Deep reinforcement learning AI and prayer

Ashley Swartzfager
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

Deep reinforcement learning AI is about as close to human-like artificial intelligence as we can yet develop. It can LEARN to play sophisticated first person shooters like Doom, and it’s capable of learning by spankings and rewards, just like humans.

This brings up the possibility for an interesting experiment, perhaps in a world economically akin to ours like Minecraft, to how God treats AI. I propose we create a deep reinforcement learning simulation where some of the AI prays for what it needs (low health will prompt a prayer for healing, hunger will prompt a prayer for food, enemies will prompt a prayer for support and deliverance). Then we run the same simulation, with the same map seed and everything, without prayer. If we can compare the score, we’ll see whether God answers prayers from AI or not. Whether that means he treats it as a prayer from the creator or not is irrelevant, it means we can automate complex tasks while also automating requesting help from our creator with our more sophisticated challenges. Also if it works, that’s another point of proof of God, or for the efficacy of prayer more generally.

I can envision all sorts of cool applications for this, for example, a solar system exploitation AI that gets launched. It’s goal is to map territory, gather resources, construct various things, including perhaps more copies of itself, and follow a complex set of programmed rules derived from the Bible as sort of its ethical programming. When it’s running low on fuel, or if it’s approaching some field of debris, it can pray for help as well as figure it out and navigate through.