A group of scholars and thinkers have argued that religion is not off the table, as far as artificial intelligence is confirmed.
In article for dailydot.com, writer Dylan Love toyed with idea of what would happen if robots, the ones that we think may take over the world some day, come across the idea of religion and faith.
Of course, the discourse described a hypothetical era known as The Singularity, when machines will be able to improve upon themselves and surpass all human abilities -- super intelligence (SI).
John Messerly, a scholar at the Institute for Ethics And Emerging Technologies, said
"I assume you can program a SI to "believe" almost anything. And you can try to program humans to believe things too."
While most of the interviewees appear to have some sort of religious background that has shaped their answers, this is not the first time robots and their hypothetical conversion to faith have wandered into the realms of scientific examination.
Last year, Marvin L. Minsky of MIT, said computers could one day, "have a soul."
In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Minksy was asked "could computers have a soul?"
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"Why not?," he answered.
"If you left a computer by itself, or a community of them together, they would try to figure out where they came from and what they are. If they came across a book about computer science they would laugh and say “that can’t be right.”
"And then you’d have different groups of computers with different ideas."
However, he does argue that making predictions today on what the future might hold is "very difficult" as our "ordinary ways of thinking" will become outdated very quickly.
Still, Lincoln Cannon, president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association proposes that "super intelligence may be either the best or the worst kind of super intelligence—sublimely compassionate or horribly oppressive."
Others including Hawking, who have not commented on this aspect of artificial intelligence, have argued that robots will become "our masters in 100 years."
On a separate occasion he also explained:
"It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate, humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded."
Here's hoping they use their powers, including religion, for good.