AI

1
AI Atheism

• AI Mind without Mysticism
• Atheism Life, the Universe, and Everything
  without Mysticism

2
Conciliatory Preface

• Religious beliefs are a very significant and
  personal aspect of ones world view.
• Every individual must be free to make up their
  own mind about religion without undue coercion
  from any educational or governmental authority.
• I condemn and decry our own governor's approval
  and promotion of constitutionally illegal prayer
  at mandatory school events.
• As long as one does not contaminate ones
  scientific hypotheses with un-falsifiable
  supernatural explanations, one can be a devout
  theist and an effective, productive scientist.

3
Science and Religion Disjoint??

• Science and religion have been claimed to be
  compatible since they address different issues
  (S. Gould, The Rocks of Ages)
• Science is about The ages of rocks
• Predictive theories of the material world.
• Religion is about The Rock of Ages
• Spirituality and morality.
• Tell that to Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and
  other scientists that have been persecuted,
  despised, defamed, repressed, censored,
  criticized and/or ignored because their science
  conflicted with prevailing religious beliefs.

4
My Own Incompatible Experience

• I was raised as a devout Catholic with 8 years of
  parochial, religious education.
• I became an atheist because, as I learned more
  and more about science, I found scientific
  explanations for physical, psychological, and
  ethical/moral phenomena much more believable and
  compelling.
• My beliefs about materialism and atheism are a
  fairly important component of why I believe
  (strong) AI must be possible.

5
Science (and AI) vs. Religion

• One of the original motivations for religion was
  to provide explanations of phenomenon that are
  now the province of scientific explanations.
• Many psychological phenomena that are
  traditionally explained with spiritual,
  non-physical causes are now the province of
  computational (AI) explanations.

6
The History of Religion and Science
Phenomenon
Explanation
Thunder and Lightening
God
Atmospheric Electrical Discharge
Origin of Species
God
Evolution by Natural Selection
Origin of Humans
God
Evolution by Natural Selection
Origin of the Universe
God
Big Bang
Origin of Life
God
Molecular Evolution
Intelligence
God
Computation/AI
Consciousness
God
Computation/AI
Free Will
God
Computation/AI
7
Explaining Away

• When evidence for one explanation increases,
  evidence for other competing explanations
  decreases.
• A form of common-sense reasoning that is
  formalized in AI as abductive and Bayesian
  inference.
• Bayesian formalization demonstrates that
  explaining away is a mathematically sound and
  correct form of inference.

8
A Bayes-Net View of Science and Religion
God
Big Bang
AI
Evolution
Origin of Universe
Origin of Life
Origin of Humans
Intelligence
Consciousness
9
Bayesian Priors

• Belief in any proposition depends on its prior
  probability.
• A priori, belief in the existence of entities
  should have very low priors (Occams razor)
  otherwise, what prevents belief in a
  proliferation of entities?
• I dont believe in God for the same reason I
  dont believe in other entities that have no real
  explanatory power.
• Fairies
• Unicorns
• Santa Claus
• Easter bunny
• etc.

10
Laplace, Napoleon, and God

• Upon the completion of his magnum opus Exposition
  du système du monde, Laplace is said to have had
  the following conversation with Napoleon
• Napoleon You have written this huge book on the
  system of the world without once mentioning the
  author of the universe.
• Laplace Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.

11
Dualism vs. Materialism

• Dualism The belief that mind, consciousness,
  cognition, and intelligence are separate and
  distinct from the material world and cannot be
  explained as purely physical processes.
• Rene Descartes was a dualist who believed that
  the mind made contact with the physical body
  through the pineal gland at the back of the
  brain.
• Materialism The belief that mind, consciousness,
  cognition, and intelligence are physical
  processes that can be explained through normal
  scientific investigation of the material world.

12
AI ? Materialism ? Atheism

• Strong AI seems to imply materialism.
• If purely physical, deterministic machines can be
  intelligent, then mind is a physical phenomenon.
• Materialism seems to imply atheism.
• If the human mind is a purely physical phenomenon
  (Minskys meat machine), then there is no
  immaterial soul or spiritual free-will.
• Atheism seems to imply materialism.
• If there is no spiritual world, then mind must be
  a physical phenomenon.
• Materialism seems to imply strong AI.
• If mind is a physical process and computers can
  emulate any physical process (strong
  Church-Turing thesis), then AI must be possible.

13
Are Religion and Strong AI Compatible?

• If all behavior is the result of physical causes
  in the material world, then there is no
  metaphysical free will.
• Without dualism, how does human behavior and
  morality relate to a non-material God?
• If a truly artificially intelligent agent was
  created, then what would be its
  religious/spiritual/moral standing in relation to
  God?
• Would we be playing God and thereby offend
  religious sensibilities by creating such a being?

14
Scientific Explanations of Religion

• Religion is a ubiquitous phenomenon in human
  culture that itself requires explanation.
• Religion may arise from spiritual experiences
  that have a neurobiological basis.
• V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain, Chap. 9
  God and the Limbic System
• Religion may arise from various cognitive biases
  of human inference and belief.
• P. Boyer, Religion Explained.
• Religion may have evolved biologically and
  culturally to reinforce adaptive social behavior.

15
Conclusions

• AI provides scientific explanations for phenomena
  that were previously part of the province of
  religion.
• Belief in AI decreases belief in religion due to
  explaining away, a theoretically justified form
  of inference.
• AI ? Materialism ? Atheism
• It is difficult to reconcile belief in strong AI
  with traditional religious ideas of free-will and
  moral responsibility.