Will AI Have a Soul?
And does it even matter?
Eric Sentell has written an interesting piece asking some important questions about the implications of artificial intelligence for religion and spirituality. Will AI have a soul? Will it be able to participate in religious observances alongside humans, if it’s so inclined? And how will its relationship to religion and spirituality affect our thinking about such things?
I want to take a stab at answering some of these questions, and possibly a few more. But to do that, I want to approach the problem from what might seem an unexpected angle.
Picture this: you’re a small child sitting in a church pew, watching the priest prepare the sacrament of the Eucharist. That’s where he transforms the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. This being a Catholic Mass, you and everyone else in the pews doesn’t just believe the bread and wine have become symbolic of Jesus’s flesh and blood. They are his flesh and blood.
You envy the sacristan, the alter boy in the white robe and yellow belt who holds the liturgy open for the priest to read. He is close enough to see the transformation happen. You imagine the wine in the chalice…
