Advancing Science and Technology: Implications for Mormonism

Christopher Bradford

Motor. Said, I wish all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them. If there is a quintessential scripture, That’s representative of the prophetic call of the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament. It might be this one: Isaiah 3:13-15. The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of this. People, it is you who have ruined my vineyard. The plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor? Board declares the Lord the Lord Almighty.

Christopher Bradford

My name is Christopher Bradford. I’m a board member and a founding member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. How many of you have heard of transhumanism? Okay, a little under half, it looks like. I just would like to give you a quick introduction to transhumanism and to the Mormon Transhumanist Association before I talk about some of the trends that we see in technology. And then I’d like to talk about some of the Social and economic implications of these trends in technology and how we as a society might respond in a prophetic manner, in a way that reflects some of the early Mormon ways of living.

Christopher Bradford

Transhumanism is a movement that focuses on the responsible use of technology in enhancing the human experience, applying technologies to human lives. while recognizing and acknowledging and mitigating the risks that are associated with it. This movement really started as a secular and in many cases very Atheist, anti-theist, and anti-religious movement. And ten years ago, this March, a group of us Became acquainted with the ideas of transhumanism and saw a lot of parallels between the ideas of transhumanism, in particular, sort of the futuristic ideas of what the future might look like and Mormon eschatology and Mormon visions of what the future might look like, as well as areas in which Mormonism and transhumanism might inform each other. And so we founded the Mormon Transhumanist Association.

Christopher Bradford

In many regards, this was primarily to infuse the transhumanist movement With religious values and moral guidance, as well as to bridge the gaps within Mormonism that were anti-intellectual, anti-science, those types of things, and try and be a br a bridge builder. We published an article in Sunstone a number of years ago that talks about the parallels and complements between Mormonism and transhumanism. Today, the Mormon Transhumanist Association is the largest religious transhumanist association in existence. We have approximately six hundred members around the world. And as I mentioned, we’re coming up on our tenth anniversary in March. Our website is there. We also have some cards if you’re interested that you can take to remind you of the website and visit there. We host an annual conference every year that is right near the time of general conference in April. and have had a number of both secular and Mormon keynote speakers. And all of these conferences are online. You can see them on our YouTube channel.

Christopher Bradford

One of the cognitive challenges that we have as human beings is the fact that exponential growth is not intuitive for us. It’s very, very difficult for us to grasp the idea of exponential growth. How many of you are familiar with the what the term Moore’s law? Okay, again, about half. So Moore’s law was observed back in the 1960s by an engineer at Intel Corporation who noticed that the capacity of computer chips was doubling about every two years. And later that was revised to about every 18 months. Now, what you see in this slide looks like linear growth, looks like a straight line up. But if you look at the scale on the right, this is a logarithmic scale. That is, every notch on the scale is actually a factor of 10. It’s not simply a linear increase. So, what this really looks like on a non-logarithmic scale is this. And this is what Bob Rees referred to earlier this morning in his talk in here. about how progress looks relatively flat for a long time and then it hits this giant upswing. This is something that is really not intuitive for us. And I’ll give a few examples of why that’s the case and then I’ll talk about what’s happening with technology in this regard.

Christopher Bradford

There is a famous story of an ancient Chinese or Persian or Indian, you take your pick, mathematician, who did a great service for the king. And the king asked him what reward he would like. And he said, My re my demands are very modest. I would just like you to take this chessboard that has sixty-four squares, and on the first Square, I’d like you to place one grain of rice. And on the second square, I’d like you to double that and place two grains. And on the third square, double that and place four grains, and so forth, doubling each time. And the king thought, wow. This should be easy, right? Just bring in a bag of rice and cover the chessboard with rice and should be good to go. Well, in the first few squares of the board, that looks actually fairly modest. But it turns out that each subsequent square, you place more rice on that square than you have placed on all of the previous squares combined. And in the end, there are 64 squares. So in the end, the amount of rice. is two to the power of sixty four minus one grain of rice. This is a pile of rice as high as Mount Everest. That is this number of grains of rice. That’s a huge number. We can’t even comprehend this number. It would weigh. 461 billion metric tons. This is the power of exponential growth. This is about one thousand times the global production of rice in twenty ten. This is what exponential growth means.

Christopher Bradford

Now I’m going to give a few quick slides that talk about how we perceive this always in the near term. This is what exponential growth looks like over five years. In five years, with a doubling every year, We reached 32 times more advanced than we are now. That looks like a lot of growth. I would love for my income to grow that way. In five years, have 32 times as much income as I have now. But Take that out five more years. Thirty-two is the small red number. Notice how linear that looks in the early stages. And then we get up after ten years to a thousand times growth. Take it out another ten years, now a thousand is down at the bottom, and you have a million times growth in ten years. Take that out another to 30 years, and now a million is down at the bottom, and you’re over a billion. And take that out forty years, it’s a trillion. Take it out fifty years, it’s a quadrillion times more advanced in fifty years. This is with a doubling every year. Again, this is something that’s very difficult for us to grasp. We are seeing this happen in technology.

Christopher Bradford

On your left is a picture of a five megabyte hard drive. Being loaded onto an airplane with a forklift in 1956. This cost $35,000 a year to lease from IBM. On the right is a much enlarged version of a micro SD card that you can buy on Amazon today for under $50. It’s smaller than my little fingernail. It is over twenty eight thousand it has over twenty eight thousand times as much capacity as the drive on the left. It is seven hundred times cheaper. That’s an eighteen million fold increase. And that’s not even taking size into consideration. Density, cost, and capacity are changing at exponential rates.

Christopher Bradford

Here is a diagram of what it costs, the trends in cost of sequencing a million bases of DNA. In two thousand one, After the first successful human genome sequencing, which took ten years and a billion dollars, it was about ten thousand dollars per million bases. Now the white line here represents Moore’s Law. If it had just followed Moore’s Law, we would expect that, that would be somewhere around seventy five dollars. But you’ll see that there were some technological innovations back in between 2007 and 2008 that actually caused that cost to drop precipitously. So today, it costs About a hundredth of a penny per million bases. And what this means is that we’re sequencing an entire human genome. Fifteen years ago cost a hundred million dollars. Today, it’s under a thousand dollars. And if this only follows Moore’s Law from here out, that means Next year, it’ll be $500. The year following, it’ll be $250. The year after, $125. Within five years, this will cost the same as that little micro SD card on Amazon to get your entire genome sequenced. And the medical technologies that will accompany that will enable all kinds of things that we have difficulty imagining today.

Christopher Bradford

Now, if we think about a typical American lifespan, which is about 78 years on average, averaging out between the genders. What does that mean at 18-month doublings of Moore’s Law? It means that there are 52 of these doublings in a typical or average American lifespan. This is the factor of change. This is four and a half quadrillion-fold improvement over a human lifetime. We can’t even imagine this. This is not intuitive.

Christopher Bradford

There’s another great example that’s given about the non-intuitive nature of exponential growth. Imagine that we have a jar, and in this jar we have some bacteria. And these bacteria double their population every minute. Now if this jar is full at noon, at 12 o’clock, At what point is the jar half full? It’s half full at 1159. At 11. 58, it’s a quarter full. At 11. 57, it’s an eighth full. So, I saw a set of lectures on YouTube by a professor who asked this question: If you were a bacterium in this jar, at what point would you start to feel like it’s getting kind of crowded in here? You wouldn’t, because you don’t have time.

Christopher Bradford

Now he said, Imagine That some very, very forward-looking bacterium said, Ooh, I can see what’s happening here. We’re doubling. We better go out and find some more space. Go out and find some more capacity. And so they send out an expedition and they find this massive, massive find of three new jars. This quadruples the capacity that they’ve ever had. And because they’re not even half full yet, this is like seeing 8, 16, 20 times more capacity than they already have. How much extra time does that give them? Two minutes. Because at 12. 01, the second jar is full, and at 12. 02, all four jars are full. This is a very difficult thing for us to grasp. And what it means is that as we see these exponential trends in technology, we have got to figure out how, as a society, we are going to respond. Can we respond in a prophetic manner to these changes that are coming to our society?

Christopher Bradford

A week ago today, the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland ended. They had a three or four day summit there. And they published their report that said we are entering The fourth Industrial Revolution. The first one in the seventeen hundreds with steam power and mechanical equipment. The second one in the late 1800s with electricity and mass production. The third one in the mid 20th century, mid to late 20th century, with electronics and computers. And now we’re seeing the convergence on things like artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, distributed computing, network connections. Lots and lots of different technologies that are coming together and that we are starting to have with us all the time. This cell phone that I hold in my hand has more computing power than the best supercomputer in the mid-1980s. A little computer chip that we put in a greeting card that plays happy birthday has more computing power than NASA used to put a man on the moon in 1969. So what are the implications of this for the world?

Christopher Bradford

So let’s look at most common professions. Let me see if I can switch over to this. Move this over. Okay, so this is an animation of the most common professions. It’s a bit hard to see. Let’s see if I can zoom in on that at all. Ah, it doesn’t look like okay, you might be able to see that better. So let me pause this. So in 1978, you can see lots of farmers and lots of secretaries and lots of machine operators. Let’s see what happens over time. 1984, 1986, a lot more secretaries. 1990, oh, we start to see in the late 80s tons and tons of secretaries, fewer farmers, lots of truck drivers, no more machine operators as the most common professions. Let’s see what happens. Truck drivers take over all the secretaries. Most of the secretaries are gone. By now, computers have taken over many of the functions that were done by secretaries. in the nineteen eighties. Now we’re in the mid nineteen nineties. Farmers are still there, but let’s look what happens over time, over the last few years. two thousand four, eleven years ago, twelve years ago. No more secretaries as a common profession. Farmers. And we can see what’s happening here. Now we start to get software developers. Customer service, retail. Now there was this was a report that was done by NPR.

Christopher Bradford

There was a response to this that Criticized a bit of the data that they used for this, and they said one of the issues is that it was reliant on how particular professions were broken down. But even taking that into account, You can see the kinds of professions that are very common today. Retail salesperson, cashier, fast food prep, service worker, office clerk, waiter, manual laborer, secretary. Many of these are positions that are at risk by of increased automation taking those jobs away. And we’re starting to see a big shift in the way that businesses operate as well. And this is what people are now calling the sharing economy. So Davos predicts that over the next five years that there will be a loss of over five million jobs as a consequence of these trends in technology.

Christopher Bradford

We’re seeing now that people are starting to have multiple jobs. They might be an Uber driver is on top of their normal job. I took an Uber from the airport to my hotel last night when I arrived here. We’re starting to see a disintermediation of businesses and consumers. The middleman is being cut out. We’re seeing things being done much more locally and being coordinated through the use of technology. Individuals can do things that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Think about the people on YouTube, my daughters. I have three daughters. The oldest is 10. They love to watch. these silly YouTube videos where people like open up toys and show what’s in the packages of toys and then do a little playing with them.

Speaker 2

And that’s all they do on these YouTube channels. And these people make millions of dollars a year from viewership. Three, four, five million dollars a year. This is unthinkable just a few years ago. Now there are lots of societal implications of these types of changes.

Christopher Bradford

I happen to work for an employer that provides me great health benefits. I work for Ancestry. And that is fantastic for my family. An Uber driver does not get benefits from Uber. Anyone who is a task rabbit, for example, who they can do come and do chores on demand, they don’t get benefits. And so we are really changing the structure of how people are employed, what the terms of those employment are where people are making their money, and it means that we need to provide a stronger social safety net.

Christopher Bradford

There are other trends that we’re seeing that I don’t have time to call out, but they include trends of greater lifespans, healthier lifespans. There’s been a lot of talk lately about raising the retirement age. As we start to have an aging population. And with some of the improvements in medical technology, we will see that people will live longer and healthier lives. As we move forward, and this will also create new demands for our society. Doctrine and Covenants 4920, speaking about wealth inequality, this was another one that was highlighted at the World Economic Forum.

Christopher Bradford

There was a report actually that came out from Oxfam just before the World Economic Forum summit. It says the 62 wealthiest people in the world own as much wealth as the three and a half billion people in the bottom half of the world’s income scale. This has the potential for tremendous social unrest, and it is called out as a moral issue. In Mormon scripture. So, how do we respond to these things?

Christopher Bradford

Doctrine and Covenants 78. For verily I say unto you, the time has come and is now at hand. And behold and lo, it must needs be that there be an organization of my people. in regulating and establishing the affairs of the storehouse for the poor of my people, both in this place and in the land of Zion, for a permanent and everlasting establishment and order unto my church. To advance the cause which ye have espoused, to the salvation of man and to the glory of your Father who is in heaven, that you may be equal in the bonds of heavenly things Yea, and earthly things also, for the obtaining of heavenly things. For if ye are not equal in earthly things, ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things. For if you will that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, which, as we will remember, is this world transformed. You must prepare yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you. And now verily, thus saith the Lord, It is expedient that all things be done unto my glory by you who are joined together in this order. This is the revelation that established the United Firm, which we commonly call the law of consecration. Joseph Spencer has recently published his book For Zion, reminiscent a bit of Hugh Nibley’s approaching Zion and his famous essay, Work We Must, but the Lunch is Free. The essential thrust of this is that we should have a society in which everyone’s basic needs are met to enable them to do meaningful work.

Christopher Bradford

Lately, one of the ideas that’s been getting a lot of traction on both ends of the political spectrum is the idea of a universal basic income. And in Scripture, this is essentially providing to each person according to their needs. This would allow us to decouple the necessities of life from our work. It would allow people to take on greater risk because they wouldn’t worry that they would be putting their life at stake, which would encourage entrepreneurship It also may prove to be significantly less expensive than many of the social programs that we have today. So there are some parallels here with early Mormonism, the idea of consecrating, of providing for everyone’s needs from the surplus of those who have.

Christopher Bradford

Another idea is home manufacture. Technology, 3D printing is providing the opportunity and new technologies in growing and producing food in your own home. Is producing this option, this possibility for us to provide for many of our own needs. We’re already doing this in many respects. How many of us call a travel agent to make travel plans rather than going online and booking our own travel? There are a lot of things that we’re doing ourselves that we used to do. I don’t have time to go into this, but home industries have been a long tradition in Mormonism, and we’re advised to be self sufficient and frugal. And many of these technologies will enable us to do this in ways that we don’t even think about today. But they’re very congruent with early Mormon thought and early Mormon ways of life. Education, another key aspect.

Christopher Bradford

The World Economic Forum called this out as a particular need for the new employment skills to meet the new demands of the new kinds of work that we’ll be doing after the advent of many of these technologies. And we need to have a continued emphasis on education. And this education is particularly around adaptability.

Christopher Bradford

At the Sunstone Symposium this past summer in Salt Lake, John Dominic Crossan posed a challenge to Mormons. And he spoke about the kingdom mind, that is the mind that builds the kingdom of God. And he says, if we claim To be a prophetic people, to have the gift of prophecy, that we should be fighting for. A just society, and we should be advocating for forward-thinking policies that are going out beyond just the problems of this year and next year and looking at this non-intuitive exponential curve of technology and the impacts that will have on society, and really advocating for the policies that will make this a society that can respond in a prophetic way. Thank you.

Speaker 3

So thank you for inviting me here today. I would like to plant this question at the outset. How may compassion be a metric in meritocracy? This talk will focus on vulnerability as a path to reacting to and behaving in a culture which is increasingly technological, secular, and individualistic.

Speaker 3

There’s one issue I want to mention up front. I had two, but I’m going to cut it down to one. The one issue is that I am not a Mormon. I am a a religiously promiscuous non-denominational Christian. drawing from many traditions, taking teaching and example to heart, but treating dogma much, much, much more casually. I too am an officer. I too am an officer and a board member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. And I have learned the best parts of Mormonism from my colleagues there, who I find are a deep source of spiritual support. My life. To the extent that my remarks mirror that, we can give credit to my colleagues. Anything you may find that you disagree with that does not align with Mormon. Please know that those are my opinions and from my heart.

Speaker 3

Some may hear that I am a promiscuous non-denominational national Christian, and they may think that I am secular. That would be an inaccurate assumption. I belong wholly to God. Though I was raised outside a church structure I came to God in adulthood, first by being an intellectual believer, followed by a spiritual awakening, and supported by joining a Methodist congregation. Mind first, then my heart opening up. The same was true for science and technology, I suppose.

Speaker 3

When I first started using computers or first learned about quantum physics, it was not love at first sight. It was not like encountering Eve and the cherubim guarding the tree of life, which created an almost instant connection to the central dance of humanity. a hunger for knowledge alongside protecting our existence. Nor was it the enthralment of the Psalms, the poetry of faith and history Intertwined, and certainly, most certainly, neither science nor technology offered me a metaphor so powerful as the image of Jacob wrestling the angel. The passion of that single image has guided me along my spiritual journey, brought me through my spiritual crises But the characters of the Bible could only go so far in helping me to grapple with the question: who or what is God? What does it mean to be in relationship with God? For those questions, I needed more than stories. Those questions reached beyond humanity alone, up to the cosmos, and down to the quantum field. It was not science or faith, but science and faith. I came to understand that believing in God also means believing in technological progression. as an essential part of our human history. The path towards transhumanism and the path towards God are inextricably linked. Further, I don’t think that is true only for me, because accelerating science and technology, as Chris just pointed out, is part of the context of modernity. What might surprise some of you is that you too are also being influenced by the emerging transhuman age.

Speaker 3

Technology is in every facet of our lives, from birth to death, including the food we eat, the material and the clothing we wear, and the cookware we use. It influences how we perceive the world, our expectations, and even how we interact with others. MRI, deep brain stimulation, pacemakers, transplants, hip replacements, cardiocalcium scanners, knee replacements Nerve and thought control prostheses, home pregnancy tests, DNA testing, IVF, transgenic animals, mice with human brain neurons, artificial intelligence. Drones, machines that can write poetry and prose, machines that can perform better on quiz shows than humans, devices that can act as organs, and genetic editing are here today. Already, vaccinations have eliminated smallpox and polio in much of the world. Measles cases are so rare in this country that an outbreak makes the news. So given how far we have already traveled, seeing the convergence of medicine and technology, understanding that developments are happening more rapidly and in more places globally. It seems we are likely heading toward a future we cannot fully, as yet, believe or understand.

Speaker 3

We are living in a transhuman age, formed by a synthesis. Of science, math, medicine, technology, and commerce. In developed nations, it is the context of our lives. It is, then, like the kingdom of God, which Jesus told us is now. And still unfolding. Odd then that faith is being challenged by some at a social level.

Speaker 3

The emphasis on individualism and personal empowerment is evident in the technology itself. Telephones, transport, the power grid, all used to be perceived but are now at an individual level. They used to be perceived communally, but are now at an individual level. Solar power, and some clean water solutions, too, for example. Are rolling out on a home-by-home basis rather than in the public arena. Tablets and Kindles are replacing libraries. Even education is being re-engineered through technology that emphasizes individual study via computer and online courses, changing the landscape of in-person communal classes. The emphasis of individualism filters into our social sphere and is expressed as both ethics and morality being considered personal choices. The reliance on evidence-based reasoning leads to a problem-solving mindset.

Speaker 3

Theologian Ted Peters wrote: Science and technology as a cultural phenomenon are inextricably tied to promise, progress, and perfection. Science is the engine that drives progress, and technology steers it towards perfection. The goal is to engineer, manufacture, code or decode solutions. Medicine seeks technological and pharmaceutical ways to address what may sometimes be spiritual issues. Such as grief, depression, and relationship deficits. Simultaneously, narcissism has been deleted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Excessive selfishness or ego-orientation no longer being perceived as an illness. These social changes potentially result in a move away from what Martin Buber referred to as.

Speaker 3

I and thou relationships in favor of the objectification of living beings. Through such a lens, we move away from perceiving people as having problems. to perceiving people as being problems themselves. Peters again, our risk is that our generation might be tempted to ask of science what only God can deliver. God may be able to deliver perfection. Science cannot. Perhaps vulnerability, comprised of the dimensions of authenticity, emotional openness, humility, and empathy.

Speaker 3

Mark an essential aspect of faith. Faith informs my behavior and changes the condition of my soul. It connects me to God who operates within and not separate from the parameters of nature. It is a transfiguration of my way of being. And transfiguration is a key concept here.

Speaker 3

Theologian John Dominic Crossan, who Chris referenced, wrote: The escaton is not about the destruction of Of the world, but about its transformation into a place of justice and nonviolence. It is not about the annihilation of the earth, but about its transformation into a location of freedom and peace. The transfigurations of Moses and Jesus alike, in and by the presence of God, are our examples. Technology is not a replacement for presence. It is part of the means through which presence allows us to be co-creators. Realization of transfiguration must include the divine attributes of agape, nonviolence, and social justice. Perhaps it is not what we do, but how we do it, which determines sanctity. Each of us are given a choice in life.

Speaker 3

Do we see the world, perceive the world, and behave in the world through the dominant lens of secularism and ego? Or do we look with different eyes through a different lens? When I strip away the mythology, when I dig beneath the dogma and the doctrine, I find that my faith is at its core about making myself permeable to God. To do so, I strive to search for my deepest level of truth, to put a check on my own ego, to admit when I am wrong, to seek forgiveness. And to be willing to grant forgiveness to others, though doing so means I risk getting hurt. To be permeable to divinity is to strive to live in a state of vulnerability. Vulnerability is a state of openness and a state of susceptibility. For me to be open to God takes courage because it means I must be open to my fellow humans as well. Vulnerability moves me away from judgment towards acceptance. But the quote normalcy of civilization, unquote, as Chrissan as Crossan puts it

Speaker 3

With its emphasis on moral judgment, does not readily offer unconditional love. Being willing to be vulnerable means taking risks with authenticity, emotional openness, humility, and And empathy. It means opening ourselves up to those around us and to be willing to experience their pain as our own. This is hard to do already, and technology is making it more difficult in some ways.

Speaker 3

Algorithms are getting better and better at selecting for Human behaviors. This means that dating sites and employment sites and local business ratings start to funnel or skew our choices towards an idealized version of the world. Only those with the best skills, the most unblemished records, even enter into the consideration set. This emphasizes perfection, making it increasingly difficult for the non-neurotypical To feel like they even have a place in the world.

Speaker 3

When I was a child, I had a cousin who was on the autism spectrum. His name was Joey, and we all, even as kids, knew that he was different from other adults. His parents had to help him run a local candy store. But they put his name on the sign. He was a fixture in our community. And we kids were fond of him because, in some ways, he was like us, and also he’s the one who sold us the Italian ices that we really Love. When his parents got too old to run the shop, Joey was able to get a job with IBM watching the mainframe computer. When the light came on, he went and got someone to look at the mainframe. Again, he was very proud to have a job in the nascent computer industry. By these jobs, his dignity was supported by the broader society. And jobs like those have long ago been automated. Our challenge is to make a place in society for folks who aren’t the best and the brightest. Realizing that we all have strengths and weaknesses, gifts and shames.

Speaker 3

Opening myself to others means being willing to see how I am not like just those that I admire. but how I am similar to, perhaps even a reflection of, those I fear and dislike. The call of secularism is to put distance between myself and those not in my tribe. The call of God, though, is to see the ways in which we are part of the same family. And being part of the same family, we find ways to communicate and support one another. Even when we do not agree. This kind of deep respect and kindness, I believe, is the essence of Mormonism. What I see in Mormonism, when it is at its best, is a modeling of how to disagree amiably without making others wrong or arousing animosity. I assume it must stem from a belief in a family model of godhood, of having a heavenly father and a heavenly mother, hopefully in an equal partnership. Connecting us all as siblings. In a family, it should be safe to be our genuine, authentic self.

Speaker 3

When we are authentic, though, we open ourselves to ridicule. When we are emotionally available, we open ourselves to betrayal. When we are humble, we open ourselves to not feeling special, not being perceived as among the chosen. When we are empathic, we open ourselves to the pain and suffering of others. But the more we are willing to make peace with our own wounds, the more accepting we are of others. Adopting a stance of vulnerability. means being willing and able to see the perfection of imperfection, to understand that we are flawed only when we are harming ourselves or others.

Speaker 3

It is easy for me to talk about my cousin Joey. It is less easy for me to admit that I, too, am not neurotypical. When I hide from this truth, I put on a mantle of shame. In doing so, I also need to reject anyone who brings it to mind. Quaker theologian Parker Palmer called this, quote, making enemies where none exist, unquote. But there is freedom in my facing my truth. That freedom of realizing that it is through and in my nerdiness, my anxiousness, my dark nights of the soul, that I am able to connect with God. When I accept my imperfection as a gift, the miracle is that I see it as a gift in others as well. As people of faith, we ought not to seek to be invincible, to protect ourselves from any pain, any kind of suffering, any kind of failure. Often, when we are most vulnerable, as when we are grieving, we find that we are closest to God. To choose vulnerability is to reject the lens of the agotic and the secular. that measures success quantitatively, and to accept the lens of God who sees success in our being rather than our doing. To choose vulnerability is to choose connectedness.

Speaker 3

It is to say that while others suffer injustice, we must not pretend and turn a blind eye. We make a contribution simply by being present and by being conscious of the adversity of the other. If we do nothing else, we must witness. So we are called as part of the entire body of Christ to be conscious witnesses.

Speaker 3

Collectively, churches hold a unique role and responsibility for offsetting the commercial motives which move technology forward. The community of the Church stands in contrast to individualism and greed, and can exercise leadership to address those most vulnerable as the living body of Christ. We would benefit by revisiting the Jesus story for the lessons that it has to teach today. Ours is a God who suffered and died. Seeing Jesus as a powerless peasant, and as the Pope reminded us a few months ago, homeless at birth, who challenged the divinity of the prevailing power gives us permission to not seek to be invulnerable ourselves. If we are to become gods, as Christian theosis implies, we must do so in unison with God, not in opposition. Jesus taught us to look for Him in those on the margins.

Speaker 3

Proclaiming God as all-powerful fuels the quest for omnipotence. Just as parents may teach children but are not responsible for their actions, so too God may guide us, but we must learn to behave maturely ourselves. The image of parental gods is of love and acceptance, not judgment and banishment. It is an image of teaching through life experience how to channel our ego and personal power for the good of the Family. It is one of becoming parental role models through learning how to love, how to accept, and how to forgive. Mormonism has much to teach the country and the world about behaving in a society as loving family members. When we open ourselves to transfiguration through heavenly love, it is behavior and intention that develop that technology. That manage how it is implemented in our society instead of the other way around. Thank you.

Christopher Bradford

I think we’re out of time, aren’t we? Do we have some time still? Oh, great. Any questions then? Or a bathroom brief.

Christopher Bradford

Okay, well, then have you drawn any or had any ideas about artificial intelligence? And what that will be to religion or some curious questions? So, the question is: Have we given thought to artificial intelligence and what the implications might be for religion?

Christopher Bradford

There’s been a lot of press recently by some fairly prominent folks, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk and others. that really puts artificial intelligence in a very negative light and sees it as a threat. And frankly, sometimes transhumanists are cast as only techno optimists kind of taking a rosy view of what technology can do and not not recognizing the risks. And I want to disabuse you of that notion. I didn’t really address those because I really wanted to talk about the economic and social implications, even if those catastrophic risks like nuclear or biological or artificial intelligence types of risks don’t manifest themselves. So, yes, I think that artificial intelligence can potentially present a risk to humanity. I don’t know how much of a risk it is to religion generally. I think a Mormon view in particular has embraces the idea of artificial intelligence, but in a novel way. I actually wrote a blog post about this on the MTA’s blog. which is the Transfigurist. And in it I suggest that for Mormonism there is no such thing as artificial intelligence. That is, for Mormonism, every way in which the world operates is natural, it’s not artificial, and that intelligence is essentially present in everything around us. And so in that sense, I think it doesn’t pose a very strong challenge to Mormon theology. In terms of like human risk. I think one way that we may mitigate, and that I think is the most likely way to mitigate, the risks of artificial intelligence is that we will use that artificial intelligence to augment ourselves and that we will see humanity Integrating with artificial intelligence rather than producing it merely externally, and that it won’t be seen as Artificial intelligence versus natural intelligence, but it will be an integration of the two. And that may be part of the Mormon vision of what transfiguration may mean in the long run. Do you want to comment on that?

Speaker 3

I think when we think about artificial intelligence, we may keep in mind that it’s actually multiple intelligences. that there are going to be different brands, different flavors, different types of artificial intelligence. So an apple artificial intelligence may look different From a Microsoft one, may look different from an LDS one. I think when we look at artificial intelligence, the metadata that forms the backbone of it we need to be conscious about that. Is it coming from Facebook? Is it what kind of social media feeds into what do we see? As the behaviors. And if it’s coming from deep learning, how do we teach the AI to embrace issues of compassion rather than competition? So much of the algorithmic approach bases it on game theory, and game theory presumes a winner and a loser. But if we can, as people of faith, advocate for and promote deep learning, which emphasizes an emphasis on compassion and an emphasis on cooperation, AI could be An amazing, amazing tool for bringing about global peace. And just a quick follow-up on that.

Christopher Bradford

So some of our family’s favorite games, speaking of game theory are cooperative games, there’s still a winner and a loser, but the winner is us, and the loser is whatever’s trying to kill us. And I love that type of application of artificial intelligence, right? The perpetuation of humanity. And we are beginning to see the application of that. Dora, you mentioned artificial intelligence being able to win at quiz shows, right? There was an announcement just this week that Google had made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and for the first time had beaten a world champion Go player, the Chinese game Go. which was thought to be a very, very hard problem, very intractable problem. Well, these capabilities are already being used to benefit humanity. IBM’s Watson, which was the winner of the Jeopardy game show, is being used for medical diagnosis right now in hospitals. And so I do think there is great promise in the compassionate application of these technologies.

Speaker 4

The transfiguration that through technology some that AI or technology could assist In Transfiguration. As representatives of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, could you talk a little bit about other ideas that may be The association has a kind of expertise on maybe like resurrection, the relation of technology, developing technology for resurrection, or a way to interpret Resurrection that way, maybe becoming like God, and anything else that strikes your fancy like that. That’s all. Big question.

Christopher Bradford

Yeah, so in the same vein of Merman’s really naturalistic approach to cosmology, we see God operating according to natural laws, which Many of which we may not understand now, but we have the promise in Mormon scripture that the day will come, according to the doctrine and covenants, when we will comprehend even God as we are quickened. and we’ll begin to understand the way that this works. And any of these natural ways of achieving these ends can be seen as technological. You know, early Mormon leaders taught that resurrection was an ordinance that we perform. We already use technologies in the ordinances that we perform on behalf of deceased people. And we use technologies for the records that Doctrine and Covenants 128 equates essentially with the heavenly records. Where Joseph Smith speaks about things being sealed on earth and sealed in heaven, or in other words, being recorded on earth and recorded in heaven. We use technology for that now. We are working to put together with DNA, with historical records and so forth, a much more comprehensive record of the human family than we’ve ever had. And this could be one of the avenues by which we participate in these ordinances of resurrecting our dead ancestors. And by so doing, become much more like God and seek to do so by the guidance of God.

Speaker 3

When I think of Transfiguration, I think of it primarily as work of the soul and work of reaching out to humanity. I see it as applying technology for humanitarian purposes and being able to transfigure the world by being able to address issues of dire poverty. Um we talk a lot about radical life extension. The you know the age of adulthood in Uganda is about Half of what it is here. If someone could live to age 60 instead of age 35 or 40, that would be radical life extension. And I think it is incumbent upon the developed nations to help bring at At least a minimum level of security to people around the world. Clean water Google’s project to bring Internet access around the globe is a is a wonderful step in that direction. So I see transfiguration as sharing the bounty of technology and applying it for beneficent Purposes. I also see it as changing our own souls and technologies like artificial Virtual reality and augmented reality are ways of helping us experience empathy. It’s ways of allowing us to live inside the shoes of someone else. What is it like to be homeless? And there are technologies that will be able to help trigger spiritual experiences. Those experiences when and I’m in favor of that. I’m in favor of doing that alongside a spiritual director or within people who are supporting a faith community. To do it just for the thrills of it, as a kind of pornography, but to do it as a way of helping to deepen our spiritual path, as a way of helping us connect to God and others. I think that goes a long way to help transfiguring our souls.

Speaker 4

So why not each of these people today that we’ve been given is how much of technology To be more creative, but also we believe that whatever was created here on earth was created spiritually first. So why wouldn’t it just Move into our eternal progression. That’s moving my hand up. She was saying that as a Mormon growing up and finding your way in Mormonism, that we’re taught that we should be creative as God is creative, and that We should be able to take advantage of these technologies to create, and that this creation reflects an earlier spiritual creation that flows through our experience and our path to Godhood. Thank you. Oh, one more.

Christopher Bradford

Yes, the MTA sponsors an annual conference. I mentioned it earlier. If you go to our website, transfigurism. org, you can find out more about it. The conference is being held in April. This year, it’s the week after General Conference, and it will be held in Provo. And our keynote speakers are Eric Steinhart, who is well known in the secular transhumanist community, and Rosalind Fransen Welch, who will be our Mormon keynote speaker. And we have some cards up here, if you want to come get one. Thanks.