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Good morning. On this day, one hundred and fifty years ago, the mathematician and logician George Boole died of an illness apparently caused by walking two miles in torrential rain and then lecturing in wet clothes. Yet before this untimely and unfortunate death, he did something which is currently changing the world. As well as a being a committed religious thinker and passionate social reformer, Boole believed that it was possible through logic and algebra to formalise how humans deduce and make decisions. His 1854 book, The Laws of Thought, provides a practical basis for designing knowledge based systems, and led directly to today’s possibilities in artificial intelligence. These possibilities are now being fulfilled in the voice response of my smartphone, the ever changing scenarios of video games, and in the Government’s announcement of three pilot projects for driverless cars. Yet they bring difficult questions and some apocalyptic fears. Might thinking robots create mass unemployment and undermine the unique nature of human beings? And might artificial intelligence, evolving much quicker than humans, one day supersede us and inevitably destroy us? This scenario has been raised recently by Stephen Hawking, and will be fictionalised in the new Avengers movie, Age of Ultron. Such a fear of scientific advance is not new. Some have painted nuclear power, genetic medicine and nanotechnology as opening a Pandora’s Box of uncontrollable powers and nightmares. Yet this Greek myth is very different to the Judaeo-Christian narrative which sees science as gift rather than threat. The theologian Philip Hefner suggests that humanity is given the privilege of being created as co-creators in God’s image. This involves freedom and risk, but it comes with responsibility under God to use technology for the benefit of all. The development and use of science is in our hands. It seems to me that Hawking and others are right to raise long term harmful possibilities as a way to stimulate and engage ethical questions at the beginning of any new technology. But I’m thankful for and not terrified of AI. And I’m relaxed about the unique nature of human beings, for I don’t think we are defined by our physical capacities or mental processing power but by a relationship that God forms with us and sustains by love. In the life, logic and in the commitment to social reform of George Boole, I’m reminded that human beings are frail, and at times silly, but also immensely accomplished in understanding the world, being creative in it and with love working for a common good.