종교와 AI: 미래의 영향과 윤리적 고려 사항

파올로 베난티 신부는 기술의 윤리적 발전은 인간의 가치와 사회적 책임에 달려 있다고 강조합니다.

### 종교와 인공지능의 교차점 탐구하기
* 🎙 바티칸의 기술 윤리 자문위원인 파올로 베난티 신부와 함께 종교와 인공지능의 상호작용에 대해 이야기하는 **'마지막 질문' 팟캐스트**에 오신 것을 환영합니다.
* 📅 청취자 여러분께 감사의 의미로 **에든버러에서 열리는 데이터 서머 이벤트 티켓 25% 할인 코드**를 에피소드 마지막에 공유할 예정입니다.
* 🕊 이 대화에서는 종교와 기술 혁신이 역사적으로 얽혀 있다는 점을 강조하며 **종교가 진보에 영감을 줄 수 있지만, 특히 과학에 대한 미국 종교 우파의 입장**과 관련해서는 장벽이 될 수도 있다고 지적합니다.
* 🤖 베난티 신부는 미국과 중국의 AI 개발을 형성하는 문화적 영향을 강조하며, **기술은 단순한 도구가 아니라 사회적 욕망과 두려움을 반영**하는 것이라고 말합니다.
* 🧠 이 토론에서는 AI의 윤리적 함의를 다루며, 기술이 소수의 이익이 아닌 인류에게 도움이 되도록 **사람 중심의 접근 방식**이 필요함을 강조합니다.
* 🎨 예술 분야에서 제너레이티브 AI의 등장은 예술적 표현의 미래와 종교와의 관계에 대한 질문을 던지는데, **AI가 인간의 경험과 신앙을 새로운 방식으로 반영하는 작품**을 만들 수 있기 때문입니다.
* 🔮 베난티 신부는 미래를 예측하면서 **AI가 새로운 형태의 지능과 생명**으로 이어져 존재에 대한 우리의 이해에 도전하고 잠재적으로 종교적 신념과 관습을 바꿀 수 있다고 제안합니다.
* 📬 이 에피소드는 청취자들에게 **향후 50년 동안 AI가 신앙에 어떤 영향을 미칠지** 생각해 보도록 요청하고, 향후 논의를 위한 생각을 공유해 달라는 당부로 마무리됩니다.

foreign [Music] and I'm Gordon Johnson. Welcome to the Last Question podcast, brought to you by the Data Lab, Scotland's Innovation Center for Data and AI, hosted by the University of Edinburgh. If you're enjoying these episodes, please do leave us a review and a rating on your platform of choice. It really does mean quite a lot to us. And as a thank you to our listeners, towards the end of today's episode, there'll be a code for 25% off tickets to this year's Data Summer Event in Edinburgh in November, so keep an ear out for that after the interview. Before we launch into today's show, we need to make a quick Public Service Announcement. We're going to be discussing religion and its relationship to AI with Father Paolo Benanti, advisor to the Vatican and Pope Francis. Due to Paolo's position and our own native culture and upbringings, we're likely to talk mostly in reference to Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. Yeah, we want to make sure that it's clear that we're not dismissing or

Ignoring other religions or beliefs, we're just not equipped to properly discuss them in this context. If you happen to be an AI expert and a person of faith, we would love to hear from you. Please do write to us at datafest@thedatalab.com, and we'll read some of the messages out in future episodes. Okay, with that caveat out the way, let's get on with the show. As you have noticed, we love sci-fi on this show, and religion has a rich and fascinating history of portrayal in futuristic media. This podcast is named after the famous Asimov story, which spoiler alert becomes a creation myth, and you'd be hard pushed to find a Sci-Fi franchise that doesn't touch upon religious themes. That's absolutely true. I mean, from the Matrix to the Handmaid's Tale to Star Trek and Futurama's Church of Robotology and First Amalgamated Church, religion offers rich and philosophical and often satirical ideas to extrapolate out from. It's not a recent phenomenon either. Superman

from the very beginning has been steeped in Christ-like imagery, and arguably the first sci-fi book, Shelley's Frankenstein, is a story of creation gone wrong. Frankenstein's monster has been described as the Christian Golem. If you're really keen on Golem chat, you can check out our nanotechnology episode with larger Poli for more Golem-related information. Should point out this is Golem, the creature from Jerusalem mythology, not Gollum, the guy who loved the ring and his precious from Lord of the Rings, which is disappointing. I was hoping you were doing a question there, but no. I really did consider it for a second, then I thought, Now I've got a reputation to maintain in this town. Yeah, not a good one, but see a Golem chat. Yeah, go on chat. So this is the last Golem with Gordon and Lily. Religion has often played a key role in technological innovation and equally has been a significant barrier in some instances as well. The powerful religious

rights in the USA is often considered anti-science and anti-progress, but we wouldn't have the modern world without the genius of medieval Islamic scholars. Religion, science, and technology have a wildly intertwined and complicated past, and the future doesn't look like it's going to be any simpler. So, as we mentioned today, we are talking to Father Paolo Benanti. Paolo is an academic of The Franciscan of the Third Order Regular, a theologian, teaches at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and is an advisor to Pope Francis on issues of artificial intelligence and technology ethics. Paolo, thanks so much for joining us. Foreign listening is aware, and AIs are imbued with the inherent biases and preferences and morality and worldview as people who create them. And even if you program your AI to learn about other cultures, it will still be learning through the lens of that tracer. Uh, that's why building ethical, inclusive, and trustworthy AI is central to the Scottish government's AI strategy as a statins, the two countries spending the most money on AI.

development are the USA, which is obviously heavily influenced by a form of Christian morality, and China, which is shaped by almost like de facto State mandate and Atheism and the political thought of Ji shinping. How do you see these cultures shaping the future of AI and AI development when the technology itself doesn't really know any borders? Well, I think that the probably we should look at technology not simple as a means but also as a cultural needs. There is not technology that is not shaped by the environment and desire and fear. So, people that use it to say it in a synthetic way, the first time that one member of our species seventy thousand years ago probably take a club in his hand. It was a tools or a weapons. Well, this difference is double use of every kind of technological artifact now is pinging on AI season and of course looking at the complexity of the world. We have a lot of use case in which this tool can help us to be live better life and there is a lot of tension to weaponize it. Well, as a

Europe we know along the history of the last century in which the weaponization and the industrial production simple was the companion uh that that bring up to the worldwide first and World War II uh chemicals and then all the steel and another thing that simple rules the everyday innovation of the 20 cent well now uh we have still against uh learned that a technology don't become itself a progress without uh societal and political uh companion to that so unionizing ourselves and working for peace is what simple they weaponize it the technology in the last century that we bring here to the to the to the world and today we have ai that simple can think of the work Market camping in everyday lives in a huge high tension International relationship and so it's not just matter of the United States and China it's also mother of all the tension that we can think we'll see watching from the windows the world and so for the first time after World War II we have again warned in Europe Ukraine we have this incredible high tension between United States and

China to Taiwan and all the dominance on the eastern part of the world. And so we should be aware that technology itself is not enough. We have to Ping on technology to maintain the long tradition that we developed in the last century. In some way, to make it Urban, to subtract from the weaponization, to subtract from any kind of news that could simply produce an advantage for the owner of Technology, and push on the collectivity side, and push on the fact that there is a series of good things to achieve that has to be made in this process that transforms technology, the progress. And so, to make it shorter, we have technology now, we have to build the progress. Yeah, I think having a people-focused approach to technological innovation is really the only way forward. You know, progress for the sake of progress without the human element is, well, at least a disaster really. Yeah, yeah, like you said before, you know, we are developing AI, and AI is simply the mirror of human behavior in some cases. And it's also the

human cognition bias. Well, let me say in that perspective that we have a cognition bias when we look at technology and innovation. Sometimes, the technological elite that develops technology has a bias: What is good for me is good for everyone. So, what produces a huge gain for me, myself, from the company, will be almost useful for everyone. But what we saw with social networks in the last decades is that this huge monetization of social networks is connected to a much more polarized society. And so, the first bias that we have to fight is not inside AI; it is inside the developer of AI. And that is probably something that universities and also Europeans with the tradition, the kind of tradition that we have, should make present in the debate today. I found it interesting that you said in another interview that one of the ethical principles the church holds, especially since Pope Francis, is a precautionary principle of think twice, cut once. I really liked that phrase. It seems to me that in this kind of recent speedy development of AI, there

might be more cutting than thinking at the moment, and/or maybe just not enough caring. Um, how do you think the church or modern religions can help influence this precautionary approach in developing and using new AI technologies? Well, that is really important because in measuring from the developing of the computer age, you know, the United States approach is a brute force approach. If you look at what the ENIAC producers say, the ENIAC computer is wonderful because it can solve the partial differential equation of 491 in 30 minutes, 28 to cut the cardboard until to make the calculation. And so the speedy, the speedy approach to have the bomb was a speedy, that brute force level coalition. And if you look at the last developing, at the last frontier of AI, large language model, well, this is a huge brute force approach. And we make this and push on the society equation, the market, and we see how to monetize it. Everyone is running on that. If you look

at the last transformation of Twitter or NYX, that is, and the other companion Society xai. Uh yes, we are. We know that we can have some kind of solution, but because this kind of innovation is not State-driven, but it's driven by company. At one point, they have to capitalize it, they have to monetize it. And if you simply throw it and use it, yes, you are cutting, you are not thinking neither twice, probably once if it happened well. Precautionary principle is something that we can say in a church perspective as something that comes from the past. AI is anticipation in the future, but the wisdom that comes from the past said that sometimes we lose control on the tools that we develop. And this nosing of control is something that Ping On Us because you have to be precautionary. There is a lot of examples, especially with the use of information and the Jewish persecution in Europe. There is something that always makes me think because you know in a country like Netherlands that was used to be really tolerant, the rate of Jewish

that was persecuted was tribal. That the other country in Europe, one of the reasons is because they have a centralized identical system. And so when you get the control of all the information, then you can use it in a really faster executing way to be dangerous for people. And this brings us to the other side of the person on China in which the state is simply owning all the information of people. Well, precautionary is also not only the thing to ice cap plans but also stop yourself and think a bit. I think owning that unwanted consequence or the best or but not thinking use of the technology that could arise when you push in the market or when you push in the society. And what what simple let me take on that perspective is what happened with the, you know, mid-journey picture of the Pope with the fancy Puff. Okay, myself, I have no doubt that it was a generative AI image. You know, the pop, it's a little deteriorated, it's a little bit benched, and he's standing

like a model on a Fashion Week, but this is not the point. The point is that the men that produced that kind of images was someone that is not an expert on the field. He worked on the word house, so with a totally other John Bell profile. And so, this kind of democratization of the technology that can arrive to everyone with simple prompting inside the public space should tell us to slow down and think a little bit. That image completely filled me, uh, because I didn't - it was like just mundane enough for me to think, Yeah, you know, that was - that could be real. And I didn't really think about it until days later when I saw that it was AI Generations. I suddenly like analyzed it properly and thought, Well, of course, that's not real. Like, that's absurd. Um, but I think that's the thing that worries me about generative AI, is that it's not going to be like the really dramatic crazy things that I'm gonna follow, or it's gonna be the very mundaney small things.

they're just gonna erode the idea of, you know, truth, I guess. If it's mundane, maybe you just think that, Why would someone make a fake version of that? So, it just slips through because you're not questioning it as much, especially in a communication world in which spin is the early king, huh? And you have the byte-click title on the news that go in the feed of the social network. So, the news that gets more reading is not anymore the one that are on the best newspaper, on the best source of news, but that one that has more astonishing titles for people. And this is perfect because you have also the visualization for something that, uh, simple tension. And so, they did a temptation to monetize in that way. The news market could have also a lot of side effects, and with so much data on, like, clicks and finding out how many people are clicking what type of titles, you can just narrow it down to finding the best words based on that data, even if they're not the best words to describe the real what is.

actually happening in the news. It's just we have shown with our data these are the words that will make the audience click. Maybe it will lead them to not believing that like understanding the truth, but they'll read it. I've read somewhere ages ago the New Scientist magazine. Whenever they put the word Quantum on the cover, they sold about 30 percent more copies because it's just like real-life clickbait. People just are fascinated by that kind of technology. Religion and arts have been inseparable for a very long time, maybe since all of time. Thomas Martland of Columbia University argued that religion does what art does. It is an expression of ideals, perhaps also an expression of ideas and how we think about those things. Some of the earliest examples of humans exploring art are ascribed to religious practice. Over the last 12 months, the relatively sudden emergence of generative AI artistic tools such as GPT, DALL-E, and the journey, as we spoke about, to name just a few, has led to the

Renaissance of interest in AI-generated art. However, it has been argued by some that the rapidly improving memetic ability of AI is leading us to a semantic apocalypse—a great phrase where all art and human expression is simply AI-generated materials recycled from previous expression, which fundamentally embodies and means nothing, described by the writer Eric Howell as pure syntax. So, losing semantics, gaining just syntax. Given the intrinsic connection between art and religion, how do you see the isolation of art and artistic expression affecting religion in the future, or how religion uses that? Well, probably in my feeling more than inseparable, we can use with a strong correlation. And well, that it's interesting, but I think that this is not the first challenge this kind of visual art has with technology. Imagine that at the end of the 18th century, a new impressionist painter spent one month to make a picture of a digital learner at breakfast on the grass, making point by point, point by point. At one point, one man with a black box put the camera

near to you, push the button, and in five minutes, you have a really grainy picture of the same things that you put one mark. Well, it's photography. Photography, it's an imitation of nature, not less than the art in a lot of things. Well, what we saw is first a theoretical reflection, Benjamin Water, the future of the art in the age of reproductive reproductibility, in the age of Multiplicity, technological multiplicity of the images. The second thing is that we saw an arising of a different form of art, that is photography. So, probably now, a lot of people is scared by the things that we can do with photography or we can do with the kind of other art now is made counted, not the simple shooting or not simple with a sort of pencil. Well, it's a simple different tools. All the art is crossed by this kind of technological innovation. Painting was not possible without chemicals that give to him different kind of color because it was synthetic colors that was not available before. And now, we have a huge problem because

this kind of chemicals was not stable, and the painting got really degrading really fast. Now it's not a matter of chemicals; it's the mother of chips and electronics. And probably what we see is that the artistic feeling is something that is deep inside the human beings. Now we are amazed by the facility, the easiness that we have to produce some really high-quality images, but there are still contemporary artists struggling with AI. There is a lot of the exhibition on that with a lot of attempts. There is also some kind of quantum arts just to be easy and to allow someone to sell more pictures. But we are in a transitional time, you know. Art is something that happened not only when you have a genius that paints something, but also when you have a canon, so something that is in a community, is an artistic expression. And so probably we need the time to be just this kind of new canon that is the AI canon general, the way I can. And then we will see something really interesting about it, about religion, the use of

Religion was really different time to time when the church was used to speak only a language that no one was speaking anymore on the earth laughing just the clergy. We need art to communicate what we are seeing with our words to the people, and this is also really connected to Saint Francis. At one point, San Francisco State the song of the people in the early Italian and change the world and make these beautiful feet filled songs, and probably something like that will happen. A classical artistic canon probably now is not speaking to a lot of people of this culture. If you look at one culture that is using graffiti and you show them Michelangelo, probably the symbolic content of Michelangelo as a barrier to touch someone that is expressing itself like Banksy. And so probably we need advanced key of AI, so for religion, someone that is able to take what is inside the life of people nowadays and expresses with other means that allow us to think to what is beyond the sky. That is usually what is faith-oriented to.

and probably there is also a new Educational Tools because one one use of Art and religion was also to make it visible some history from the Bible and you can imagine how easy it would be to make it visible to produce and imagine a public imaginary some content also for for a country in which probably uh bring an artist is to to the field if I have to guess something or need some in some church in Asia or in Africa in Nigeria in which there have a lot of AI startup will start to produce some kind of air for faith uh we need time if things are going in that direction with that Speedy probably is Speedy to the the art and church but at that time when we see something it would be interesting to analyze not in the sense of AI but in the sense of what is inside human beings that is this tool to express something about faith in my perspective this the human part of human AI relationship is always much more interesting than the technological part I think you're right that uh when we

talk about like semantic apocalypse and we're quite negative about AI art. Maybe we aren't thinking enough about how as much of the art is in the interaction with the community, exists in, and not just in the artifact itself. Um, I think it was a book by Roland Barthes, Death of the Author, which I think also applies well to art as well. It's to literature in his case, it was about literature, but um, perhaps as he would say, the art itself is not what contains the meaning, it's the viewer that contains the meaning, and it's inside us who observe the art, but not just the individual, but within the community contexts, the meaning gets created. And I think that's a more positive way of looking at AI arts, is that you're not losing the meaning, you just get the meaning from what's around it, as we did anyway with art. And also with what you're saying about there using AI-generated art to perhaps illustrate parts of stories of faith, parts of the Bible, maybe. I think it's going to be

very interesting to see what kind of images we get with that because I'm thinking about how the data sets used to train these AI modules might have a lot of like white blue-eyed Jesus imagery. That means that when people are like trying to perhaps make us some of the images of Jesus in historical settings, it won't. It will be a particular kind of Jesus that will reveal a lot about our training data set and not so much about what we actually think Jesus probably was like. And we were like, Yeah, that could be interesting. Yeah, I can take a picture of the gospel and use it as a prompting for some kind accent looks what happened. And but I was not so negative on the blue-eyed Jesus, you know, because it's not simply a bias on Jesus. It's also a way to say that Jesus is near us, to me. So if I am a blue-eyed Jesus, it means that Jesus is near to my experience, my feeling. If you look at the way of the Cross, traditionally kind of prayers that Chris

can doing during the lens. Jesus spoke three times, and there is no way in the gospel that say that Jesus followed but that kind of things tell to people that the same struggle that they need in my life was in the life of Jesus. So once again, it will be interesting to see what will happen and in the devotional way because the blue-eyed Jesus is a devotional painting. And the problem we will have a devotional use of AI for faith probably could be kind of the new way in which we have the oligarchy. I don't know, I will see, and probably in culture that they are less connected to people and enough is much more easy to read the paper or on a smartphone but not on paper. Well, we will see something really interesting. This is another way to see that inculturation of the Fig. If you look in Africa, you see a lot of black Madonna and black Jesus, and probably we will see also AI Jesus and AI nadon all colors coming back to the first question if the system is Faded by our

historically, image the pot. Probably, the system has the tendency to produce something that is really near to the past, not to their contemporary. But at that point, the prompting could easily change something, you know, because you can modify an image really fast with this generative model. And so, we can imagine that we can put a really classic image of classification of the cross and then allow, with few prompting, to make it much more ethnically diverse or culturally diverse. But at that point, once again, we need the artists that make this kind of bridging. I think the only thing we can be sure of is that it won't get the hands right. I'm so yet to see an AI-generated image that doesn't have about 12 fingers on each hand, you know. But one day, there's a long history of religion moving instead with technological process, uh, progress, sorry. You know, from Islam incorporating compasses to find Mecca to digital Tibetan prayer wheels, and now you've gone, you know, these big high-tech Christian mega churches and Scientology's e-meter things, you know.

religious always found a way of incorporating the profane and sorry. It's day-to-day Alliance something I'm wondering like with AI automating so much of people's lives these days and with humans being able to delegate more and more complex tasks. Do you think this will have an impact on religious practice? You know, if you can automate tasks to make religious observance easier, like um programming routines to make life on the Sabbath easier for Jewish people or even Trader candles for example of automation. Uh, do you think that'll have an impact on religious practice? Well, uh, I will say that there is a multiple possibility of answering to this question. First of all, is it our relationship to technology a little bit religious one? Well, in the past when we have the padian temple, you are used to go to the Pagan and simple, bring them to chicken and the priest make a correlation between the two chicken and the star in the sky and tell you the prophecy. Well, this kind of oracular relationship

could be one of the relationships that today we have with some kind of AI system, and people that use charge GBT as a search engine simply are making something that is not so much different. It's a miraculous relationship to this generative AI and a lot of tests, the classical texts about the Delphi Oracle, and now would be postponed to this kind of GPTs subject Peters. And the second feature is, once again, focusing myself on large language models. Just to make an example, probably the most similar take in the past that we can make connected to the large language model is the invention of the press. The first press-printed book was the Bible, and it changed a lot of religions because you move from everyone that is looking at one book to each one that has his own book, and the interpretation becomes one-to-one. Now, with the computed language, everyone could have his own text that is different, initial, and generated names. So, probably, we will see something so revolutionary as the print invention was, but not only in religious builder in

other field and when the Press happened we note that Luther used it to make this kind of reformation with a lot of using of press and using of comics to make the criticism of the power. Well now after illuminous master of Enlightenment after the old past Century we know that the power the secular power is not anymore the same things with church church power and so probably the first effect of this kind of new press and the digital large language model will be on the power much more than on the church and so on democracy. Yeah the criticism will happen on democracy and look at things like brexit and what happened with qn on and other things [Music] paying five stars in Italy and things like that but also on on religion and belief of course it's hard to predict how and where but if I have to describe being the magnitude in my feeling is like a new invention of the press. Yeah I wanted to see uh lots more different versions of religious texts because people can kind of generate

their own with the same source but in a way maybe that's um more personal to them. It's easier for them to understand or relate to their life more um. That's gonna be interesting to see if we have lots of those versions and what they'll be like. I also like the idea of Chachi BT as an oracle. That's an interesting idea that I haven't thought of before. And are people going to treat it as an oracle? And is that dangerous? Because we, it's like the hidden knowledge behind the output right? Like you think it was um in some time is like if you have a non-oscobo you know when you when you're reading there. I'm looking for the effects for the future. I have a lot of the people that simple ask about really famous people linguistic model that does only one means keep you interacted in Enchanted. Now we see a lot of different use for example we are the Bing that include the GPT for search and that are using like for example the black CD AI that make

the same things. What is really interesting, the tools like perplexity, just to make an example, ask you a personal profile so the system tells me something about it. Who you are, and I'm a monk that is busy with the ethics of AI. Why do you decide to make the monk? Why? You have an interest in ethics or AI. This is a real case used. I need with perplexity, and then the answer will be in some way cheaper by my identity. So can you imagine what can happen with data population like that one that can come from Social Network plus AI generation? We are not only as a feed that is composed by a different series of news according to our profilation. We can also have a totally different view of reality, and that will be the total atomization of cognition. And if we start the real enlightening process when the definition of standard knowledge in Singularity, and now what will happen, Wikipedia will be different for each one of us, and so chain. There are a lot of tensions that can produce a lot of

changing in that sense. Uh, property is also something that has to be in charge by some kind of university because university takes the name from universal knowledge and not only the age of uh infinite personalization of the knowledge like that one. The generative AI can produce in this copilot mode. What is the means of the university? What does it mean to looking for a universal? Well, I don't want to see or look like an apocalyptic one because this kind of AI could be used for good, really, really easier. Imagine you can express quantum theory with a language that a biologist can easily understand or a humanistic can easily understand. So, it can help a lot of education, but it's not, it does not to be taken as granted if we don't need to make something as society, as a cultural, as university, as everyone that is a stakeholder in the process, though, in some way, to push the innovation in that direction. Infinite customization, infinite personalization terrifies me. It would be great for some things like education, you know, right now.

school systems final lots of different people because they're not really suited to particular kinds of learning. If you can have personalized education for every single person, it would hopefully mean everyone could reach their full potential, which will be a wonderful thing. Let me think to the Glasgow University. You know how many students who are now in Glasgow University? Twenty thousand, thirty thousand, sixty thousand. Well, we can move from one University having sixty thousand students to 60,000 University, each one customized whatever student we are flipping out the model and could be really powerful but could be really changing the way in which we understand what elevation is not taking yourself and making you near to a model but change everything to be near to you. I don't want to say that is bad, better, or worse but it's changing and it's changing fast. It'd be interesting to see how that affects groups of people watching, working together on, let's say, like a scientific study. You'll have them coming from it at the study with different perspectives, which is a good thing, but if their

understandings are all slightly different as well. What if it would take them a little bit longer, or they'd there, they won't quite understand each other in the way they communicate in their team because they've gone to effectively their own University where they've learned the science in different ways? How is that going to affect peer reviews, teams of people working on scientific studies? Yeah, and this is a process that is already started. If you look at the last sociological studies on the last generation that come to the work team, working is one of the most difficult things for its Generations. Okay, Z generation and Centennial, they have also colored with a really bad word, snowflakes, because it's still they have to soft to have this theme working. So probably is something that will amplify a process that is already started, but it can fix it. Imagine if communication is a problem. Well, I send an email to you, and the system know that you can be affected by that, and it can be automatically received to make it softer.

less divorce in some way, you know, and I really, if anything comes from AI, I hope it's bad because the number of like career-ending emails I've sent over the years. My life will be so much easier if new Gmail says, Don't do that, don't talk like that. Yes, or if WhatsApp sends your warning, Are you sure? May I? You got a cooler attached to it. That in some way is happening, you know, because one of the first users changed it. BP was to fuel Tinder interaction, first chat Tinder interaction. Help me to say something nice to this woman. It's probably kids are in front of us already. They already trying to smooth conversation. Then the problem is, did you fall in love with this person or with his AI? Yeah. Do they have to keep using AI to speak to be able to be the same person in a way throughout the rest of the relationship? But that was already in literature. If you take the siren of the Bergerac and what was their first model of an AI.

for uh falling in love relationship or the love at the Time of Cholera is the sentence you know so probably we are touching some deep point of the human beings in which the real question is what is the difference between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. What does it mean to be human is the most problematic question in the image of AI. For anyone unfamiliar with the term transhumanism, it can be described as the use of technology to augment and improve The Human Condition. It Bears a lot of the Hallmarks of religious belief. There are Promises of vast improvements to human life and even immortality, but only to those who subscribe to the belief. In some cases, the writer and former Evangelical Christian Megan L. Giblin suggested that transhumanism offered a vision of redemption without the so many problems of divine Justice. The end result of transhumanism often predicts post-singularity god-like abilities for humans, although it could be argued that this is subjective compared to the average person 200 years ago. Everything were able to do with technology right.

now could be considered god-like to some if transhumanism is a successful pursuit, and humanity, or at least a portion of it, is afforded greater and greater abilities. What does this mean for the future of religion and belief? Instead of who watches the Watchmen, it's more a case of what will the gods worship? Well, let's put things in perspective. First of all, when every one of us got the shuttle vaccination for COVID-19, we got an improvement. So, I don't think that improved in itself is the problem. The problem is which kind of technology could be really an improvement. I was in a conference in 2012 talking about human enhancement. It was in New Orleans, and at one point, one of the presenters in the conference asked for an off-labeled use of drugs that can simply fix any kind of memory inside you. And they were saying, I'm simplifying a little bit, one of the most used substances today in the top universities in the United States, the ones with the higher

fee is substances that help you to be focused so you can have a normal life, and then you keep focus on your class, and you get the best results. If we then give to these people something that allows them to memorize and don't forget, you simply have the best return of your investment in your education. Well, I raised up my hand and said, Look, imagine that we have a woman that has to make these important finals, and she takes this kind of memory or memory enhancer. Well, then she goes to a party, and in a really unlucky way, she gets raped. Are we condemning her to live with the same freshness, with the same grade, or it happened now for the rest of her life, this really bad episode? Are we sure that forgetting is at the fact of the memory? And now the problem is, what does it mean to improve? And as a religion, we know something that is eschatology, and it's what will happen when history will finish, and we know that salvation is something that happened after history. Then the most

problematic ideology of the last century are based on the idea that you can move after the end of History, the Salvation inside the history. So, when you talk to Marxism, they tell you that Revolution would be the Salvation, no more need, no more things inside the history. And you can see how team will go transition is some form of transition, is to be more precise because we are meeting a label, but when you make a label, you are always framing a lot of things different in the same box. Some form of transhuman is as this kind of the fact they put technology as the Marxist was put in Revolution is the solution on any human problem inside the history. But theologically speaking, that cannot be a selfish, and so probably we will see the distance from what we hope and we will get with this kind of things. And then it could become a really dangerous domination of this new mantra. Innovation, Innovation, innovation in our life also in a way, like I said before, in which this kind of innovation, it's not really a real announcement during my

life and religious know a good enhancement. They call it virtues, not only religions but also philosophy. Now, virtuous is an announcement of your behavior in which you can live happy. That is what Plato and Aristotle used to say. So, it's not that bad, the idea to be better than how we are today. What is the question to ask out to ourselves? Is this kind of changing in my life a real upgrading of my life? Is this idea that I'm getting old and Egypt at the fact of human nature? Well, if you look at the Sci-Fi signific science fiction, the Bicentennial Man is a Chasm of History. These robots get something really near to human beings. At one point, he realized that there is something that is missing: cannot die. And to be a real man, he has to die because this is the problem. A machine works; we exist. And if I have a duck and a high prayer, the silhouette of both is really similar. The duck with the long nose is not different from the hybrid. Well, if I turn off the high grayer, then

I can turn on again if I turn off the duck. Then I cannot turn on again. So what is the difference between something that is that function and someone that exists once again? The problem is who we are, and only after we answer this question can we see which kind of technology could be defined as improvement and what is something that is simple and illusion or worse, a distraction of what we are. After all these millennia, humans, we are still thinking about who we are. I'm gonna answer, and it happened from at least 3000 years, and it probably is an ongoing process, yeah, with an unanswerable question. I mean, if we do actually achieve some kind of digital or physical immortality through transhumanism and transmitter practices, it's gonna have such a profound effect on the human condition. Because like you said, being a human used to be temporary, and pretty soon it could become permanent. And then if society would change as well, because if you don't have the, I know, the kind of promise of a...

Salvation in an afterlife where everything's perfect, and nor do you have the kind of threat of the opposite, like some sort of Hell situation, that would change the way that people act, and it will change Morales and always. These technological advances aren't going to happen to everyone; they're going to happen to the rich first, and then for the lucky, which I call down to everybody else. Yeah, uh, also news is something that could be really different, you know. Salvation is for everyone. Instead, The Gospel, you have a lot of Parables that say that there is the rich that is going to die and the poor that is going to die, and for both of them, there is a problem with selfish, uh, if he's a human drive and immortality, and probably it will be for the one that can afford it. It was now you have to afford the idea of having a longer life, much more longer in Western Country than your work life, and so we have a lot of problem with pension advertisement plan, and but when you grow up.

you think to the Future as something that is different, that's something that is disigurable. I have a fear that with an endless life, you will become down to live in the present with not pasta and probably not desire for the future. Every day is another day, a little bit like every given Sunday, you know the movie about the football and so that is anthropologically speaking a deep changing in our attitude in life because every one of us at the end of the day asked to us to insult did they spend well my life because it's something that I consumed today and they make us dreamer of scared or feeling that is also something that is based on a lot of the decision to get married, you know because there is something like that. I don't know, it's too much different from our experience to try to imagine how it could change the quality of our life and probably we have also a lot of example of people that has nothing that is blessing to them thanks to Michael Jackson and then they have this deep

pain of life, so I don't know. It's too difficult to keep different from the base human beings' condition that we experience, at least from seventy thousand years today. The first way play we know where we was in the Neolithic because we find Greece skeletons and body. Imagine a world without body. You don't bear anyone anymore. That really will be the end of History, basically. Um, oh, the end of Desire or having a better history. You know, if you can just do it another day, why do it today? Some people think they wouldn't pushed each day to make to change or do things improve, make progress. I'll do it tomorrow. There are endless tomorrows and probably excited retelled us that a lot of suicidal this thing happen when you have no any more ideal future. So, this kind of behavior, the societal idea, can't happen when you have not anymore any chance of a different future, and you feel yourself trapped in your life. So, enjoy voluntarily probably is not so smart. I mean, the thought of an eternal life.

doesn't really do it for me, to be honest. This one is exhausting as it is, you know. You can tell if it's never-ending. Let me do the theologians. Eternal life is not an infinite life. Eternity is not an endless thing. How can I describe eternity? Look, think of the last time that you went out with your friends. Maybe I'm playing with the, you know, with the bias, taking a whiskey for a Scottish, you know, to get out. I mean, you cheers with a whisk, and you feel that that night was really well spent. And instead, someone said, Wow, what's nice? Do it again. Well, that kind of sparkle is a sparkle of Eternity. Eternity is that quality of experience, something that enlightens you and says, Wow, it's not an endless. So, you have a sparkle of Eternity in an experience that was finished. An identity will be a series of experiences like that. It's not an endless movie in which you have to sit on your chairs and see now what's going on and if

we see which kind of law we are much more uh willing to see probably his mission impossible. It's not the a documentary on the life of uh of a world that nothing happened for six months. The reflection of Eternity in moments with that said. I think now it might be time for some wild speculation in each episode of the last question. We ask our guests to look beyond the scope of their research and speculate wildly about the future. Paulo, what do you think the next 50 years of artificial intelligence development will look like? Well, probably we could develop a machine that not only will imitate our intelligence but can develop a different form of human intelligence. And that would be the most interesting thing, you know, something like that happening in robotics. There are some people that are developing robots that imitate human beings, and then there are these warm robots. We are used to thinking that one intelligence is one body. Well, I think a different body with one intelligence, this is a known. We are not used to that kind of intelligence. If you

look at the dogs of Boston Dynamics. You can see something like that one with this big hand on the top can open the door, and the other dog can pass. Is Azure intelligent? Well, you can imagine that we start to develop different forms of intelligence from the human War. Probably, we didn't find any life in the exoplanet, no aliens, but we could have alien intelligence developed on the earth. We didn't discover life on Mars, but we can produce my life with the synthetic biology driven by AI, able to live life in Mars. So, that kind of evolution in which our dreams about science fiction will be human-produced could be the future of the next future. I'm already on bringing a lunar base on the dark side of the moon. It's not a Pink Floyd rotation, but it's something that we are going to do, and probably would be. We will produce with Gen folding or clothing folding with AI new forms of life, a new form of intelligence, and it will be the most challenging scenario, you know, because transhumanism is still focused on beer.

I suggest looking at the outside, then our source system, and probably GTS. I don't think, but also Beyond, and that will be really interesting because we can colonize with life all the solar system, and we will have life for Pluto, life for Mars, and we will have a new kind of Explorer, like um in the past, and in which is not anymore the black Africa to be discovered, but the unpredictable or self-developing life in a new environment like Mars, and everything will be AI-driven. So, to answer the question, uh, do aliens exist or is there alien life off Earth? It could be yes, but not yet. We'd like to thank Paulo Benanti for joining us today, uh, for that fascinating explosion of the future of religion. You can see Paolo in person at the 2023 edition of Data Summit, uh, the Data Labs flagship conference right in the middle of Days Fest. This year's Data Summit is back at the EICC in Edinburgh on the 2nd and 3rd of November 2023, and all of

our listeners can get an exclusive 25% off their in-person and live stream tickets with the code DS23TQL. That's all caps. So head over to datafest.global for tickets and information and the full program of what's going to be happening over those two exciting days. And here we are, the last question. This is where we pose our listeners a question, and in a future episode, we'll discuss some of the most interesting answers. Our question this week is: How will artificial intelligence impact face over the next 50 years? And that's it for us today. We'll be back next time with more insight, innovation, and wild speculation. If you feel like getting in touch to say hello or to suggest someone we should talk to or to correct us even, please email us at datafestdatalab.com, or you can find us on Twitter at datalab Scotland. If you enjoyed the podcast, please do leave us a review on your platform of choice. It goes a long way, and thanks for listening. Join us again next time for another episode of the

last question goodbye. [Music] Tomorrow. [Music]

AI, Transhumanism and Religion with Paolo Benanti

The Data Lab

바티칸 고문인 파올로 베난티 신부가 종교와 기술, 특히 AI의 복잡한 관계에 대해 이야기합니다.

그는 AI 개발에 대한 각국의 문화적 영향력을 강조하며 윤리적이고 포용적인 AI의 필요성을 강조합니다.

베난티는 기술은 인간의 욕망과 두려움에 의해 형성되며, 기술이 사회에 미치는 영향은 긍정적인 발전을 위한 공동의 노력이 필요하다고 주장합니다.

의미 있는 발전을 위해서는 기술만으로는 충분하지 않으며, 사람 중심의 접근 방식이 필수적입니다.

소셜 네트워크로 인한 양극화에서 볼 수 있듯이 기술 개발자의 인지적 편향은 사회에 해로운 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

교회의 사전 예방 원칙과 기술의 민주화는 AI 개발과 그 사회적 영향에 대해 더 느리고 신중한 접근을 요구합니다.

인공지능으로 생성된 예술의 등장으로 모든 예술적 표현이 재활용되어 무의미해지는 '의미론적 종말'에 대한 우려가 커지고 있습니다.

예술과 종교의 상관관계는 역사적으로 강력했으며, 예술의 고립은 종교적 표현의 미래에 영향을 미칠 수 있습니다.

사진에서 AI에 이르기까지 예술의 기술 혁신은 항상 예술적 표현에 변화를 가져왔으며, 현재의 AI 혁명에서 새로운 예술적 표준이 등장할 수도 있습니다.

AI가 예술과 종교에 미치는 영향

AI는 신앙을 위한 예술을 제작하는 데 중요한 역할을 할 것으로 기대되며, 잠재적으로 종교적 이야기가 묘사되는 방식을 변화시킬 수 있습니다.

예술의 의미는 유물 자체에만 있는 것이 아니라 공동체 맥락에서 집단적으로 창조된 것으로 간주됩니다.

인공지능으로 생성된 예수와 같은 인물의 이미지는 학습 데이터의 편견을 반영할 수 있지만, 종교적 인물을 다양하고 포용적으로 표현할 수 있는 잠재력을 가지고 있습니다.

ChatGPT와 같은 AI 시스템은 델파이 오라클의 역사적 영향력과 유사하게 사용자와 기적적인 관계를 형성하고 있습니다.

대규모 언어 모델의 출현은 인쇄기의 발명에 비유되며, 개인의 해석과 권력 역학 관계에 혁명을 일으킬 수 있는 잠재력을 지니고 있습니다.

AI를 통한 지식의 무한한 맞춤화 및 개인화는 인지의 원자화와 교육의 미래에 대한 우려를 불러일으키는 동시에 혁신적인 맞춤형 학습 경험의 잠재력을 제공합니다.

AI와 트랜스휴머니즘이 인간 상호 작용에 미치는 영향

커뮤니케이션에 대한 AI의 영향력은 특히 젊은 세대 사이에서 팀 역학 관계의 기존 문제를 더욱 악화시킬 수 있습니다.

트랜스휴머니즘은 인간의 조건을 향상시키기 위해 기술을 사용하고자 하며, 기술이 종교와 신념 체계에 미치는 영향에 대한 의문을 제기합니다.

기술을 통한 인간 향상 추구는 특히 기억과 트라우마와 관련된 윤리적 딜레마를 야기하며, 인간 문제에 대한 기술 솔루션의 위험한 지배 가능성에 대한 우려를 제기합니다.

미덕을 향한 탐구와 불멸의 영향력

플라톤과 아리스토텔레스 같은 철학자들은 자기 계발을 옹호하면서 미덕을 행복으로 가는 길로 여겼습니다.

기술을 통해 불멸을 달성한다는 생각은 인간의 본질과 사회와 도덕에 미치는 영향에 대한 의문을 제기합니다.

영생에 대한 추구는 삶에 대한 태도의 변화로 이어져 개인을 끝없는 내일의 순환에 가두어 발전에 대한 욕구를 약화시킬 수 있습니다.

향후 50년간의 AI 개발은 인간의 지능을 모방할 뿐만 아니라 다양한 형태의 지능을 창조하는 기계로 이어질 수 있습니다.

이러한 진화는 화성에 AI가 주도하는 인공 생명체를 만들고 태양계를 식민지화할 수도 있습니다.

미래에는 지능과 신체에 대한 우리의 전통적인 이해에 도전하여 지구에서 외계인과 같은 지능을 가진 생명체가 탄생할 수도 있습니다.