Im Colloquium Presents "Christianity in an Age of Artificial Intelligence"

Image provided by Dr. Heup Young Kim

Dr. Heup Young Kim, Visiting Professor of Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Emeritus Professor at Kangnam University

Wednesday, October 23, 2019
2:00 PM - 3:15 PM

156 Royce Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, 90024

The recent development of Artificial Intelligence brings about serious issues in Christianity and theology. The possibility that Artificial General Intelligence (Strong AI) or Super Intelligence can achieve digital omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence challenges the traditional doctrine of divine attributes. The anticipation that AGI or ASI will soon possess superintelligence endangers the validity of Christian theologies which have adopted the logos, a cardinal Greek concept, as the root-metaphor. For the logos in the modern thought has become narrowly defined as a technical reasoning (intelligence) since the Enlightenment. This logos-centralism brought a theological reduction to perceive God as superintelligence, which could be equated with a superintelligent AI. Therefore, the advent of superintelligent AI could finish logos theologies with ultraintelligent and omnipotent God. In hi-tech places such as Silicon Valley, there already appear new techno-religious movements that enthrone and worship AI as a divine status. Furthermore, transhumanists fervently advocate techno-utopian vision that, with the maximum use of science and AGI technology, humans can achieve the paradise foretold in the Gospel, without tears, sufferings, diseases, and even death. This lecture will engage in two major tasks. 1) It critically analyzes these coming issues of AI and Transhumanism. 2) It proposes a major theological paradigm shift from the traditional theology of theo-logos to a new paradigm of theo-dao, adopting a cardinal East Asian concept of Dao (the Way) as an alternate root-metaphor for this theological revision, in and through interreligious and interdisciplinary dialogues with both East Asian religions (Confucianism and Daoism) and sciences/technologies.

koreanstudies@international.ucla.edu

Sponsor(s): Center for Korean Studies