This post will also be published in The Vermilion Standard.

Scientists are currently working on Artificial Intelligence with an intensive curiosity.  The Mount Everest of robotics and computer programming, artificial life is the challenge of creating a machine that is self-aware, has emotions, and experiences love.  This sounds like an interesting and noble goal but it comes with profound ethical questions that must be reflected upon in advance of this exploration – at least that is what should happen and yet, like most scientific curiosities, ethics take a back shelf to the curiosity of possibility.

We, the potential creators, users, and consumers of technology and artificial intelligence, need to ask ourselves the following questions: “Is it ethical to create something to love if we have no intention, or follow through, to love it in return?  Is it okay to create something to feel the emotion of attachment, commitment, sacrifice and undying affection, if in return, we respond with consumer distance and perishable affection?”

This is an ethical question for our new emerging age.  The fact is, if we create a machine that could feel this way with some sort of self-aware consciousness and then abandon it with impunity once the novelty of the experience is over, it would be as cruel as it would be inevitable, given our human selfish tendencies.

Whether this technological advancement is a possibility or not is still up for debate but it does lead to another discussion.  It causes us to consider our creator and the fact that God created us with the ability to love in an expression of our free will.  In fact, we are created to love God, others, and creation and live in unbroken relationship between these three realities – a reality we are all guilty of falling short of.
Our creator created us to love but, unlike the potential creators of artificial life, God did so with the ability, intention, and follow-through to love us and stay committed to us – demonstrated by sending Jesus, His One and Only Son to save and rescue us.

John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

God is not a consumer God who created us in disposable fashion.  Rather, God created us as free human beings to live forever with him, even entering our existence (Jesus Christ), demonstrating his love for us and rescuing humanity from sin and death.

I want you to know that God loves you.  I want you to know that God has not abandoned you.  I want you to know that in Jesus Christ, abundant and eternal life is possible.  In Jesus Christ, you can know real life…not just artificial life.