This book applies a Jewish-philosophical approach to questions raised by technology and artificial intelligence. Futurologists tell us that in the not-to-distant future technology will transform all existence into a single super-intelligence or ‘singularity,’ where AI will outsmart human beings, and humanity will coalesce into a single, ever-expanding mind for which data is everything. How does this idea relate to ideas about God? Is this idea of oneness good for humanity? What space does it leave for individuality and difference? This book engages with these questions by applying approaches to oneness and difference found in the Jewish tradition and the thought of philosophers, Benedict Spinoza (1632−1677) and Martin Heidegger (1889−1976), and develops a theology based upon them which will appeal to devotees, seekers, doubters, atheists, and faitheists alike. What emerges is a dynamic religion of the everyday capable of balancing all aspects of being, while holding tight to a God who is both singular and wholly other, and which urges us, above all, to stay human.
Nonfiction
Staying Human: A Jewish Theology for the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2021
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