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Journal of the American Academy of Religion Advance Access originally published online on January 28, 2008
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2008 76(1):138-166; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfm101
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence

Robert M. Geraci

Robert M. Geraci, Department of Religious Studies, Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY 10471, USA

E-mail: robert.geraci{at}manhattan.edu


  Abstract

Popular science publications in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) reveal a striking merger between apocalyptic religious thought and scientific research. Three major elements characterize early Jewish and Christian apocalypticism: alienation within the world, desire for the establishment of a heavenly new world, and the transformation of human beings so that they may live in that world in purified bodies. In Apocalyptic AI, these characteristics are attributed scientific authority. Apocalyptic AI advocates, frustrated by the limitations of bodily life, look forward to a virtual world inhabited by intelligent machines and human beings who have left their bodies. Having downloaded their consciousnesses into machines, human beings will possess enhanced mental abilities and, through their infinite replicability, immortality.


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