31. Artificial Intelligence

"I'm all for technology being used in a good sense. I often say to people, AI is like a knife, a very sharp knife. You can use it to operate with, or you can use it to kill people." -- Professor John Lennox 

Artificial Intelligence is the buzz phrase of the 21st century. 

For some, it’s a welcome step into a future that promises all manner of good. For others, AI is damaging at best and, at worst, a step towards our own destruction.

This episode, with the help of the great John Lennox, we ask the question: is Artificial Intelligence an under-estimated threat… or the saviour we’ve been waiting for?

This episode is brought to you by series sponsor Zondervan Academic, publishers of Telling a better story: how to talk about God in a skeptical age by Josh Chatraw.

LINKS 

• Meet Professor John Lennox
• Get Professor Lennox’s book 2084: Artificial intelligence and the future of humanity
• Read more about how China is using surveillance technology to keep tabs on its citizens in this article from The Atlantic: 'The Panopticon Is Already Here'
• Check out George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 
• Learn more about the Singularity with this article from Futurism: 'Singularity: Explain it to me like I’m 5 years old' 
• Why Elon Musk fears artificial intelligence, Vox 
• Lennox called Google’s Chief Futurist, Ray Kurzweil, “one of the great gurus in this field”. Read more about him here.
• Find out more about Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus 
• Watch the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, talk about the potential dangers of science and technology over the next 50 years
• Read more about science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and why they’re a little out of date
• Say hi to episode guests Dr Grenville Kent and Dr Vicky Lorrimar
• Read a recent ABC opinion piece by Dr Lorrimar, What hope? Dreams of immortality in the time of a pandemic
• More on Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English.
• Here's some ancient ‘technology’ to find out more on (as mentioned in this episode's Five Minute Jesus)
  • Trojan Horse
  • The Roman battering ram
  • Stuff designed by Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius
• Read the whole story of the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis
• More on deus ex machina (not the Australian motorcycles)
• Read the Asilomar Ethical Principles
• Watch Rosalind Picard’s TedTalk about the smartwatch she has developed  that can detect seizures. 
  • Then, watch her story of how she became a Christian

All the movies referenced in this episode: 

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Star Wars ... all of them.
• Terminator (the original!)
• Bladerunner (1982)
• Interstellar 
• Wall-E
• Her
• Avengers: Age of Ultron

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.