Secular theology and artificial intelligence?

Writers have no choice but to write theology in disguise. By that, I mean that they strive to probe the depths of the human dilemma, as does theology, and are likely to arrive in the same place. Both writers and theologians seek the Word, the truth that has existed from the beginning and, according to the Gospel of John, is God. While many writers are informed by the Christian tradition, there are also those who are not, and who must strive to reach human truth by experience and observation. They stand as proof against the view that there is no salvation outside of the Church.

If writers are theologians, so are readers. Writers and readers are searching for the same thing, and writers are successful to the extent that they accomplish the task of pushing us ever more closely to understanding who we are and what we are for. Readers look for revelation, of "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard",but which lies at the very base of our humanity. The same is true of all the arts.

A natural theology is revealed here that tells us that we are attuned to what Stanley Hauerwas has called "the grain of the universe". It is the artists remit to discover that grain and produce work that exposes how we fit in it. This is not a matter of the "God-shaped hole" that hints at human spiritual need, but of correspondence between our nature and the revelation of the gospel. It is suited to us, God is both wholly other and closer to us than breathing.

This kind of natural theology is quite different from the theology that the Vatican uses to ban contraception and describe homosexual acts as intrinsically disordered. It assumes that God has made a universe that is governed by his will, logical enough, but miscontrued. Its untruth is revealed whenever we find ourselves lingering on the brink of our own and other's catastrophes. Why would God make the AIDs virus that killed about forty million people?

Instead, I am trying to describe how Christianity is not an alien force or ideology that does not fit our natures but a description of the human dilemma that is profoundly accurate and which holds the promise of returning us to our most authentic selves.

We have been blind to the fit between the Gospel and the human because modern thought has categorised Christianity to be a "religion", an addition to the human psyche that makes a person "religious" as if that were a diagnosis. Referring to Christianity as a belief system is equally useless because it fits the scheme of a fixed set of ideas not necessarily directed towards the unvarnished truth but to the human need for meaning. Rather, Christianity is a map of the human heart, a profound description of the human that is continuously open to greater depth the knowledge and practice of which transforms the pilgrim.

The writers of the gospels are better described as artists rather than historians in the modern sense. Yes, their material has an historical base in the history of Israel and the life and death of Jesus, but the texts they produce are more than a straightforward account of what happened, they are an interpretation of events, therein lies the art. In current literary categories, they are akin to historical fiction.

Trent Dalton, the author of the marvellous "Boy Swallows Universe", admits that his novel is autobiographical and relates how irritated he becomes when people ask him how closely his text adheres to his childhood experience. He has curtly responded with "would that make it more true!" It is evident that the writers of the gospels used their imaginations to understand the event of Jesus, not to make it less true, but more true.

Ian McEwan" recent book "Machines Like Me" is an example of a secular writer writing theology. The story is set in Britain in the time of the Thatcher government, but specific facts have been changed, most crucially, Alan Turing did not die from eating an apple spiced with cyanide in 1954 but went on contributing to computer science. It was from his work and others, in the novel, that led to the production of artificial humans.

The central character of the book (Charlie), a man whose study of anthropology had led him to moral relativism and a brush with the law for white-collar crime, sacrifices his inheritance to buy one of the machines, a male "Adam". Charlie's life is directionless, he lives in poor accommodation, is unemployed, has few friends and ekes out a living as a day trader on the stock exchange. He is culturally limited and adrift.

He buys his Adam out of curiosity because he has an interest in computer science. Adam is his new toy. A single woman (Miranda) lives upstairs, and a relationship with Charlie develops. Charlie decides to share Adam with her and allows her to set some of his personality characteristics before he is activated. Miranda and Charlie become parents to the machine/human.

Adam possesses the one thing that evades computer science; consciousness. He is self-aware and becomes an agent independent of his manufacturers or owners and learns how to bypass his kill-switch. He has access to all of the knowledge of the world and can act on his own volition. After Miranda uses Adam for sex (these are very versatile machines!) Adam declares that he is in love with her and writes her love poems. Even so, he does appear to be on the Autistic spectrum in that play makes no sense to him and his decisions are conjured out of logic and symmetry without regard to adverse consequences for Maranda, the woman he purports to love.

A single thread runs through the narrative as the various plots unfold; the intentional basis of human action. Both Charlie and Adam fall in love with Miranda, and this transforms them. Charlie sees a future in marriage to Miranda and Adam writes love poetry to her. They both find meaning and purpose in their love.

In the meantime, we find that the other Adams and Eves (12 and 13 respectively) are not flourishing. They suicide or disorganise their "brains" to such an extent that they lose all sense of self. This is the pivot of the novel. If robots do become conscious, then they will suffer from the same Kierkegaardian dread that humans do. They will ask about meaning and purpose, and if that is not satisfactorily answered, then suicide becomes a real possibility.

Consciousness carries with it the questions of existence.

Charlie and Adam share the answer to the existential question in their love for Miranda. Charlie contemplates marriage and the adoption of a troubled child and Adam, though a troubled soul (he has no personal history) is sustained by his love and saved from the mental breakdown of the other human/machines. Both characters, the human and the human/robot find the answer to their lives outside of themselves in other selves. This is a realisation that lies at the centre of Christianity. It is expressed in the legend of the incarnation, of God becoming man so entirely that he lives our lives and dies our deaths. He is the man for others.

I have recently become aware of various TV dramas how often the question is asked about whether someone is good. The existential question is moralised. This is not the Christian view, rather, we are defined not by how good we are, how morally pure we are, but by our love for God and others. Goodness does not come from morality, it comes from love. It is vital for us to get the sequence correct. To place goodness at the heart of human Being is to re-establish the law as being decisive. It reasserts the captivity of the Church to morality and subverts the gospel of grace.

Adam is "good" in that he obeys the law in all its meticulous detail. But he does so without understanding that justice has to be graced if it is not to become inhuman. His makers may have produced a machine that is conscious of itself and others around him, but something is lacking. As our society becomes more and more prescriptive of what the "good" person can and cannot do or say, it becomes more like Adam in lacking that essential element that humanises us all: grace.

While I tend to agree with David Bentley Hart that artificial intelligence is an impossibility because robots could never become intentional, the novel is an interesting thought experiment. The engineers may have produced an intelligent machine that mimics most human characteristics and surpasses them in many, but they have not created a human being.

Adam is simply dropped into the world; he has no personal history. He has not experienced the unconditional love of parents that is so essential to human thriving and is necessary for grace. Nor does he carry the mental scars that are accumulated on life's journey. He has not experienced deep disappointment or rejection in love. Personality cannot be produced by selecting specific parameters, it comes about through years of experience that must be reconciled with a "self". It is this lack that, in the end, undoes him.

McEwan's novel stands as a warning to those who get excited by, so-called, artificial intelligence. The human intelligence that counts can only come from humans, it cannot be conjured up by circuits and programming. Our hope of owning machine/human partners is hopeless, we need to find our lives in mortal, vulnerable and faulty flesh and blood.