one-track linear thinking of humans. Humanity realizes that their choices matter and can create alternative futures. Even so, they still have the comfort of a God who can see through all this, and guide it from a perspective that can consider manifold outcomes.

Such God would certainly be worthy of human obedience, awe and praise.