蜜芽传媒

Good morning. Some decades ago my mother was replaced by a computer. Her job was pressing buttons on an electromechanical adding machine to work out electricity bills. In my generation I am faced with just how far this growth of technology will go in replacing not just jobs but more fundamental aspects of being human.

This evening Panorama begins Intelligent Machines week on the 蜜芽传媒 looking at the future of work. A Deloitte report published today suggests that 60% of jobs here in the North East are at medium to high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Yet the implications are complex. Brynjolfsson and McAfee in The Second Machine Age argue that while some jobs will disappear, others will be created and some existing jobs will become more valuable. This scenario is extremely important for education, training and financial sustainability.

But are there wider implications for spirituality? Will these intelligent machines become conscious and what might this mean for our self-understanding of what it means to be human? Here we need to be careful in navigating the complex relationship of science and science fiction. The Channel 4 series Humans and Alex Garland's Ex Machina present an almost inevitable emergence of human like consciousness in artificial intelligence. Yet the science is still uncertain about this possibility, even if the fiction poses useful questions. Equally, those who categorically rule it out by asserting that human beings will always be unique because of a mysterious dualistic soul need to take the rate of scientific advance seriously.

There are of course no intelligent machines in the Bible but it does have a lot to say on what it means to be human and created in the image of God. In the Genesis narratives human beings are created for community, and within that given the gifts of intimate relationship with God, responsibility and creativity - which for me includes the gift of science. In the New Testament the image of God is seen supremely in Jesus, showing that at the heart of being human is love.

My mother found more fulfilment with children as a school dinner lady rather than typing rows of figures. I welcome intelligent machines taking away drudgery in work, but also want to engage in the discussion of how we structure our world so that all can experience what it means to be fully human. And if the intelligent machines which come from our God given creativity eventually emerge as self-aware and with a capacity to love, then why should they not be loved by God?

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