Artificial Intelligence: God, Memory, Technoscience, and Evil

On the heights of Sils Maria, a man intoxicated by philosophy proclaimed the death of God.

The setting is appropriate: at an altitude of 1,800 meters, believing to be in proximity to the heavens, the man begins to address the divine.

Yet, more than a megalomaniac act, this declaration was meant to be hopeful. According to Nietzsche, by killing God, humanity could finally become the master of its own destiny.

Without a higher authority, humankind would only obey the injunctions of its own freedom. Faced with the temptation of nihilism that had seized Western civilization, Nietzsche presents the alternative, far more valuable, of believing in oneself.

However, to what extent does believing in oneself not become an act that veers into monotheistic devotion?

In other words, is there not within the human being the eternal return of adoration? And if religion, as the opium of the people, is not so much the invention of predatory elites but rather a need claimed by the everyday person within us?

These questions have long been debated by theologians. Discordant voices joined a chorus that ultimately amounted to a grating question mark and a long silence.

This guilty silence of humanity defending that which it cannot answer. The haunting question of a world of suffering created by the grand design of a loving God.

The tension of this paradox reaches its zenith in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Auschwitz had taken place, and the world would never be the same.

At that moment, a specter descended upon Europe, forever haunting it: barbarism.

In the wake of the unspeakable, any attempt to account for the evil that afflicted Europe was rendered null. Writing a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, wrote Adorno.

Yet, one man would endeavor to write about the Holocaust. Paul Celan would pen poems in the German language, seeking to confiscate from the executioners the privilege of tragedy.

Another man would go even further. In 1984, Hans Jonas delivered a groundbreaking lecture. The Concept of God after Auschwitz.

Jonas undertakes a questioning of the concept of God. For him, after the Holocaust, every silence is a compromise. The tragedy experienced by Europe necessitates a clean slate from the divine predicates that have long held authority.

How can one account for evil? How can one reconcile the existence of God with the unprecedented horror that occurred during the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis, their inhumanity and violence? Faults and punishments no longer suffice to explain the existence of evil. Why Auschwitz? What is the meaning of this massacre? Why were the Jews exterminated?

Such questions trace a speculative labyrinth. A maze of inquiries in which one question persists: “Who is this God who allowed this to happen?”

The atheist will respond, perhaps too hastily, that this is proof that God does not exist, that it is a mere chimera. Hans Jonas cannot indulge in such ease, and that is the depth of this text. Jonas is a believer, a devout man seeking to unravel this unsolvable enigma. In the tradition of Leibniz and his theodicy, which seeks to reconcile the existence of evil with the perfection of the universe, Jonas strives to save God by confronting Him with the world’s evil.

It is a precarious situation, as Jewish spirituality, unlike Christianity, conceives of the world as the place of God and not a transitional space toward an Eden where humanity will be healed of the suffering of earthly existence.

How, then, can one reconcile the belief in a good and all-powerful God with the reality of absolute evil? This question lies at the heart of Jonas’s theodicy — a question without an easy answer, but one deserving to be asked.

For Jonas, the creation of the world by God rests upon an act of renunciation of His omnipotence. Indeed, by divesting Himself of His omnipotence, God finds Himself devoid of any capacity to give more. From then on, it is up to humanity to take over, ensuring that the world is not corrupted by actions that would cause regrets to God, irrespective of human will.

By reversing the traditional relationship between God and man in this manner, Jonas accords a preeminent place to human freedom and responsibility. In this view, man becomes the principal actor in preserving the world and shaping his own destiny, called to act with prudence and wisdom to avoid fatal errors that could alter God’s work.

Thus, for Jonas, the world is not an arbitrary gift from God to humanity but rather the result of divine sacrifice and an appeal to human responsibility. This conception invites each human being to feel responsible for the state of the world and to act accordingly in preserving this creation and making it a dignified place for human life.

Years later, in two different places, this tragic question would impose itself as an obsession in the minds of many.

In a mythical little street in Paris, a lecture took place in the amphitheaters of the École Normale Supérieure. A lecture for students among countless others, destined to end up in the archives of the school.

However, this lecture made waves in the Parisian academic circles, as its discourse challenged classical philosophical discourse on technology.

Delivered by a self-taught philosopher, the speech could not indulge in sometimes sterile academic jargon.

Mehdi Belhaj Kacem went straight to the point. He speculates on the possibility that, in the human mind, God becomes confounded with technology itself. In fact, technoscience and God respond to the same expectation: “A horizon of ‘total’ accumulation of all possible knowledge.”

God is “the concept of absolutized memory,” he says, which, through technoscientific development, is now on the verge of becoming a reality. Humans becoming God through technological advancement, or even technoscience defined as God… In any case, a radical change occurs at the very core of our humanity.

Far from the Parisian grayness, under the sun of the San Francisco Bay, ambitious individuals will work to give this theoretical framework the substance of a defined project.

Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google, is the leading figure of a movement born in Silicon Valley: transhumanism.

The most ardent among them call themselves “Singulatarians” and hope that their minds will one day merge with those of computers, enabling them to live eternally. According to Ray Kurzweil, one of the leaders of this movement, “eventually, we’ll be able to expand our natural abilities by merging with our technology.”

To whether God exists, he answers, “Not yet.”

Thus, Kurzweil predicts that technological singularity — the crucial moment when machines become more intelligent than humans — will occur within our lifetime.

A prediction that takes on the shape of a prophecy. With the advent of ChatGPT and the democratization of generative AI, humanity has attained the ecstasy of metaphysical experience without religious mystification. Engaging in contact and conversation with something that appears to possess superhuman intelligence.

Are we on the threshold of a new religion?

If new religions founded on AI emerge, they will be different from traditional religions. Firstly, people will be able to directly communicate with the divine on a daily basis. This means that these religions will be less hierarchical, since no one can claim special access to divine wisdom.

The future depends on humanity’s ability to be better than the gods it sanctifies. Perhaps the enlightened in Sils Maria was wrong. God is not dead. God is the Immortal.