Recently, I've been discussing Professor John Lennox's book entitled 2084, which is all about the development and production of artificial intelligence. As an Atheist, I clearly have many differences with his Christian perspective. Wherever you sit with regard to the God question, Christianity, or the ethical concerns that are raised with the advancement of AI, you have to give varying perspectives their due. Today, I wanted to spend a moment chatting about how artificial intelligence is impacting the advertising world and the serious ethical questions that are raised by that. So let's begin with a couple of points from that book Professor Lennox wrote.

So lately I've been commenting on a terrific book written by Professor John Lennox. It's called 2084; It's all about the development of Artificial Intelligence. Today, I wanted to discuss some of these incredible advances but more specifically how they will benefit the medical industry. I didn't realize just how far we had come in the past few years with Artificial Intelligence. In his book 2084, Lennox reports that at the University of Toronto, engineers have harnessed the powers of machine learning in generating X-rays which augment training sets.

But the second kind of artificial intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, is really the quest for a superintelligence of one of two kinds, either enhancing human beings as they exist and building a biological superintelligence, or else discovering ways of uploading or downloading the contents, say, of the human mind onto silicone, so that we remove the dependence on an organic substrate. And there, it seems to me, that the likelihood of building a superintelligence that exceeds human capacity in every direction is very slim, because human intelligence is conscious. And we don't know what consciousness is. No scientist knows what consciousness is. And that the most serious people recognize that, that is a huge barrier.

Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute at MIT, made this rather grandiose statement: "In creating AI [artificial intelligence], we're birthing a new form of life with unlimited potential for good or ill." A study by Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Roger Hampson entitled The Digital Ape carries the subtitle How to Live (in Peace) with Smart Machines. They are optimistic that humans will still be in charge, provided we approach the process sensibly. But is this optimism justified? The director of Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk said: "We live in a world that could become fraught with . . .

WE have seen that AI, like any new technology only perhaps more so, brings with it a whole new raft of moral considerations that may easily seem unsurmountable. For AI computer systems have no conscience, and so the morality of any decisions they make will reflect the morality of the computer programmers - and that is where the difficulties start. How can we be sure that the programmers will build in a morality that is benevolent and humane? Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Group at MIT, puts it succinctly: "The greater the freedom of a machine, the more it will need moral standards." Political scientist and author of The End of History Francis Fukuyama regards transhumanism as "the world's most dangerous idea" in that it runs the risk of affecting human rights.

In a podcast, "Does Revelation Talk About Artificial Intelligence?", he discusses with Robert J. Marks, director of the Walter Bradley Institute, the title question: "Can AI replace the need for belief in God?" Robert J. Marks (right): Let's talk about the theological implications of AI. You have a reputation, not only as a mathematician, but a Christian apologist. And I wanted to go into some of the apologetics that you gave in the book and how it relates to some of the modern perceptions of artificial intelligence. Generally, how will technical advances affect the way in which people, either believers or non-believers, think of God? John Lennox: Well, sometimes technological development has a very positive effect because if, like myself, you believe that God is the intelligence behind the universe, that he's made human beings in his image, so that we are to a certain extent creative and we can produce this technology. Then the existence of the technology and the need for science itself is evidence that there is a God behind it all. So that is a positive development.

In a recent podcast, Oxford mathematician John Lennox answered some questions raised about his new book, 2084 by Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks, including questions as to how the loss of privacy could wind up really harming us: Robert J. Marks: It's been said that AI is the new electricity. You have addressed some of the potential negative uses of artificial intelligence or the negative impacts of artificial intelligence, but expanding on that, what are some of the big threats that you see in the use of AI technology in the near future? John Lennox: Well, the threats are best explained by comparing them with the advantages. Let's take a very simple and practical example, which is extremely useful. That is in the field of x-ray technology.

On Oct. 9, 2018, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. EST, John Lennox will address the critical questions surrounding artificial intelligence and how the future of artificial intelligence bears on a Christian vision of reality. This event is hosted at the Zacharias Institute in Alpharetta, GA, and is part of a new series called #TrendingQuestions. For more information or to attend in person, visit: https://rzim.org/trending-questions/

On Oct. 9, 2018, 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. EST, John Lennox will address the critical questions surrounding artificial intelligence and how the future of artificial intelligence bears on a Christian vision of reality. This event is hosted at the Zacharias Institute in Alpharetta, GA, and is part of a new series called #TrendingQuestions. For more information or to attend in person, visit: https://rzim.org/trending-questions/