What Is the Afterlife Like for Robots? An Experimental Eschatological Sneak Peek

People have always pondered their afterlife. Now, as AI and robotics continue to advance and proliferate, a new question emerges: Is there also some kind of "afterlife" for robots—and how can we envision it? This article seeks to explore these very queries from a Christian perspective. To...

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主要作者: Tretter, Max (Author)
格式: 电子 文件
语言:English
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
出版: 2024
In: Zygon
Year: 2024, 卷: 59, 发布: 3, Pages: 692–716
Further subjects:B Artificial Intelligence
B TV series
B Protestantism
B Popular Culture
B semantic theology
B Christianity
B Eschatology
B Robotics
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总结:People have always pondered their afterlife. Now, as AI and robotics continue to advance and proliferate, a new question emerges: Is there also some kind of "afterlife" for robots—and how can we envision it? This article seeks to explore these very queries from a Christian perspective. To tackle the initial question, I argue that, following the thoughts of St. Paul and St. Augustine, the whole of creation is sinful and seeks completion, it would be inconsistent to nurture such an all-encompassing hope yet exclude robots from it. From a Christian perspective, we should therefore assume the existence of an afterlife for robots. To decipher how we can envision it, I examine two pop-cultural depictions from the television episode "Zima Blue" and the television series Futurama, questioning whether they provide a fitting image of eschatological completion for robots. This methodological approach allows me to present a spectrum of conceptions of robotic afterlife that, when examined through the lens of systematic theology, appear plausible, offering fresh impetus for eschatological and robophilosophical reflections.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.16995/zygon.10903