In case you missed it, more than 2,000 humanoid robots representing 700 teams from 16 countries convened last month in China for the Second Annual World Humanoid Robot Games.
It’s like the Olympics but with robots. The “athletes” competed in more than 51 categories.
Tiangong Ultra was the star — the robot that obliterated Jamaican gold medalist Usain Bolt’s 2009 world record time of 9.58 seconds by nearly a second.
Think about that. A robot that resembles a human literally ran faster than the fastest human ever clocked. While watching the highlights of robots running the 100 meters, I uttered a line from the movie Gladiator: “I did not know men could build such things.”
Then I thought: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4).
Man’s sinful pursuit
The tower itself wasn’t sinful, but man’s sinful pursuit to supplant the authority of God was. The battle for superiority between man and God continues today, only now the tower is built with microprocessors and artificial intelligence (AI).
Technology is modern man’s Tower of Babel.
Pastor and author James Emery White, in his excellent book, “Serious Times: Making Your Life Matter in an Urgent Day,” writes that the word “technology” derives from two Greek words: technites (or techneI), meaning a person who shapes or molds something, and logos, the word John’s gospel uses for the eternal Word (Christ) who embodies “divine reason” and was “with God, and was God” (John 1:1).
White states that the two words together imply “humans shaping, molding and rearranging the order of reality.” The point, according to White, is that technology presumes man can occupy the ordering role that belongs to God.
The arrogance of this thinking is stated by Robert Edwards, a pioneer of the test tube baby.
“It was a fantastic achievement, but it was about more than infertility,” he said. “I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory.”
“It was us,” he concluded with satisfaction.
Edwards isn’t alone. Some of the most vocal voices driving AI today share a passion to supplant God. Ray Kurzweil, a former Google director of engineering, stated that his motivation in escalating AI was to enable human bodies and souls to transcend the limits of humanity and become immortal.
Same old lie
It’s a lie as old as time. “You shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). The serpent still whispers today, but through the rampant and invasive expansion of technology. He offers succulent fruit disguised as comfort and ease that masks the agenda to steal our souls while elevating the deity of man.
Examples that may be unfamiliar are:
• Brain-computer interfaces, which move from the noble pursuit of restoring function to augmenting cognition, with a long-term goal to merge human and machine thought.
• Autonomous AI agents that execute tasks with minimal human oversight.
• Cryonics and digital-afterlife services that sell AI trained on a deceased person’s voice.
• Longevity and anti-aging science developing to reverse human aging or dramatically extend human lifespan.
• Synthetic biology that is “originating” life from scratch.
• Geoengineering that is being developed with the intent to re-engineer the atmosphere’s chemistry and reorder the created world itself.
While the validity of these technologies could be debated, it is the intent behind them that pushes for transcendence over God’s curse of “thorns and thistles” — those things like mortality, dependence and finitude that God built into creation for our good.
However, especially in our culture, we often pursue pleasure and avoid discomfort.
Remaining on guard
That is why Christ followers must be on guard against worshipping the accomplishments of man. While humanists aspire to flesh becoming data, Christians must remember the Logos becoming flesh.
We must cultivate submission to God: collective worship with other believers; prayer, which recognizes the authority of God; and Scripture, which establishes His sovereignty.
Man has been trying to exalt himself in the world above God since his devastating fall in the Garden.
At first, it was through a tower of bricks and mortar, and now it is through the rapid development of technology.
However, God is firmly established in His position: “I will be exalted among the nations,” the Lord said. “I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10).
And no robot will ever outrun that reality.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This article was written by Chris Turner and originally published by the Baptist and Reflector.
