Virtual Reality

How does Artificial Intelligence complicate religious morality and the concept of a soul?

Assuming we can create a working Artificial Intelligence that is just as if not more so competent as an average human, how would this complicate the soul? I mean how can you think of yourself as meaningful if there is artificial intelligence around? How do you know you are not Artificial Intelligence? For all you know God could just be a computer programmer, and you his creation.

Public Comments

1. I'd believe he wrote a program then ran it and left it there with his technician staff. Edit: Religious people will merely suggest that when it becomes self-aware, God gives it a soul. Personally I don't believe that's what the soul is.
2. The Concept of being self-aware is supposed to be the conclusive sign that you have a soul. If man creates something that is self-aware how can it have soul? that is the main issue among religious people
3. Perhaps we are. Would that change anything?
4. AI is a concept for a machine. A soul is a concept for a person. They are not the same thing. You are trying to compare apples to softballs, not even closely related.
5. AI would complicate the concept of the "soul" because robots and other forms of AI are suppose to have no soul because they are artificial/fake. I would think of myself still meaningful if there was AI around because you would assume you life would be more up their on the hierarchy then a machine. As for your last 2 questions I guess anything is possible, but highly unlikely. But thinking like that is how we get movies like The Matrix.
6. There is no such thing, nor can there be, as everything man creates is according to his own will, not something with its own will.
7. This is a straw-man argument. You assume religion and intelligence are related. If we can create artificial silliness, then maybe we have something… Joking aside, fact is that man is composed of both mind and heart. The heart is a desire to receive and the mind is the instrument to fulfill that desire. It’s the heart that drives man, and the mind finds a way, being to work, to steal, to have money, honor and power and even to the point that he will create a fantasy that a great reward awaits him after death. Question is, Can we create an (artificial) endless desire to receive? At that point it will be self evolving, because this desire will consume the whole planet, until eventually it will realize what is seeking can not be found.