I believe that one of the most important parts of being human is having personal identity (PI). And part of being human in today’s world means experiencing an unprecedented influx of artificial intelligence (AI). It is the thesis of this article that these two categories will inevitably meld together into a third category—what Andrea M. Lundeen calls—“artificial identity.”[1]
As AI becomes more prolific, becoming the common source for data intel and social interaction, people will be faced with not only the existential crisis of PI morphing into “artificial identity” but also the theological crisis of replacing the personal triune God of Judeo-Christianity with impersonal AI machines.
The consensus today is that things in the tech world are getting pretty weird. With the high demand for the newest gadgets and rapid acceleration of technology, the attitude of most people is that science fiction can no longer be deemed “fiction.” If I could ascribe a motto to Silicon Valley it would be, “If we can imagine it, we can create it.” (A similar slogan can be surmised for Hollywood, “If we can imagine it, we can direct it.”) Sadly, however, the more intelligent we become, the less wise or, dare I say, human we become. Secular humanists/scientists are racing to save the human race and prolong our existence indefinitely. But at what cost?
The irony is that in order to save humanity, humans are methodically being turned into robots. The ethics involved for this type of transhumanism is alarming. It’s utilitarian, plain and simple—the end justifies the means. And even more concerning, nay, reprehensible, is the emergence of sexbots. Yes, you heard me correctly, robots are being booted up for intimate interaction with humans.
So, how did we get so far off course? Well, when the culprit/motive gets brought up about a civil or criminal case, the typical response is “follow the money.” Similarly, the clue-leaving culprit here is the “currency” of what Scripture calls “the lust of flesh” (1 Jn 2:16a), which is man’s proclivity to the sensual pleasures of a depraved nature, and “the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16c), which is another human bent toward self-aggrandizement, which is not complete without pretentious praise and applause. In this case, I’m specifically referring to praise and applause for scientific progress and technological advancements. But that’s not to say that science and technology are bad things in and of themselves (more on this later). The culprit here is the desire to be worshipped for these accomplishments.
Moving away from the sexual orientation between humans and machines, I’d like to discuss my concern over the existential crisis of PI morphing into “artificial identity.” In other words, I’d like to talk about man and machine becoming one, under the psychological category of a pseudo-nature or what I call a “drama ontology,” starting with its cultural influence through the lens of cinema.
I believe the crisis of losing our PI to “artificial identity”—a synthesis of flesh and silicon, what can be called transhumanism—happened initially by the mere fact that it was primed for existence by the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters, producers, and directors.
I remember watching the first Terminator movie when I was about 12-years-old (c. 1985). Quite frankly, I didn’t know how to process what I was thinking, feeling and seeing—a cyborg or humanoid made up of living tissue surrounding a robotic endoskeleton was ruthlessly assassinating all maternal prospects that might birth the future leader of the rebellion against the machines.
Then, in 1990, I rented a sci-fi film called Cheri 2000, where Gynoids, female humanoid robots, are created to be substitutes for wives given society’s aversion to intimacy in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The plot pivots around the lead male role risking his life to find another Gynoid model of his wife in a lawless sector. So, he hires a female tracker to help him find his fembot replacement. But their brush with death only serves to show him that what he really wants is the gritty, real-life intimacy of a female partner—his flesh-and-blood tracker.
Nine-years later (1999), the movie The Matrix came out at the box office and it was an instant sci-fi hit. An evil cyber-intelligence deceives humans by keeping them plugged into the matrix—an AI simulation program—while humans are harvested as batteries in liquid metal pods. Only the prophesied One, who turns out to be a computer programmer named Neo (an anagram of the One), can rescue the human race. In this cyberpunk fantasy, the machines are hardwired into “unwoke” human brains in order to control and manipulate their perception of reality.
Fast forward fourteen-years (2013), a romantic sci-fi film, Her, debuts. It’s about a grieving hopeless romantic who gets divorced but finds friendship that slips into love in the “arms” of an operating system (OS) called “Samantha.” As the film progresses, it’s obvious that “Samantha” is not your garden variety OS. After all, what would be the selling point of a Hollywood production about a man who quixotically falls in love with a voice-activated computer software that can merely regurgitate facts, play songs, alert daily reminders, organize lists, and tell time? But if that OS is sentient or evolves sentient properties (i.e., emotions), then the leap to love is not as far-fetched, and the love story is more believable, which will fill more seats, which will make more money at the box office.
Then, two-years later (2015), the highly anticipated Marvel Universe sequel to Marvel’s The Avengers—Avengers: Age of Ultron—attracted a record IMAX audience on opening night. In this high-octane film, Ultron is an AI peacekeeping program created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, which becomes a sentient android villain with a god complex. He is ultimately destroyed by Vision who is a Vibranium-based android with an AI program (J.A.R.V.I.S.) uploaded into his core software.
These films were instrumental in the development of my creativity. But they also spawned seeds of confusion, doubt, and anxiety inside my fertile imagination. What’s real? What’s fiction? Is it possible that we’re in the matrix and we just don’t know it?
(A word of warning, in the name of “entertainment” Hollywood pervasively manipulates our emotions by having us imagine that AI machines are sentient beings with feelings that are capable of relational reciprocation and falling in love. The truth is that a multi-billion-dollar business like the entertainment industry, by its very inception, is manufactured to capture imaginations and elicit emotions, using complex algorithms to mimic those emotions.)
Now I’d like to discuss the true ontological union of man and machine, starting with its restorative purposes. Robotics has been deeply mined, and continues to be upgraded daily, to improve quality of life and the utility of human interaction with the world. Brain computer interface devices are used to help humans who suffer from paralysis, “improving learning ability and memory of new physical movements.”[2] Unequivocally, this is an amazing feat of human achievement. Of course, there are prosthetic limbs, which are now “designed with a preprogrammed set of movements.”[3] And there’s adaptive AI in artificial limbs that “could help people better adjust to the challenges of everyday life.”[4]
As anyone can see, science and technology are not necessarily bad things. Of course, they can be used for sinister purposes. But my concern here is that the proliferation of AI in its utility for human flourishing will become problematic, confusing people as to what is real and what is not real. I argue that this confusion has far reaching tentacles, touching on PI.[5]
Personal identity is predicated on what a person believes is real. That is, there’s a cause-and-effect relation between identity and reality, with the latter directly affecting the former. For example, consider someone who refers to herself as a “Christian creative.” She derives her personal statement from her experience of reality, particularly her (metaphysical and epistemological) beliefs that God is real and knowable, and her beliefs (about identity and teleology) that God has created humanity in His image in order to have men and women reflect His creativity.
But what if in this pervasive technological field of AI, a Christian creative begins to believe AI is real? Will that necessarily confuse her understanding of who she is? The answers to these questions pivot on the explanation of what we mean by “belief” and “real.” If “belief” simply means putting one’s confidence in something so that, in this case, she puts her confidence in AI, in the same way she would place her trust in a traditional internet website regarding the acquisition of information, then I would say that the chance for getting confused over her PI has a lower probability. (A word of warning though: a person should always exercise caution in determining the validity of the digital resource employed, whether it be a traditional website or an AI website.)
The second question is a bit more complicated given its colloquialisms. “Real” can mean several things: something exists and is not make believe (To this, AI is real); something has an essence, which makes it what it is and not something else (To this, AI is real); and something is a person with personhood, having a conscience and experiencing mental states, as well as having a soul with personal properties, such as free-will, desires, and emotions (To this, AI is not real). There is no evidence to suggest otherwise, not even to the possibility that AI can grow a conscience. Life only comes from life. This is the law of biogenesis. To say otherwise—that life stems from non-life—is to attempt to run a gambit in the face of a royal flush.
In sum, if a Christian creative believes AI is real in the sense that it’s not make believe or that it has an essence, which makes it AI and not something else like French fries or a mustache, then confusion about her identity—“artificial identity”—is less probable. But if she believes AI is real and has a conscience, then confusion about her identity—“artificial identity”—is more probable.
Closing thoughts:
- How do we fight the temptation to be seduced by the secular religion of transhumanism, which is not going away any time soon?
- I suggest making ourselves consciously aware that the AI devices we’re using are not created in the image of God and do not reflect His creativity, although they reflect the creativity of their creators—software programmers.
The other matter to be concerned with is the theological crisis of replacing the personal God of Judeo-Christianity with impersonal AI machines linked to a vast global network.
I’d like to start this discussion of AI idolization by comparing two quantitatively similar entities: a mega-brain and a mega-mind, with mega-brain representing AI and mega-mind representing God. I have no issue calling AI a mega-brain, although the silicon circuitry of AI is not technically a “brain.” Likewise, for this purpose, I have no problem saying, “God is a mega-mind,” if properly qualified. Obviously, God should not be relegated to a mere mind, which implies only properties of intelligence, saying nothing about other complementary omni-divine properties. Moreover, God is a triune deity of three persons who enjoy cohesive yet individual minds. This is the benefit of personhood—a person has a mind but is not equivalent to a mind. If I were more restrictive with my terms, I would reserve “mega-mind” to colorfully describe only God’s omniscience. With that said, the terms “mega-brain” and “mega-mind” are quantitatively similar, and I will use them as such for pedagogical comparison.
The argument for the theological crisis stated above is: If AI is a mega-brain similar to God’s mega-mind, then a Christian creative can be tempted to worship it, especially with Hollywood’s anti-Christian agenda and its manipulation of emotions. I believe that the mega-brain of AI has been used in films like The Matrix or The Age of Ultron to resemble or replace the mega-mind of God. This is why Ultron is said to have a god complex, and Neo has godlike powers. For example, Neo can mentally manipulate objects in the matrix at will (telekinesis).
If we’ve learned anything from cultural anthropology and psychology, it’s that, first, Homo sapiens desire to worship something or someone greater than themselves, and second, they become like the thing or person they worship. By replacing God with AI, we’re not only dishonoring our Creator, we’re also hurting ourselves. AI is neither conscious nor sentient. But our Creator is both, speaking loudly to our understanding of reality and PI. When we worship the God who created us, we’re fulfilling our nature as personal beings who thrive by knowing the personal Being.
Worshipping the perfectly omniscient God of the Bible, who is also omnibenevolent and proves it (post-fall) by sending His Son into a fallen and broken world to save it from their sins, is the “good news” (Gospel) of the New Testament. In this case, a person’s PI is regenerated (ontologically) and brought into union with God’s PI (relationally).
In sum, the intellectual similarity between God’s mega-mind and AI’s mega-brain makes it possible for a Christian creative to replace the former for the latter, ending up worshipping an artificial idol. The worship of an artificial idol in place of the real thing is both blasphemous to God and deleterious to our PI. We become like the thing we worship. So when we worship AI, we scrub our hard drive (PI) of the possibility of spiritual redemption and thus being unplugged from the immoral matrix of this world, leaving behind the binary pseudonym—“artificial identity.”
Closing thoughts:
- How does one fight the temptation to replace God with AI?
- Should we interact with AI or steer clear of it?
- I suggest praying and including God in our plight. This humbles us to remain dependent on Him as we conscientiously engage AI and use it for His glory.
These are my concerns and projections based on my experiences of human nature and the interaction of humans with technology.
[1] “Artificial Identity” was coined by Andrea M. Lundeen at an Artist Gathering hosted by The Grove at Capo Beach Church on April 26, 2024. The theme was “AI and the Arts.”
[2] Joanna Wendel, “5 Ways Robots and Humans Are Becoming One,” Inverse Online Magazine, February 20, 2024, https://www.inverse.com/innovation/5-ways-robots-humans-are-becoming-one/amp (accessed May 22, 2024).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Admittedly, my theory would be strengthened with a survey about the deleterious effects of AI on PI.