God in the Machine: What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God by Anne Foerst

From the Publisher

A provocative look at the theological implications ofartificial intelligence—and the controversial questions raised by robotics about our very definition of humanity—from the founder of MIT's God and Computers Project Get ready to meet two remarkable characters, Cog and Kismet. They both enjoy working with others, they're very attentive, have excellent learning skills, and, according to their colleagues, they're very charming. And they're both robots.

From Hollywood to the halls of NASA, robots loom large in the popular imagination. But what feelings do these lifelike machines really provoke in us? In God in the Machine, Dr. Anne Foerst draws on her expertise as both a theologian and computer scientist to address the profound questions that robots such as Cog and Kismet raise for us all: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a soul? And what do robots teach us about our relationship with God?

God in the Machine challenges many popular assumptions—about the Bible, about the meaning of community, and especially about the fundamental distinctions between humanity and the “artificial” beings we create. Dr. Foerst shares intriguing observations about the ways we define “human” versus “person” and asks what we must do in order for all humans to be treated as equal persons.

Original, controversial, and deeply insightful, God in the Machine illuminates the exciting and little-understood new terrain that lies at the intersection of technology and religion, science and faith.

Author Biography: Dr. Anne Foerst is a former research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where she also founded and directed the God and Computers Project. The only robotics theologian in the country, her work has captured much media attention, including coverage in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Science. She is currently a visiting professor of theology and computer science at St. Bonaventure University.

Publishers Weekly

Foerst, a theologian associated with MIT's artificial intelligence lab in the 1990s, writes not so much about robotics or AI as about what it means to be a person, in technological and theological perspective. As a German theologian transplanted into an unlikely environment, Foerst was received with both hospitality and skepticism by MIT colleagues. But the robots, rather than the roboticists, are the stars-especially Cog, a model of hand-eye coordination and learning, and Kismet, an example of emotional mirroring through voice and facial expression. Foerst effectively narrates the delight-and at times, confusion-she feels from her robotic encounters, although some readers will wish for more concrete descriptions of the science and technology involved. Foerst's thoughts on AI and theology can be grouped into two main themes: the importance of embodiedness and the flexibility of personhood. The first theme is developed quite effectively, integrating insights from the Bible with the idea of AI in the 1990s: making progress by modeling embodied systems-even simple ones-instead of abstract computational tasks. The second theme, relying heavily on Paul Tillich's concepts of sin and justification, and focusing on audience perceptions of Cog and Kismet, is generally less persuasive. Overall, Foerst relates an inherently interesting story, supplemented by parallels in Judeo-Christian traditions, but hampered at times by academic jargon. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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The handshake occurred in the fall of 1995 between Harvey Cox, a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, and the humanoid robot Cog, developed at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cog is a huge robot, approximately seven feet tall, and somewhat intimidating. It has a massive steel frame. Our culture is infused with science-fiction stories about robots that turn against humans and destroy them. We are also accustomed to factory robots that blindly do their assigned tasks and can accidentally smash a finger or a head. Therefore, Cog induces a mixture of fascination and fear in many people who see it for the first time. But Harvey Cox took the first step. He had devoted his entire life to bringing Christian theology into a dialogue among people with different worldviews, and he didn't want to stop at a robot. So, when he first realized that Cog's eyes were following him around the room, he made eye contact. Then Professor Cox tentatively extended his hand, and Cog, after some trial and error, grasped it. There was a collective gasp from the Harvard theologians and MIT scientists present.

Cog is the result of one of the first attempts to build a humanoid robot, and in 1996 it had just become very famous. As soon as the media discovered the project, Cog was constantly surrounded by cameras and covered by all the major television networks and newspapers. Building a humanoid robot is a fascinating endeavor, but before the development of Cog, such a project had belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction. At MIT, Rodney Brooks, then associate director of MIT's famous Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT AI Lab), had the vision of building humanoids. For quite some time, Rod was the enfant terrible in the robotics community; he had played around with techniques and strategies that were completely new to the field, and he was the first to build successful autonomous robots that could navigate real-world environments. This might sound like a very simple task, but before the mid-1980s, nothing like it had ever been accomplished.

The traditional metaphor in AI had been that intelligence is a program that is implemented in the wetware of the brain but might just as well be implemented in the hardware of the computer. Traditional AI programs have internal world models that process data in order to plan “intelligent” reactions to given stimuli. While these traditional machines are great at playing chess and proving mathematical theorems, they fail as soon as they have to navigate constantly changing environments. They are incapable of reacting effectively to the real world. The assumption in the traditional system is that intelligence is the capability for abstract thought. Humans are so good at it that they can live in the real world. If AI systems become increasingly smart, they might eventually be able to perform as well as we do.

Rod broke with this assumption and declared our facility for abstract thinking a mere by- product of our ingenious capability to intentionally shape our respective environments in order to survive. Rod believed that if AI researchers attempt to build intelligent machines, they ought to build embodied entities that interact with the real world. One might not need abstract thought in the beginning—after all, most animals survive pretty well without it, and human newborns don't have this capability either. Hence, Rod proposed starting with insect robots and then attempting to build a robot analogous to a newborn baby that learns through social interaction and physical embodiment. The jump from insects to a humanoid is huge, but the group that worked with Rod was so excited about the project that they decided to go ahead nonetheless.

At research universities such as MIT, most professors have groups that consist of undergraduate and graduate students, Ph.D. candidates, postdocs, researchers, and visiting professors. That is, people on many different levels work together and inspire each other's projects. I started to interact with Rod and his group in the fall of 1993 and joined the AI Lab in the fall of 1995. While I never got to know all the people in the original project that started in 1992, I became acquainted with all those who worked in the group between 1994 and 2000. At this time, we called our group “The Zoo,” as there were so many exotic people in it. As a theologian, I was probably the most bizarre member, but we had other strange animals as well.

I was working in Germany on my doctoral thesis. I had studied computer science as well as theology and focused in my thesis on the possibilities for a nonjudgmental dialogue between Christian anthropology and AI. As I based my work on the theology of the great twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich, I had intended to work in the Tillich archives at the Harvard Divinity School (HDS) during my first visit to Cambridge. But I also wanted to sneak my way into the hallowed halls of MIT, the cradle of AI. Most bigwigs in AI had come from this place or had trained here, and I couldn't wait to walk the same hallways with these figures that I so secretly admired.

When I met Rod, he invited me to come back in the fall of 1993 to join his informal seminar on “Embodied AI,” in which he would talk about his new assumptions on how to build smart machines. I think I tickled his sense of humor when I first walked into his lab. He had probably never been sought out by a theologian. But he respected my wish to analyze the hidden assumptions, hopes, and beliefs in his group, and thought it might help them to develop a clearer worldview. He invited me back again and then invited me to join his lab as a postdoc. After finishing my thesis in 1995, I became an official member of the lab.

Meanwhile, at Harvard, my research in the Tillich archives had not gone unnoticed. I had unearthed a total of six lectures that Tillich had given at MIT, only two of which had been published to that date. Harvey Cox became fascinated. He had studied with Tillich and had written his doctoral thesis on Tillich and technology, but he had never been involved with MIT, nor had he ever concentrated on a particular area of technology. He was especially intrigued by the possibilities of bringing Tillich into the discussion of the development of Cog. As plans for my postdoc time at MIT became more concrete, he managed to get me a position at Harvard as well. This way, I would not spend my entire time at MIT, an alien place for me, but would find refuge at HDS, which was my theological home.

It worked beautifully. I spent my days happily at MIT and often trotted over to HDS. The inherent differences between both places fascinated me and became instantly visible just by looking at the architecture of the respective schools. The AI Lab was then a harsh, concrete, cubicled building at Technology Square, and HDS a Gothic, Oxford-style building with turrets. One had long corridors, chaotic offices, and modern furniture, and the other had oil paintings and woodwork from another era. At MIT, you couldn't distinguish between professors' and students' offices; at HDS only professors resided. Robots were always running through the hallways of MIT, and Cog was constantly being haunted by the media.

But there were also commonalities. Both schools were located slightly off campus and, in both groups, I laughed more than in any of my previous German academic settings. The other commonality was that at both schools I was initially perceived as an outsider. People at HDS found my fascination with high-tech somewhat strange. Most of them were slightly antitech and thought my quest to bring theology and AI together somewhat superfluous. At MIT, on the other hand, people were suspicious of the theologian in their midst. It probably took a year and many, many conversations until heads stopped turning toward me whenever the term evolution was mentioned. Most people there associated any form of Christianity with creationism and had a hard time understanding why I, as a Christian, actively sought out scientific explanations for why we are the way we are. But at both places, initial skepticism slowly evolved into active interest in my research.

As I liked both places so much, I attempted to bring the sides together. Socially, I introduced as many people as possible, and it is wonderful to see that after all these years some friendships still remain. At the same time, I was attempting to bring both groups together academically. I read and gave presentations to prepare them for each other. Finally, the group from HDS came over to MIT to meet the robot team and the robots themselves. It was on this visit that the monumental handshake occurred. There were quite a few important handshakes that day between various professionals of divinity and of AI, most of whom had never met a person from the other discipline.

The handshake between Harvey and Cog was deeply profound, as it built a bridge between these seemingly different areas. When Harvey and Cog looked at each other, it became clear that there was a dialogue waiting for us. As our technical creatures become more like us, they raise fundamental theological questions. As theologians, we have the responsibility not to shrink away from such a challenge but to seek out these opportunities and overcome our fear as Harvey had done that day.

This handshake has been fundamental for my life as a researcher, and I have worked on stabilizing the bridge that was forged at that moment ever since.

This became especially challenging when, after a few years of work on Cog, Cynthia Breazeal, one of the first engineers of Cog, started her own robot project, Kismet. Kismet is the most charming robot I know. Today it is proudly presented in the MIT Museum. However, during my last years at MIT, it was the center of our attention and eventually became the center of my research.

For me, the challenge is to analyze the attempt of the people at MIT to build creatures with human capabilities by technical means alone. Any such attempt suggests that humans are not special but rather are just like machines. Embodied AI also firmly places us within the animal kingdom and uses many insights from evolutionary biology. Any sense of specialness is rejected because there is no empirical evidence that humans are more unique than any other animal. Most of what we think is special in humans can be directly tracked to earlier stages of development in other animals. At the same time, I had learned in theology to understand humans as special, elected by God to be God's partners. Because these two worldviews clashed, I was constantly walking the boundary between them.

What I learned at this time was that doubt is a positive thing. If you enter a dialogue between theology and another discipline and don't think the partner in dialogue has a valid perspective, you might as well not talk at all. Whatever the other party is saying will never convince you or even influence you in any way. If, on the other hand, you throw yourself wholeheartedly into a discussion, you have to question yourself constantly. I often sat in my office at MIT and thought the whole idea of religion was utter rubbish. What I had learned about the human machinery sounded so entirely convincing. These moments of doubt were very painful. But they were also constructive, as I learned the validity of both sides of the argument. I was able to follow Tillich's footsteps in walking the boundary without coming down on one side or the other because I found both sides so fascinating and attractive. I loved the people in both fields and was able to build connections between them.

Could I have found a similar situation in any scientific lab that attempts to understand humans in terms of evolution and functionalism? I think it was the presence of the humanoids in the AI Lab that made the journey so special. Humanoid robots invoke many contrary emotions in most of us. We often perceive them as a threat; we fear they might turn against us. We also resent the possibility that these creatures are as smart as or even smarter than we are, because we feel that we humans are special. But while we fear humanoid robots, we are also attracted to them. We are intrigued by the idea of nonhuman partners inhabiting the earth with us. As a deeply lonely species, we have a strong desire to communicate with beings different from us. Our attempts to communicate with dolphins and chimps and our continuing search for extraterrestrial intelligence demonstrate the depths of this desire. The construction of humanoid robots follows this search for partnership. It can therefore be linked to the Jewish golem tradition in which the construction of humanoid robots is understood as praise of God and as a repetition of God's act of creating us.

Even when I talk about computers, my focus is on humanoid robots and I strictly distinguish between the two. Computers are the machines that sit on your desk or in your lap. They are behind bank machines and at other sites where computing power is needed. Computers can be accessed via keyboard, voice, or touch, and they respond by processing data, running programs, and outputting language.

Robots, on the other hand, are bodies that have specific functions in and interactions with real-world environments through sensors and actuators. Even if their actions are based on computer power, they appear as entities in which computers play only one part. The popularity of fictional humanoid robot characters such as Commander Data (Star Trek) or C-3PO (Star Wars) demonstrate this. Most people are fascinated by robots and endeared by them.

The power of robots lies in their physical presence. They share our space. They move in the world we move in. They interact directly with us, and this allows us to bond with them. Bonding with computers occurs because computers are fascinating machines. Bonding with robots occurs because of their physical reality in this world and our ability to interact with them in physical space.

Among the most powerful science-fiction robots are C-3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars. R2-D2 is much more darling than C-3PO despite C-3PO's humanoid form and human speech. I think that people prefer R2-D2 because it is so emotional. Even though its beeps are unintelligible to us, we think we understand it because we empathize and bond with it.

This is the same for Cog and Kismet. Cog is more like C-3PO in that it has a humanoid form and invites “grown-up” interaction. Kismet is cute like a baby, fostering an emotional connection—like the one with R2-D2.

This suggests that our bonding mechanisms depend on our own perception of the other and that therefore our ability to bond with them depends much more on emotional settings than on abstract “humanlike” qualities. For the same reason, it is the very emotionality Commander Data from Star Trek displays every time it complains about having no emotions that endears us; an emotionless machine would not constantly raise the issue of its own worth, value, and personhood.

Needless to say, I am very conscious not to assign robots any gender. Even if we, for instance, might think Data is male—after all, it is played by a male actor—I don't want to assign it gender. Humans are accustomed to interacting with creatures that have a gender. Although we find the address “it” offensive, I don't mean it this way. I just want to avoid a “male” impression of the robots.

Cog and Kismet are the first steps in the development of humanoid robots that will be part of our future. But there are many questions about a future with robots. Will these beings be seen as our future partners or as our future enemies? Will we ever perceive robots to be as special as we perceive ourselves to be? Might they make us superfluous in the course of the new, technology-induced evolution?

While I will address many of these questions, I have yet another emotional response to robots. While working with Cog and later Kismet, I have learned more about myself than at any other time. Why would it make me happy if Kismet smiled at me when I knew that it was a programmed reaction? Why would I be disappointed when Cog was ignoring me, even if I knew that—at that time—it could hardly see anything in its periphery?

Our strong emotional reactions toward the robots let the members of my team study themselves. What, after all, do we really know about ourselves as biological creatures, functional systems, and images of God? We decided to explore what modern science could teach us about ourselves. We studied neuroscience to learn more about the brain, and we studied behavioral science and animal studies to learn about mechanisms for common behaviors. We studied evolutionary biology to learn why our bodies are the way they are and what that means for our being in the world. Later on, we concentrated on developmental psychology; adult intelligence is, after all, developed over time, and we thought that if we simulated the learning process of an infant in our robots they would develop a higher degree of intelligence.

This book is the result of my journey at MIT, which started with the monumental handshake between Harvey and Cog. It was this handshake that made me realize that I was not an oddball trying to bring together things that simply do not belong. It convinced me that a dialogue was not just possible but necessary. I finally realized that these robots can serve as thinking tools to explore how we are and how we function in relationships. Surprisingly, the reflection on the robots led me to find some answers to one of the most urgent questions at the beginning of the third millennium. How can we achieve a global community where deeply ingrained cultural differences can, nonetheless, create a community in which different people can live in harmony?

In this book, I explore what robots can teach us about ourselves, our emotions, our ways of thinking and acting in the world. I will talk about what the very wish to build such a creature tells us about Homo sapiens. In the end, we will see that such questions lead to deeper theological and philosophical insights into who we are as thinking machines, as bodies, and as interactive beings and partners of God.

CHAPTER 1
Re-creating Ourselves
O GOD1, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, oh GOD.
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the winds of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”
Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you for I am wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intrically woven in the depth of the earth.
You created me as golem in my mother's womb.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
from Psalm 139

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

We need to begin with the most important questions that will follow us throughout the book. What does it mean to be human? How can humanness be defined? Can we ever come up with criteria that distinguish us from animals—or, for that matter, from robots? And what exactly is our place and our purpose on this planet, in our sun system, in the universe? Are humans special, or are they just another random species on an insignificant planet?

People have dealt with these questions for millennia. Countless answers have been provided, usually reflecting the specific cultural context in which they were formulated. As a result, many of these answers are unsatisfying for people outside the particular religious and cultural framework in which they operate. Is it really our intelligence that makes us human? Is it our creativity, or perhaps our ethics, that distinguishes us from animals? Is the essence of humanity the humanoid body—and if so, in what gender? At the MIT AI Lab, I was confronted with these questions every day. I found a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that beautifully illustrates both the complexity and profoundness of this issue. Calvin says, “I read that scientists are trying to make computers that think. Isn't that weird? If computers can think, what will people be better at than machines?” And Hobbes answers, “Irrational behavior?” And so Calvin says, “Well maybe they'll invent a psychotic computer.” I have always found that this is not just a good description of humans but also a very good introduction to the world of Artificial Intelligence and our attempt to rebuild ourselves with the help of machines.

Before we can focus on this endeavor, however, I would like to introduce you to the assumptions I have made about humans in order to write this book. I believe that humans are, before anything else, storytellers. When we attempt to understand ourselves and develop theories about why we are the way we are, we talk in metaphors and symbols. Before we can learn about ourselves as creatures who yearn to rebuild themselves, we first have to look at other stories about humankind.

The Storytelling Humanoid (Homo narrans)
When we search for ways to understand ourselves, we find many metaphors in the human sciences. We have attempted to describe what it means to be human in terms of humankind's evolutionary development. We know that we are mammals and share with chimpanzees between 98 and 99 percent of our genes (we share with yeast approximately 50 percent of our genes, so perhaps the commonality with the chimps is not too astonishing). In the evolutionary context, our nearest Homo ancestor is addressed with the metaphor Homo erectus (upright humanoid), which refers to our upright position. However, the two-legged walk alone does not turn a species into one that constantly asks fascinating and deep questions about itself. For this, we need a form of higher intelligence, thinking capability, or wisdom; therefore, scientists talk about Homo sapiens.

Observations of human behavior versus animal behavior reveal that humans are quite good at building tools and then larger, long-term constructions with the help of these tools. The metaphor Homo faber describes the universal human trait to build and construct things and to shape the world in which we live with the help of technology. We know that other primates use tools and that they teach their young how to employ them. Homo faber is distinct from these other species because members of this species can intentionally build and construct over time—even over several generations.

Churches often took several hundred years to be completed, and in the case of the church in my hometown, the Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) in Germany, it took more than a thousand years to complete it. The Dom is my personal favorite of all the churches I have seen. Of course, I grew up with it, but, so far, no other church has inspired in me so much awe and such a profound sense of beauty and spirituality. Part of the awe is a result of its history; it is hard to imagine that people who possess different styles and tastes can, over the course of a millennium, construct something so unified and coherent. The Dom is in the Guinness Book of World Records because there has never been another building that took that much time to be constructed. The metaphor of Homo faber addresses our ability to follow our intentions and wishes over long periods of time through many generations. Our ability to speak and to write makes such a capability for planning possible. Homo sapiens cannot be without Homo faber; both are equal parts of being human. The seemingly “wise” Homo sapiens creates theories and visions while Homo faber constructs and verifies ideas. In AI, both are intrinsically linked.

A good example of the close connection between humans as creators of ideas and humans as toolmakers is Martin Luther's powerful influence on the thoughts of people in Western Europe in the sixteenth century. As a Lutheran, Luther is to me one of the greatest men in history. But most of his thoughts weren't unique or new. Many others before Luther had offered similar critiques against the Church, and they all were prosecuted and killed as heretics. What Luther had on his side was not only the greatness of his ideas but also a technical gadget, the printing press.

Gutenberg's printing press allowed for the wider distribution of the ideas of the Reformation. The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Renaissance movement had called for education, among many other things. When Luther appeared, many people were able to read without the help of their priests and so they could absorb Luther's writings. The thoughts alone were not powerful enough to change the Western world; they needed to be contained and transmitted in a concrete and physical entity, such as a booklet or pamphlet.

It is, of course, Homo faber who constructs robots and many other things. If humans believe themselves to be created by a god, members of the species celebrate that god and god's creativity within them whenever they construct something; art, music, engineering, poetry, and thought are all new creations.

Building robots, as well as most other acts of creativity, contains a playful element. When Rod Brooks was once asked why he liked robots so much, he answered, “Because they blink and move.” The playful humanoid (Homo ludens) has fun doing unusual things and accomplishing nearly impossible tasks. We are also very good at role- playing and act often according to a script, e.g., when we conform to the behaviors of the group we happen to live with, or if we take a specific role in a defined interaction between a small number of people. For instance, in a family, the father, the mother, and each of the children will take on a specific role that works in interactions with the other roles. One member might be the serious one; someone else might be the joker of the bunch. One might be responsible for healthy social interactions between the family members; another might be the peace builder or the disruptive element. Research even suggests that the birth order—whether a child is the youngest or the oldest of her siblings—as well as gender have a profound influence on the development of the individual child.

Homo ludens is a social animal with a fine sense for interaction. While the playful element should not be forgotten, it is important to remember that most games follow rules as well. Homo ludens seeks fun and entertainment and Homo faber often acts out of sheer pleasure. But humans also can use their abilities to work toward different goals, for example, to just make money. We are a greedy bunch and work selfishly toward our own economic and commercial success; that is why economical theories that are based on the metaphor of the Homo economicus are applied so successfully to market analysis.

Finally, theologians talk about Homo religiosus, the religious humanoid, which aims to be spiritual and to act in a meaningful way. Homo sapiens is at her best when involved in a spiritual enterprise. Many scientists think the metaphor of Homo religiosus unscientific and irrelevant. But history, cross-cultural studies, and anthropological paleontology indicate that with the rise of Homo sapiens there have been no groups or societies that did not have a religion and a story of their origin that would place them into creation and in a special and unique spot.

However, religion seems to be rooted into our system even deeper than we think. Our fellow primates sometimes have their own ritualistic behaviors. Jane Goodall, the eminent and first female primate expert, has a unique way of looking at our closest relatives. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she embraces similarities between them and us. I once heard her talk about a rain dance in a chimp tribe in which male chimps perform a dancelike ritual before a thunderstorm. I don't know if I would go as far as she does and call that behavior spiritual. But I certainly do agree with her findings, which seem to suggest that the phenomenon of ritualistic behavior has been in our primate species for a long time.

The concept of Homo religiosus is also supported by brain studies. Neurologists have discovered that a special part of the brain is connected to religious experiences. When people pray, this part of the brain is particularly active and if, in turn, the neurons in this part are artificially stimulated, the subject reports a religious experience. Other researchers have discovered brain changes that occur whenever meditations and prayers are performed. These brain changes helped the subjects to function better; they were relieved from a feeling of stress and could concentrate better.

In 1997, this research was reported in the popular media and created a nationwide discussion; the media dubbed the brain area in which the activities occur the “God module.” Reactions from reporters were split. Half of them stated happily that now we know how God has enabled us to communicate with God; they saw the God module as a sure sign that God is real. The other half, however, felt the exact opposite. Here, they stated, is the final proof that religion is bogus. There is no God anywhere; it's all in the brain.

The researchers who discovered the God module protested against both of these views; they were adamant that their findings proved only a correlation between brain activity and religiosity, which is perfectly natural. We are bodies and, therefore, everything we experience has to manifest itself also in the physical realm. They said it was inappropriate to draw conclusions about God's being from these findings. But they weren't heard. People were much more intrigued to use this research to start again age-old fights about whether there is a God. Of course, this discussion is worthless, as there will never be any concrete proof one way or the other. But what the media responses showed was that, first, there is a lot of interest in the phenomenon of religion and, second, we always try to find seemingly scientific proof for what we believe. Faith is defined as what we can't know but trust in anyway. The discussion around the God module shows that this understanding of faith has been lost; most of us need proof to have faith. If anything, this discussion throws light on how much Homo religiosus is in us insofar as we all yearn for faith, for something to believe in.

The metaphors just described tell stories about specific aspects of human nature, such as the desire to create. It is appropriate, therefore, to introduce yet another metaphor for our species of humanoids that refers to our universal trait to tell stories: Homo narrans.

Humans have a need to tell stories, to make sense of the world. These stories help define us, help us to discover who we are, to create community. In fact, each of our Homo metaphors is a story in itself; it tells the story of a human being in a very specific context in which one feature is most prominent—our upright walk or our cognition. But, as the discussions about Homo religiosus show, humans today are not very good at accepting stories as stories. They need empirical evidence, they need proof, and they need verification of the facts. The attempt to understand the Bible as a factual, scientific book is a result of this way of thinking. We have unlearned our ability to understand metaphors as pointing toward a deeper meaning, telling stories. Instead, people today tend to understand them literally.

Most economic theories are based on the story of Homo economicus, the self-centered, pleasure-seeking humanoid. Predictions under that model can be very precise and can help us to understand economic tides. However, this does not mean that we are entirely egotistical and utilitarian. No one can deny that we all have a Homo economicus inside ourselves; it is, after all, one important aspect of us. But it is just one of many contradictory aspects of humans, and to say humans are nothing but self-centered and egotistical is simply wrong. We are also playful. And sometimes wise. If one were to take any of the Homo metaphors as absolute, we lose the richness and complexity of our self- understanding.

So storytelling is not without its own problems but it is our primary feature, the main method for interaction, and what we do best. Humans tell stories in every context possible: Stories are used to teach about the properties of our environment, and to make sense out of our perceptions and experiences; they help us to explain ideas and abstract concepts and they help us deal with the incoherencies of this world.

Jesus used stories to reveal his religious message. To the great grief of New Testament scholars, these stories are not coherent; there is no coherent body of rules, concepts of the world, of God or of Christianity. Every story of Jesus is embedded in a different context, told in a different situation, retold by different schools of thought. The Christian tradition usually accepts these stories as equally valid and attempts to preach all stories over the course of the years. They are never perceived as wrong because of their incoherencies; they refer to human life, which is always ambiguous and chaotic. The narrative form of the gospels reflects the nature of Homo narrans.

Homo narrans in the World
All cultures have a large body of myths and rites that define them and distinguish them from others. The words “cult” and “culture” share the same etymological roots, the Latin noun colonia (settlement), which derives from the verb colere (farm, cultivate, inhabit, honor). This connection implies that humans who live in a group create a community that is held together by common beliefs and rites.

Indeed, when we follow archaeological, anthropological, and sociological studies, we recognize that the trend to create community through rites and myths is universal. Further, all cultures have developed a treasure of stories and narratives that are memorable and can be visually and theatrically represented. Homo ludens comes right into play here as the term clown also derives from the root colere. All cultures have institutions or wise people who teach the body of stories embedded in a culture to the young and, thus, create cultural continuity between the generations.

Symbols are a more advanced form of narratives. A symbol brings two very different spheres together, two realms that usually have nothing to do with one another. Take, for instance, the flag of the United States, which can be seen everywhere since 9/11. Physically, it is a piece of red, white, and blue cloth with a pattern of some stars and some stripes. But this piece of cloth participates in a completely different, deeper, and more abstract concept: the idea of a nation in which many people and many cultures live together as a whole.

Another culturally important symbol is the cross, two laths nailed together in a ninety- degree angle that participate in the faith statement that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah who, with his death and resurrection, promises us a reality without sin.

Symbols demonstrate impressively how humans are deeply narrative, as there is no language without symbols. In fact, language consists of symbols, because every word, created as a specific combination of letters, participates in the meaning of the word. Human thought can be expressed with language; therefore, it always has a symbolic character. Homo narrans always throws things together so that even if a connection is not immediately obvious, it becomes clear through societal consensus.

Gestalt images are a good illustration of how Homo sapiens is driven to create symbols and operate as storytellers.

In this famous gestalt image, we can see either two faces or a vase; we can, however, never see both simultaneously. Our perception apparatus oscillates quickly between the two interpretations of the image, and yet only both together give us a glimpse of the whole.

A group of people might agree that it is impossible to decide what it represents and let it go. But it seems to be very difficult for humans to live with this form of ambiguity and insecurity. Therefore, people can reduce the image to representing either a vase or two faces but never both together; they might even reject people who think differently, as other perspectives might challenge them.

The rationale for returning the image in a certain way could be reinforced by stories that justify why one perspective is correct for a specific group. For instance, one group might say that whoever sees faces is just imagining things, as they know it is a picture of a vase and the faces are just an illusion. These stories usually contain an element that explains the ambiguity of the picture and defines in what situation you will see one image or the other. In any case, the people within one group will very likely go with whatever narrative their group creates to make sense out of this ambiguous sight and will reject other perspectives.

Stories can define groups; belief in a story identifies an insider, and disbelief an outsider. The very ambiguity of our perception apparatus and our incapability to live with incoherencies explains in part why interactions between members of groups with opposite stories (it's a vase or it's two faces, respectively) can be hostile. Any opposition challenges our narrative worldview.

I experience a concrete example of this with every freshman class at my school. St. Bonaventure University (SBU) is a small school in a rural area that attracts mostly kids from the region; however, there are also kids from farther away. In upstate New York, people refer to nonalcoholic carbonated drinks as pop while other Americans refer to them as soda. Every year, there is a fight between those freshmen who say pop and those who say soda, each of them convinced that they are right and the other is wrong. Some people try to compromise and come up with something such as soda-pop, but this usually doesn't work. The question is why the students get so emotional about such a trivial thing. And here Homo narrans comes into play.

The identification with the regional pop is a protection against outsiders. The students who come from western New York State usually grew up there and identify themselves with the region and the school. Others might see SBU as a stepping-stone toward other things and might even look down on the people from the area. There might also be a slight insecurity of people in the region, as they often are confronted with the prejudice that they are too rural and naïve to be taken seriously by the rest of the state. So the seemingly trivial fight over soda or pop has significance for the identity of both people from the region and from outside. The identification with one term or the other will put each student in a specific group with its own stories and references.

In these interactions of groups, individuals, and the larger community (i.e., St. Bonaventure University), several stories will be created and each of these stories will define specific groups, such as the regional-student pop group or the outsider-student soda group.

The gestalt figures add another level of complexity to this interaction. We can imagine how a dispute over faces versus vase, as between soda versus pop, might work. First, there is the human who looks at the figure, her perception apparatus oscillating very quickly between the images and her discomfort with this ambiguity unresolved. Then, there is the outreach for a group that identifies with her discomfort but has also reached some form of consensus about how to deal with it. Then there is the story that overcomes ambiguity by reducing the image to either two faces or a vase, and that declares the other perception as illusion. Finally, there is the dispute between members of opposing groups. To ignore even one of these elements or their related interactions reduces the whole perception process to the mere looking at the picture and loses the richness of the process. One of the most common examples for the manipulation of visual input in the interaction between brain and eyes is the human desire to detect patterns. Many experiments have been done to demonstrate how capable we humans are of constructing patterns in a visual input, which consists of nothing but a chaotic, random collection of colored dots. Gestalt images make us aware of this part of our perceptions. We cannot help but see what the creators of these images intend us to see, and sometimes we are not even aware that the picture manipulates our visual input and our interpretation of it. Most gestalt images rely on hardwired functions and learned mechanisms in our brains that have been developed over the course of human evolution.

That we are storytellers can be seen as a consequence of this functional setting; as Homo narrans attempts to make sense out of the world around her, she will turn chaos into patterns and will ignore incoherent aspects of the input she receives. The image on the following page serves as an impressive example. It shows three circles that are part black and part white. Yet we cannot help but construct a triangle out of the pattern of white in the circles. Homo narrans will construct her perceptions, her expectations, and her experience within her community. And all of her community members will create stories within their own lives where these three aspects come together.

This book attempts to open up spaces in which we can create stories about the world that are not necessarily coherent but fulfill different and equally important functions for human life. The world then can be rediscovered as a chaotic, exciting, and wonderful place. It will never make complete sense to us, since we are part of it and create and shape reality with our stories every day anew.

Sin: The Human Incapability to Deal with Paradoxes
The Bible is well aware of the human unwillingness and incapability to deal with ambiguities and calls it “sin.” The term sin addresses our estrangement from God, from others, and from ourselves. This estrangement is caused by our partial knowledge and our desire toward coherency. Even if “sin” in everyday language is used for supposedly bad acts, in contemporary theology “sin” is usually translated with “estrangement.”

This understanding of sin has its origin in what is usually called “the Fall” (Genesis 2–3), when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Traditionally, the story is told as follows: Adam and Eve live in the Garden happily, in unity with God and all other creatures. They can go wherever they want to go; they can eat and drink whatever they want. In the whole Garden, there are only two trees from which they are not allowed to eat, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. One day, Eve is tempted by a serpent to eat from the Tree of Knowledge (as it is usually called), and thus acts against God's explicit wish. She also convinces Adam to have a bite and therefore they have to leave Paradise. The sin here is disobedience against God's command. Unfortunately, it has often led influential church fathers to dismiss women as temptresses that lead men to sin. One reason for the low number of women in church hierarchies and the fact that some denominations still forbid women from being ordained certainly lies in this interpretation of the story of the Fall.

But is this really the only way to read this story? Paul Tillich suggests another interpretation that might have more explanatory power—especially in the context of gestalt figures and our incapability to deal with ambiguities. As Tillich points out, in the Garden of Eden there was no ambiguity. Everything was in perfect unity and harmony. According to the biblical narrative, the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to make universally valid judgments is God's and God's alone. Human knowledge is always partial and incomplete; therefore, we cannot achieve the full divine understanding that would explain unexplainable phenomena and would make the world coherent. We do not have divine knowledge and therefore we are not capable of judging; we are not allowed to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

But the humans in Paradise also had no will. They didn't make decisions. They did not think, compare, categorize. When they ate the forbidden fruit, it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Before this, they did not know what was good and what was evil. They did not decide what was right or wrong. They just were. But with the fruits of the forbidden tree came the human capability to err and to make mistakes. Like a lion that kills a deer without any regret or sympathy for the killed animal, so Adam and Eve were living each day without tomorrow, without reasoning, particularly without ethical decision-making.

But if humans do not make decisions and judge and use reason, they do not use what is potentially given to them. Humans who do not try to understand themselves and the world around them, who do not try to make judgments, are in a state of what Tillich calls dreaming innocence. To actualize our potential we have to try to become like God (in the language of the story, to eat from the tree) and thus risk the close relationship with God. Since humans are in most ways like other animals, they are limited in time and space. This makes every judgment incomplete. With the act of eating from the tree, humans risk error, incomplete knowledge, and false judgments. I want to point out here that in the figurative language of the Fall, it was the woman who ate first; thus it was a woman who had the guts to enter into a state of estrangement. This presents a unique contrast to the traditional reading.

Each and every one of us makes decisions depending on our upbringing and our (largely) inherited values. None of us can make judgments that are correct in all cases. The story of the Fall tells us that it is impossible for us to only make ethical judgments that have the potential of being valid for all humans despite their circumstances.2 We humans can only strive toward a community in which all judgments are generally applicable and, thus, not hurtful or exclusive, but to create such a community is very, very hard. With most of our judgments comes the rejection of people who think and feel differently. In a way, one could see the reactions toward gestalt phenomena as a result of Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit of decision-making and judging.

There is also something inherently tragic about decision-making. If we say the vase–face image is just a vase, we lose the richness of the experience. Seeing things only one way removes the alternatives and thus makes the world a little more boring. Whenever we decide for something, we automatically decide against many other possibilities. If we pick one path to walk on, we decide against all the other possible paths and we usually cannot return to them. This cannot lead, however, to our avoidance of making decisions. This would put us right back into the state of dreaming innocence. Instead, we have to make decisions every day of our life and accept the inherent loss of other possibilities. Thus, sin as estrangement from ourselves, from others, and from God is a tragedy and yet also makes us the beings we are.

After Adam and Eve eat from the tree, they start to live with ambiguities and decisions about right or wrong, which are not universally valid but culturally dependent. In the biblical narrative, this is expressed in the section right after eating from the tree, when Adam and Eve look at one another and recognize their nakedness. In the state of dreaming innocence, nakedness was not shameful or evil but just was. Only with the capability for reasoning and decision-making can Adam and Eve decide that nakedness has to be covered. It is their worldview that leads to this ethical judgment; in other cultural contexts, the decision might be different. Nakedness is not just to be without clothes but to be revealed, to be uncovered. Nakedness means vulnerability. Therefore, one might say that when Adam and Eve started to judge, they were able to understand the other through empathy. At the same time, they were also able to hurt each other deeply through judgment. The clothes are not just a protection from shame but also from vulnerability and from being known fully. With judgment also comes the insight that none of us is a perfect being. If we are honest with ourselves, we will realize that each one of us can be mean and cruel. So we don't want to be fully known, and we hide ourselves in order to not be judged.

This interpretation of the Fall creates multiple layers of meaning. This story is much more complex and rich than the one of Adam and Eve's misbehavior. It provides an explanation for an inherent human dilemma. Adam and Eve want to understand the world and formulate theories about it, while at the same time they know that these theories are always limited, time dependent, and thus incomplete. It also gives an explanation for the human drive toward a whole and complete truth and why it often happens that humans take partial knowledge as absolute (they have eaten from the tree and feel like God).

St. Paul talks about our sins only if he quotes liturgy from early Christian tradition; in his own theology he always uses the singular form. For St. Paul, the term sin does not refer to specific actions but describes a general human state of being. We do not sin; we are in the state of sin. Sin describes humans as being estranged, ambiguous, torn between incoherent wishes and desires, torn between polarities and fears; sin means a life in paradoxes. Sin, therefore, is not human wrongdoing. Sin is the state of living in ambiguity that leads to incomplete knowledge and flawed judgment and, thus, to wrong or at least questionable acts. Sin is a state of being, and bad actions are a consequence of sin.

Consider, for instance, the Roman Catholic folklore3 of the seven deadly sins—sloth, greed, envy, gluttony, wrath, pride, and lust. They are supposed to be forbidden to restrain people and make them live in a seemingly “Christian” way. But when you take a closer look, you will see that all these sins can actually lead to estrangement—from yourself, your body, your neighbors, nature, and God. Take gluttony, for instance. Most of us indulge in gluttony every Thanksgiving and probably on Christmas as well. It feels good sometimes to be really, really full. But what is meant by gluttony is not the casual overeating on holidays, as this is fairly harmless. We humans are not very good at doing things in moderation. Many people are in danger from overeating constantly. Eating can be a cure against stress and loneliness. Several things will happen in such a case. The people who overeat will gain weight and thus challenge their health. Also, because in our society slimness is often considered beautiful, severely overweight people are often ostracized and marginalized. They sometimes concentrate more on their desire to eat than on other things. Finally, they often lose self-respect. In other words, gluttony can lead to estrangement from your body, estrangement from others, and estrangement from yourself. And many people would say that if you are estranged from all these things, you are also estranged from God. So the problem with gluttony is not that it is forbidden. Rather, the danger inherent in gluttony is that it can lead to estrangement.

Those actions that Roman Catholic folklore or any other denomination deems as “sin” are usually deeds that can lead to estrangement. The deadly sins are, in moderation, part of being human; only overindulgence will lead to estrangement, and if we are aware of this, we can avoid this estrangement more easily than we could without that insight.

How Humans Bond with Machines
Imagine yourself sitting in a lab in front of a computer and talking to it. You chat with it, and it reacts and asks good questions. Your conversations become deeper and deeper and you finally find yourself discussing with the computer private and intimate problems. You write down how your problems with your partner have started to threaten your career and how daily problem-solving is demanding too much energy from you. You tell the computer that your partner is a control freak, that you are secretly drinking, making yourself more dependent and helpless without any way out.

The computer seems to express sympathy, asks specific questions, and empathizes with you, and you have the feeling the computer understands you better than anyone else. But the underlying program depends on an outdated therapy model in which the therapist just mirrors the comments of the client and turns them back to the client in the form of a question; e.g., “I hate my father!” “Why do you hate your father?” This very simple behavior gives the computer user the feeling that the objective and rational machine sympathizes with her, so she cannot be all wrong.

Does this scenario sound unlikely to you? Well, these very scenes have occurred since the 1960s and are happening today all around the Internet-accessing world. The first program of this kind, ELIZA, was programmed by Joseph Weizenbaum, then professor of computer science at MIT, who was a major inspiration for my doctoral work. ELIZA was based on the mirror method and had, in addition, a couple of standard questions the program could ask if it didn't figure out the keywords of the client's comment. When I met Joe in Germany, I was studying theology and just finishing my degree in computer science. I heard him giving a lecture on the dangers of computers. He told the story of implementing ELIZA in the '60s and then how he observed some of his graduate students, who should have known better, using ELIZA as their own personal therapist; later, versions of ELIZA were and are frequently used in some initial psychological analyses.

We can argue that this sounds very naïve and that the computer-savvy users of today would rarely fall into the same trap. Well, this optimism is misplaced.

In my travels, I met Cliff Nass, a sociologist at Stanford who analyzes how people interact with machines. Have you ever screamed at your computer or kicked it? Have you ever complimented it? Cliff wanted to find out if there is any evidence that we treat computers differently than typewriters, if there are any emotions involved when we interact with our desktop.

For one of his earliest experiments, he asked several people to test a computer-learning program that was supposed to be introduced into elementary schools. The program was very bad. Some of the testers were computer specialists and some were laypeople. After they had tested the program for a while, the computer on which they worked asked them to evaluate its performance. For the most part, people responded positively. Afterward, these same testers were led into another room with other computer terminals and were asked to evaluate the learning program again. Here, on these different computers, their answers were less positive about the quality of the tested software but they still sounded somewhat satisfied. Finally, a human asked the testers for their opinion on the software and the testers were very negative about it. Such a program should never be used in school, they said.

Interestingly enough, the testers had not voiced these criticisms to either the computers on which they had tested the program or the computers on which they had done the second evaluation. These same people, when asked if they would ever be polite to a computer or think they could hurt its feelings, vehemently rejected such a notion.

This experiment suggests that somehow we seem to apply our rules of politeness to nonhuman entities such as computers. Obviously, the participants in the experiment did not want to hurt the computers' feelings. They even assumed a level of kinship between different computers and, therefore, applied similar rules of politeness to the computer on which they did the second evaluation. They didn't tell these machines their true, very critical opinions, either out of the desire to not hurt the feelings of the second computer by criticizing one of its “fellow” computers or because they assumed some contact between the two so that the second would tell the first what had been said. It seems that somewhere during our interactions with a computer we start to assume that a computer is as sensitive as a human being. Therefore, we behave politely and don't want to criticize it openly.

Let's look at another experiment that seems to imply that people bond with their computers. In this case, Cliff placed people and computers inside one room. Half of the computers had green monitors while the other half had blue monitors. Half of the people wore green arm badges; the other half wore blue ones. Together, they all played interactive games, and it turned out that the people with blue arm badges were much more successful using computers with blue screens to reach their goal than using “green” machines. The same, of course, was valid for the other side. So, slowly, the people with green arm badges bonded with the green-monitored machines and the blue-badge people with the blue-monitored machines.

And now comes the surprising result. After approximately half an hour, the people wearing the blue arm badges expressed more solidarity with the computers with the blue screens than with the humans with the green arm badges; the same was true for the humans with the green arm badges. It seems that through the interactive games and the experienced benefit of interacting with the machines with one's color code, the color code took over as a definition for “my” group. The entities with the other color code, no matter if humans or machines, tended to be rejected. Remember the fictive fight between two groups in front of the vase–face gestalt image, with one insisting that the faces are an illusion and the other insisting the opposite, that the vase is an illusion. What happened in this second Nass experiment is that same thing, only this time the groups had nonhuman members and the group was subtly forged through the interactive games.

This seems to imply that humans bond with the entities of their own group, whether they are human or not. As we will see later in the book, humans do not have a sense of kinship with other humans “built in.” It is not part of our biological makeup to automatically treat all humans better than all other beings. That means we bond easily with nonhuman entities and, therefore, we bond easily with our computers.

Human beings are social mammals. Most of us seek places where we can meet other people. We go to bars and sports events and demonstrate with other like-minded people. We naturally want to be with other people. And, as Cliff's second experiment shows, we seem to be able to accept anyone or anything into our group with whom we can sufficiently interact. As soon as such a stranger is accepted into a group, he or she is seen as an equal part of the group. The group defines itself by the entities that both belong and do not belong to it. As we all know and perhaps do ourselves, people treat their cars and stereos as people as well. In a way, it saves a lot of time and energy to do so. After all, humans are educated from birth on how to interact with their fellow human beings. It is necessary for a baby to be able to do so, as her survival depends on it. Throughout our lives, we learn patterns of behavior—such as being polite and not openly criticizing someone. It is very easy to apply these ingrained rules to every entity we interact with. It is very hard not to do so, as it demands a conscious effort of us.

This behavior—treating nonhuman objects as if they deserve some form of politeness or regard and are somewhat like us—is called anthropomorphism, the human capability to morph/change everything into a human (anthropos) and treat it accordingly. Usually, the term has a slightly negative connotation. Theologians especially often criticize human terms used to describe God, such as shepherd or father, or the classical image of God as an old, usually Caucasian man with a long white beard. Cliff and his colleague Byron Reeves, however, suggest that anthropomorphization is actually the initial and natural response to anything we interact with; it takes a conscious effort not to anthropomorphize. As social mammals, we are best when we interact and any use of these trained and built-in behaviors is easy; anything else is hard.

Cliff's experiments reveal something about how we relate to one another. We innately work toward community. We work toward social interactions. We work toward groups. We work toward bonding and solidarity with the beings closest to us. And computers are great thinking tools we can use to explore our mechanisms for bonding and social interaction.

The First Humanoids: What Happens When We Do Not Bond with the Creatures We Create?
Humanoid robots are fascinating machines and there are many science-fiction movies and popular stories that deal with them and how they shape the way we live and think about ourselves. Our culture is filled with stories about humans who lose power over creatures they have created. In the context of computers and robots, it is not just HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey that raises these fears in us. There is another, even more powerful story that had a major impact on our reactions to computers and particularly to robots.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is about a monster that became cruel and turned against his maker, his family, and society. Popular culture today sees hubris as the main motif of the story. The concept of hubris comes from Greek mythology and addresses the capability of humans to overestimate themselves. It is not just arrogance but more the feeling that humans can do everything. In antiquity, the prototypes for hubris were Prometheus and Ikarus. In Frankenstein, the prototype of a hubristic human is the scientist Frankenstein who builds a creature that ultimately will go against its creator and his/her family and utterly destroys them. This motif touches a deep fear in us: that our own creatures will turn against us. This novel has influenced our thinking about robots so much that authors such as science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov called the fear of humanlike machines the “Frankenstein Complex.”

But I see another story. A young and overeager researcher named Frankenstein builds a creature out of human parts but then gets scared when the creature comes alive. He runs away and abandons it. Thus, the creature is never given a name, never treated as a beloved offspring. It tries to find community but is constantly rejected and feared. It is completely ostracized. But when a humanlike being has no chance to actually become part of a community, it seems reasonable that out of grief and revenge this being might turn against the community that excludes it. The monster's motive to kill did not evolve out of a need to exert its power over others; it stemmed from the feeling that it was not accepted by the community. How could the monster ever develop any form of benevolence toward humans when all it experienced from them was hatred and rejection? It never experienced positive feelings of warmth or kinship. It became brutal because it didn't know what else to do. No one let it participate in any form of human interaction. There was no bonding.

Most Frankenstein movies cover only the aspect of hubris and destruction, with the notable exception of the movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where the creature at some point challenges Frankenstein. After helping a family anonymously, only to be rejected when it is discovered, it asks Frankenstein, “I can read, I can learn, I can think. Do I have a soul or have you forgotten to build it in?” Here, the creature clearly desires much more than just being self-aware and the capability to understand. It wants to be humanlike, in the sense that it wants to be accepted and loved. It wants to interact. It is so much like us that it wants to be connected to a community. In this story line, Frankenstein is about responsibility toward the creatures we create. We have to care for them and treat them well; otherwise, there might be unforeseeable consequences.

The Frankenstein story is, of course, not the only one that talks about the possible outcomes when we create creatures in our likeness. Much more interesting theologically and, thus, much more relevant to this book are the stories about the golem.

Golems
The wife of Rabbi Löw could not understand why her husband had forbidden the use of the Golem for private purposes. And when, just before Passover, she was short of help she allowed herself to give the Golem orders to fill two large water kegs which stood in the kitchen which was all prepared for the holiday. She thought also that a service in preparation for the Passover feasts did not come under the head of secular purposes.

But she had a very unpleasant experience.

The Golem took the pails and ran swiftly to the brook.

Several hours later the courtyard of the house of the Rabbi was flooded with water, and people were crying: “Water! Water!” The secret source from which this water was flowing was sought.

But it was not found until the Golem was seen patiently obeying his orders by continuing to pour water into the kegs which had been filled a long time before. This explained the flood and there was much laughter over the Golem's mistake. [ . . . ]

Since that time the people took care not to give the Golem any profane work to do. To this very day in Prague people say to an unskilled artisan: “You are as competent for this work as was Joseph Golem as water carrier!”

Chayim Bloch, The Golem: Legends of the Ghetto of Prague, trans. Harry Schneiderman (Blauvelt, N.Y.: Rudolf Steiner Publications, c. 1972)

The Jewish golem stories go back to the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. They can be traced back to medieval Germany and Hungary, specifically to the Jewish mysticism, called kabbalah.

The term golem comes from the beautiful Psalm 139 quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which is one of my favorites. It talks about the beauty of creation and how God knows every one of us and knows everything in us. Even if the psalmist sometimes finds this omnipresence of God somewhat disconcerting, it also gives her deep trust, as she is sure that God will never leave her.

The verb galam appears only twice in the Hebrew scriptures. In 2 Kings 2:8 it is used to describe the wrapping of a mantle. But probably the oldest source for this term is in Psalm 139:16: “you created me as a golem in my mother's womb.” Here galam is usually translated as “shapeless thing” or “embryo.” The psalm celebrates creation and the special love and care of God toward humans. God created the psalmist, “intricately woven in the depths of the earth,” and in God's “book were written all the days” that were formed for the psalmist. The word galam very likely comes from an Arabic root and means “tangle” or “cluster.” The medieval kabbalists used this term as the name for the humanoids they constructed.

The most famous golem story is the story of Jehuda Löw, the Maharal of Prague, and his golem, Joseph. The Maharal is a historical figure who lived in the sixteenth century. He was a widely acknowledged theologian and also a political figure. He was a very influential teacher and a very wise negotiator with the Christians and the state representatives to create a decent life for the Jews in the ghetto.

At the time of Rabbi Löw (as, unfortunately, in most of medieval and even modern times), Jews were often attacked by Christians, and the people in the ghetto of Prague were often harassed. So, to add a layer of protection to the ghetto, Rabbi Löw is supposed to have built a golem and put a paper with God's name in its mouth. The golem then became animated and was able to help the Jews in Prague. Joseph supported the Jews with his strength in their daily labor and helped them against attacks from outside. One story describes how Christians would hide dead babies in the ghetto at night and then come back during the day with armed forces, and use these little bodies as proof that Jews would kill babies in their ceremonies. Then, Christians would have a reason to attack the ghetto and kill Jews. The golem is known to have found the babies several times and hidden their bodies so that the accusations became worthless.

According to most stories, golems are built from clay, constructed through words and numbers. Kabbalist theory reveals a deep faith that the world was created by God in an orderly and numeric fashion; the better people understand the logic behind the world, the more they can share God's mind and participate in God's creativity. Thus, they are motivated to construct increasingly complex things to understand God better. But they cannot build anything animated without help; golems come to life only if they have a paper in their mouth with the holy name of God written on it, or with God's name engraved on their forehead. The ultimate power of life is God's and God's alone; God has to be involved to animate an artificial being. So, even if the letters and numbers4 in Hebrew are orderly and thus participate in the order of God's creation, they are not sufficient on their own to create life. Quite the contrary: The tangle of flesh, genes, slime, and chemistry in the case of the human animal, or the clay in case of the Golem, need the spirit and power of God to become alive.

One could now ask if the Golem is estranged, a sinner. According to most stories, the Golem has no language and thus cannot participate in the categorizing, describing, and reducing of facts. He also has no sense of right or wrong—otherwise why would he flood the Rabbi's house? But there is a small potential that he also needs God's forgiveness. Rabbi Löw himself was never sure if the golem was a child of God or a mere machine. Since the Maharal cannot be absolutely sure, Jehuda Löw addresses this doubt by forcing the Golem to keep the Sabbath. Every Friday, the Rabbi would remove the animating paper with God's name on it from the Golem's mouth so that it went back into its unanimated state, thus keeping the Sabbath.

One week, however, the Rabbi forgot to remove the paper slip and the Golem, without his master, went berserk. Rabbi Löw saved his fellows of the ghetto by fighting the Golem and, after considerable violence, he was finally able to remove the life-giving paper from the Golem's mouth. In some versions of the legend, the dying Golem falls on the Rabbi and smashes him. These endings refer to the motif of hubris, as often presented in Greek tragedy and also in the Frankenstein story, where the constructors of gadgets and creatures that overcome human limitations are killed in the end.

Golems as Prayers
What is prayer? Is it to ask God or another deity for something you want, such as money or health? To have a conversation with yourself? Meditation? Do we pray when we ask the deity for the strength to accept the situation we are in, to endure what we can't change in our lives?

In the Jewish context in which the golem stories are told, prayers are usually spoken to celebrate God and God's glory in us. Prayers are communal; they strengthen the bonds of people in their community, with each other, and with God. People speak prayers to express their anger, fear, and frustration with current situations, as well as to speak about their joy in life and their happiness to be God's creation.

With the construction of golems, people felt they learned more about God's creation of humans and their special capabilities. The golem builders felt that by building golems they were participating in God's creativity. They argued, God has created us in God's image so that we participate in God's creative capabilities. Whenever we are creative, we actively participate in God's creative powers and celebrate God. In this sense, every act of creativity is a prayer. And the more complex things we build, the more we praise God. Humans are—at least as far as we know—the most complex beings on earth. Therefore, if we rebuild ourselves in golems, we celebrate God's “highest” creative act, the creation of humans, thus praising God the most.

Even if one ending of the story of the Maharal in Prague refers to an element of possible danger, the majority of the golem stories are not about the motif of hubris as the Greek stories or the Frankenstein myths are. This is supported by a vast amount of rabbinical literature that discusses golems. The majority of these stories do not understand the construction of golems as a step beyond the boundaries God has set for us or as hubristic acts, but they understand golem-building as prayer.

Golems can be helpful servants, but their creation has a spiritual purpose beyond building useful machines. It can be an act of worship. It's not trying to dehumanize the human experience or deconstruct the mystery of what it means to be human. It is to praise God. This, of course, links these golem stories with the modern scientific construction of humanoid robots.

While I was at MIT, the group that was constructing Cog and Kismet had just made the jump from insectlike, six-legged walking robots to humanoids; while they all enjoyed trying to do the impossible, most of them were also well aware of the challenging nature of this task. Everyone was enjoying him or herself trying to turn science fiction and mythology into reality. But many also felt a nudging doubt. After all, they had had experiences with the rebuilding of insects. And even if the six-legged creatures they had built were fantastic robots, they came not even remotely close in their capabilities to real insects. Now, they were building a humanoid and realized that they might be out of their league. Each week for the first year of our work, we invited a specialist to tell us something about how the human system works. We would read their articles beforehand and pepper them with questions after, and one question we asked every single one of them was: How will this knowledge help us to build our humanoid? The more we learned, the more our respect grew for the incredible complexity of the human system. It is one thing to read the Bible to learn that we are the “top” of creation, but it is quite another to learn the facts about this complexity. We became admirers of ourselves, but that didn't make us arrogant. Quite the contrary, we now had a healthy respect for the task we had set ourselves, to build a system that has, however remotely, some similarity with us. Building Cog and Kismet made us modest in our admiration for God's creation. Probably no one except me in the team would formulate this feeling with the same religious words, but the sentiment was exactly that. Modesty, admiration, and a humble attempt to do our best is all that we can do to make it work.

This experience has taught me the truth of the view of the kabbalists to see the construction of humanoids as a worship of God.

It also says something about God's creativity in us that we don't stop our projects when we discover how difficult they really are. It takes a healthy self-confidence to attempt the impossible, and even if you fail, you have tried. Cog and Kismet, though both now in museums, have contributed hugely to the field of robotics, as they were the first emotional and social robots. Even if we have the capability to bond with most creatures with whom we interact, we bond most easily with those creatures that seem to have emotions that we understand. Anthropomorphizing happens with dogs and cats and other mammals because their basic similarity to us motivates us to create stories that ascribe to them the same emotions we have, and to bond with them strongly. Cog and particularly Kismet evoke similar feelings in us and thus have moved us closer to the eventual fulfillment of the old human dream of rebuilding ourselves.

One of the oldest golem stories tells about Jeremiah and his son who built a golem with the words JHWH elohim emet (God the Lord is truth) on its forehead. As soon as it came to life, the golem erased the letter 0 (the aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) from the word truth so that now his forehead said JHWH elohim mot (God the Lord is dead). He then explained to his terrified builders that we adore God because God has created us, the most complex beings there are. If we are now able to re-create ourselves, people will adore the constructors of golems and not God anymore. But a god who is not adored and prayed to is dead.

One has to be honest and admit that this aspect of golem construction is always present. Even if we become modest and admiring of creation, there is still often the sense of demystification. If we learn a scientific explanation for a unique human capability, for example empathy (see chapter four), we are tempted to lose respect for this capability, as it seems to be just a reactive mechanism. The construction of humanoids certainly contains an element of hubris. The pursuit of an impossible task produces pride in one's own work and in the triumph of overcoming limitations, to succeed when no one in the scientific community thought it possible. There is nothing wrong with that. Quite the contrary, those elements are normal in any creative endeavor. But there is always the danger of losing respect for the human system because when you build robots and they do what you actually want them to do, you sometimes can't help but think that ultimately every part of the human system will be understood and, then, can be rebuilt.

The construction of humanoid robots is motivated by the wish to understand ourselves and to build partners with whom we can talk and interact in a meaningful way. If they challenge our self-understanding or seem threatening to us, this is not the creatures' fault but the outspoken hubristic aspects of this project that are sometimes part of humanoid projects.

Theology and Artificial Intelligence meet when we attempt to understand ourselves, who we are, and what our role in this world is. Engineers and computer scientists involved in Artificial Intelligence, as well as theologians who (re)construct stories of meaning, are creative. Both can be described with the metaphors of Homo faber and Homo narrans. The first attempt to rebuild themselves; the others tell stories. That is, both contribute equally to a fuller understanding of ourselves. They do professionally what many humans do in their spare time: attempt to answer the big question of what it means to be human.

Golem Builders Today
In true rabbinical fashion, there is more than one version of the story of Rabbi Löw and the golem Joseph. We know already about one ending, where the lifeless golem, without the animating paper in its mouth, falls on the rabbi and kills him. We have seen that this ending shares with the Christian tradition the element of hubris present in many projects of humanoid construction. I would like to focus now on the tradition that tells the story of the survival of the rabbi. In this version of the legend, the golem is put to rest in the attic of the synagogue in Prague. Rabbi Löw then creates a kabbalist rhyme that will revive the golem at the end of all days. Many Jewish children from this tradition were taught these words.

This version of the kabbalist golem legend is still strongly ingrained in the consciousness of many Jews from the Eastern European tradition. When Jewish boys descended from Rabbi Löw were bar mitzvahed, they were usually told the formula that will revive the golem at the end of all times.

It seems that many of the early AI researchers are or claim to be descendants of Rabbi Löw, but it took a coincidence to find that out. MIT is the cradle of AI; here, the field of AI was born and here the first steps toward artificial intelligence were taken and the first successful projects developed. In the late 1960s, when some students sat together on a break, someone mentioned that the first big computer in Rehovot, Israel, had been called Golem. This led to a discussion and it turned out that at least two students in the community had been told the rhyme that would awaken the golem. These two were Gerry Sussman, today professor at the MIT AI Lab, and Joel Moses, the former provost and today institute professor at MIT. When they compared the formulas they had both been told, their formulas were exactly the same—despite hundreds of years of oral tradition. Gerry Sussman later dedicated his doctoral thesis to Rabbi Löw because the rabbi was the first one to recognize that the statement “God created humans in God's image” is recursive. Recursive functions are self-referential; that is, one cannot derive all values individually but needs the previously calculated values in order to get new values. This dedication captures various aspects of the AI enterprise. For one, God has created us in God's image and we use the same process in humanoid construction as we create them in our image. Modesty and awe come out of humanoid construction, as we can never be as successful as God. We are a derivation of God and our creatures will be the next derivation, our images. To interpret the imago Dei as recursive also refers to the aspect of prayer, as we can create only because we have been created in the first place and celebrate our creator who has so “wonderfully made us” (Psalm 139).

It also points out the necessity to re-create ourselves. We are images of God and we have the drive to create, to repeat God's acts of creation. The very desire of God to create humans as partners is inside us. When we look at all the attempts to “speak” with animals, especially dolphins and chimps, and the desperate search for extraterrestrial intelligence, it becomes clear that, for some reason, humans want to interact with beings of a different kind. We want to have a species, an “other,” with whom we can interact. We know that many other animals are intelligent but we cannot communicate with them. But there is hope that we can communicate with the beings created in our image. They have the potential to be partners.

Recursive functions have yet another attribute, as one cannot derive a value in a recursive function without having calculated the previous value. Does this mean God needs us in order to create humanoids? Has God perhaps created us for this very purpose? Why else this strong and so deeply ingrained desire to re-create ourselves? These delightful speculations add another aspect to the element of prayer within the golem tradition. When we attempt to re-create ourselves, we do God's bidding. We help God. We are created co- creators, a term coined by the theologian Phil Hefner, who has influenced my thinking in religion and science enormously.

One might further speculate that the wish to revive the golem at some point in time is part of the motivation for the whole AI enterprise; this seems especially to be true, as several other famous AI researchers link themselves to this tradition.5

In light of the state of sin and ambiguity in which we live, golem creation has a forward- looking perspective. As we have seen, it is doubtful that the golem was living in ambiguity. But here another spiritual aspect of the AI enterprise is revealed. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were to create an image of ourselves that is not a sinner, and can actually handle the ambiguities of life? Can we actually build creatures that are better than us? Not smarter but morally better?

Those of us who have read the robot stories of Isaac Asimov know that he indeed presented his robots as better people. They could do no wrong, as they had to obey the three laws of robotics.6 Asimov presented one of the most powerful examples of our creations that is morally perfect. But in his later books, he realized that these laws of robotics fall short in a universal context. He, then, adds to the three a “Zeroth” law that says “A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” In this moment the robotic laws become as ambiguous as human laws, as the term humanity is ambiguous. Who belongs to humanity and who doesn't? If one part of humanity decides to kill all the others, can that be accepted?

Many people do not like speculations like these. Many even reject a connection between the golem stories and modern AI. Many people, especially scientists, do not want to acknowledge the existence of such emotional and religious elements in the motivation of researchers, nor do they feel these elements are desirable. However, when we look at scientific enterprise today, we realize that there is much room for researchers to bring in their own quest. Many robot builders bring to the table their desire to see what humans can accomplish with the help of the technology they have available today. Many feel that robot-building can be spiritual, as it taps into God's creative powers in us. Many people might be motivated by the inherent desire to overcome human flaws and limitations by constructing robots that are better or free from sin as estrangement.

Only if we see the enterprise of developing artificial intelligence as purely scientific and ignore all the mythical and emotional elements will we be in danger of falling into the trap of hubris. Therefore, we have to first overcome the danger of seeing AI as a purely rational endeavor before we can actually look at it as a source of wisdom about who we are.

1. The various layers of the Hebrew scriptures use several names for God. The oldest one is the acronym JHWH, often falsely pronounced “Jehovah.” Around 800 bc, the Jewish community, in fear of trivializing the name of their God, stopped saying the name aloud; whenever the tetragram appeared in the biblical texts, they would say “adonai” (My Lord), or “elohim” (God). Out of respect for the Jewish taboo, many translations of the Hebrew scriptures translate JHWH with “my Lord.” For easier reading, I will translate the acronym JHWH simply with “God.”

2. One concrete example for the application of this principle would be suicide. Even if I judge that it is the right decision for me, I could never claim it has any universal value! If every human being would commit suicide, that would be the end of our species and, therefore, unreasonable and unacceptable.

3. These “deadly sins” are not part of the Roman Catholic catechism; instead, they have been developed by the people themselves and, then, have become part of Roman Catholic folklore.

4. Letters in Hebrew are also numbers—there are no special numeric signs. This gave the kabbalists the opportunity to create word and number riddles far more complex than our Western languages allow for.

5. Among those people who have been told the formula are John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, both foundational thinkers in the field of AI.

6. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.