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God in the Machine
What Robots Teach Us About Humanity and God
by Anne Foerst
List Price: 15.00


Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Plume (November 29 2005)
Costumer Rating: Costumer rating

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
A provocative look at the theological implications of artificial intelligence from the founder of MIT's God and Computers Project. Get ready to meet two remarkable characters, Cog and Kismet.

Chapter 1: Re-creating Ourselves
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

Chapter 1: Re-creating Ourselves, Part 2
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



Book Description

A provocative look at the theological implications of artificial intelligence 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: How do we define "human" versus "person"? What does it mean to have a soul? And what do robots teach us about our relationship with God?

About the Author

Anne Foerst, Ph.D.Anne Foerst, Ph.D.

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.

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