2029: Computers vs God
By 2029 scientists expect to have sufficient technology to demonstrate machine consciousness. This article looks at the potential challenge to Christian faith posed by selfaware machines. Science has always been in a position to challenge the beliefs of Christians. Past challenges, given time, have eventually supported the Christian faith rather than destroy it. For a non-believer it must be quite frustrating that science still can’t defeat the teachings of the Bible. (Many people have the impression that science has already disproved the Bible — I believe it hasn’t. Either science hasn’t finished answering the question or we haven’t finished understanding the Bible.) During the process when science conflicts with a Christian belief it transpires that the conflict is with a false belief or scriptural interpretation as opposed to a scriptural truth. The Church once believed the Earth was flat. However, science said that the Earth was round. Fortunately, the Bible had never said the Earth was flat. It was misinterpreted because the language of the Bible was not sufficiently developed to make the distinction between a round-flat and round-spherical earth in the way that modern languages can. Science and the Bible will always support each other because they each teach us the truth.
We all feel special when we notice our consciousness. This is certainly something that science hasn’t yet explained. Consciousness is our self-awareness and identity. Some identify consciousness with the soul. Some believe it is non-physical and that it can be separated from the body. Biblically the soul is formed from the body and the breath of life and therefore can’t be separated:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
(Genesis 2:7 King James version)
We know that consciousness is tied to, and dependent on our bodies. Something easily appreciated when you experience the effect of drugs on self-awareness. In this way it can be identified with the soul as described in the Bible. Our consciousness is at the heart of religion. When we talk about the gift of life we internally identify life with consciousness.
Computers are based on semiconductor devices, which are made from silicon. Silicon is found in sand as silicon dioxide. Dust is mostly fine sand particles and so the same thing as the dust of the ground. Silicon dioxide is silicon joined with oxygen. Oxygen is what we breathe, although not perhaps the same as the breath of life the correspondence is still suggested. So apparently, computers are made from the same material as dust and dust is biblically half of the soul. The correspondence between the language of the King James translation and the technology of microprocessors is exciting, particularly if we are considering the idea of computer consciousness. But is there anything special about consciousness? If machines developed a consciousness equivalent to our own, what would this mean for the Christian faith? Perhaps we can escape from this issue? The Bible advises that we should not waste time by worrying, particularly by worrying about the consequences of something that may never happen.
Therefore do not worry about to morrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
(Matthew 6:34 NIV)
Much of what we worry about never happens. Possibly, computers will never develop selfawareness. If, in the future, they do show self-awareness then we will likely have the option of dismissing the advance as irrelevant to our faith because of the difficulty proving any particular machine is self-aware.
The concept of self-conscious computers is well established in the science fiction arts. The concepts explored by The Matrix prompted many to consider just what reality is. The film has become a mechanism and framework for many to discuss concepts they were never previously aware of. The Matrix was populated simultaneously by machine souls and biological souls with equivalence between machine and biological consciousness. Will we, one day, find ourselves in a world with such equivalence?
Our route to artificial consciousness attempts to directly simulate the behaviour of the cells that form the brain. Such a program is called a neural network. The neural network is incapable of any function until it has learnt to function through a learning process similar to the learning processes we continuously experience. Neural networks are very successful at reproducing human-like functions such as sound and picture recognition. If a neural network is sufficiently complex will it be able to simulate consciousness itself, or even perhaps develop self-consciousness? For a neutral network to have a chance at consciousness it must at least be as complex as the human brain. The human brain has 1012 neurons (1012 is maths shorthand for 1000000000000, count the 0s).
Each neuron makes 1000 connections with other neurons. Quite impressive when you think of a neuron as being a single cell. To run a neural network of this size on a computer would require 5 million Gbytes of memory. When do we expect to be making computers with this amount of memory? The progress of computer technology is surprisingly easy to predict. In 1973 one of Intel’s founders, Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every 18 months. The rule has been valid for 30 years and it is believed it will be valid for a further 10 to 20 years. So in principle it is possible to calculate with reasonable confidence when a computer will be able to run a neural network equivalent to the human brain. The calculation has been done by several researchers. Giorgio Buttazzo, a professor of computer engineering at the University of Pavia, Italy, calculates the year 20291.
We could no longer consider ourselves as being special or unique in the way we have previously, if a machine also showed selfawareness. Would such a machine also spontaneously develop knowledge of right and wrong? Or would it show no knowledge of right and wrong, perhaps the same behaviour as Adam and Eve before the Fall — being unaware of sin. If computer consciousness is achieved, perhaps it will support our faith rather than challenge it. God left us the description of the soul in Genesis 2:7, so if science ever succeeds in producing a computer soul we can be ready to remind the scientists that God provided the instructions around 1400 BC.
By 2029 many of us will be middle-aged and have children at university, but will they be writing essays on self-conscious computers?
1 Giorgio Buttazzo, Artificial consciousness: Utopia or Real Possibility?, IEEE Computer, Vol. 34 , part 7, pp. 24–30, July 2001