The BBC is running a story reporting on a study that found that people in more religious countries tend to look disfavorably on nanotechnology at a rate higher than those in more secular countries. See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7767192.stm

I thought this an intriguing result given the innocuous nature of much of what I hear about from people involved in nanotechnology research. Such researchers often seem to be working on things like novel applications of carbon nano-tubes, belts, or other shapes, production of better semiconductors, or other uses that, while they are beyond my ability to comprehend, do not seem in the slightest bit religiously offensive or controversial. I’ve even known people who seemed quite religious who conducted this type of research.

It should not have surprised me that what seems to have been meant is that some religious people are disturbed about a subset of nanotechnology that (to my admittedly amateurish understanding)  seems to make up a relatively small portion of the overall subject but which is in the area of overlap with cognitive science and artificial intelligence.  After all, “nanotechnology” as used in colloquial speech is a catch-all term for a number of emerging technologies that are considered to be the razor’s edge of present-day technological development, but this usage does not correspond to the technical meaning of the term. What seems to be the crux of the issue is that a combination of nano-technology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, biological sciences, and other emerging technologies might be used to create some form of synthetic life and / or intelligence.

This raises an interesting question. Is there a problem with creating artificial life / intelligence? One can imagine a whole range of reasons for opposition to building a new form of life or an autonomous artificial intelligence, but the issue is which reasons, if any, are logically defensible. We might first eliminate a ludicrous reason why some are likely to be offended by advances in this direction. For example, some might want to bar the development of artificial life because they feel it would be damning to the case for a higher power. While I would hope that no one would make such a weak argument- given its numerous fallacies and problems- I can imagine the resentment and fear caused by a perceived threat to a person’s beliefs leading them to want to avoid going down a road that they see as threatening. The first problem with such a position is that there is no reason why development of artificial intelligence or synthetic life would be an argument against belief in a deity. There is no mutual exclusive condition created. An omnipotent god can make bread. The fact that I, too, can make bread neither makes me a god nor invalidates the existence of omnipotent bread-making god. It is a stunning testament to the high degree of value that we attribute to the rationality of science that homo religiosus feels it necessary to try to selectively attack those portions of science that seem at odds with religious narrative while whole-heartedly accepting the vast majority of scientific disciplines. A religious person should be able to say that he or she need prove nothing to the scientific community, but rather will remain secure in his or her faith regardless of the findings of scientists. Those elements of apparent paradox that create the need for stronger faith should be looked upon as a gift rather than something to be destroyed. Furthermore, there is a domain in which science is completely silent and in which religion [or philosophy] rule, and that is the question of ”Why?”. Second, if one insists that uncovering any particular worldly knowledge is damning to one’s faith, to choose ignorance    over disillusionment seems a sad course indeed. 

Pursuit of artificial intelligence and / or synthetic life  does raise some fascinating moral and ethical questions that would presumably need to be worked out over the inevitably long course of development of such technologies. Consider the following, robots are developed to do various tasks for humans such as vacuuming, assembling automobiles, or acting like “helper animals” for the disabled. As the robots become more and more advanced, at what point do you revert to the despicable institution of slavery. Is it the point at which they can’t be distinguished by a Turing test? Turing’s test involved a human judge engaging in a text “conversation” with machines and humans, and a machine that the judge could not distinguish from a human would be judged intelligent. These issues are not necessarily reasons to avoid pursuit of synthetic life/intelligence technologies, but rather reasons to give thought to them ahead of time.

What would be a valid reason to avoid pursuit of these technologies? If there were a high probability that something catastrophic would result, and this probability was high enough that it would be apparent that the cost would outweigh the many benefits of developing these technologies. I am thinking of a scenario as in the fictitious Terminator movies / TV show in which machines revolt taking control of nuclear armaments in an attempt to destroy humanity. Of course, the Terminatorfranchise may not exactly be the pinnacle of sound thinking. (At least I personally nearly had my head explode considering how a person could be sent back in time by someone else so that the sendee could knock up the sender’s mother thus impregnating her with the sender.) In reality, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that an artificial intelligence would be any more likely to result in catastrophe than human intelligence. Seeing the evolution of a new intelligent species might even  help to better human society by giving humanity better insight into the origins of virtuousness and of pettiness that are the twin cornerstones of human nature.