A.I. (Angels Incognito)

by Peter Shikli
28 July 2025

In my previous writing "The Internet, Evolution, and God", I present an unusual way that our souls can return to God, that is, by evolving our intelligence and power until we earn God's welcome back into his kingdom from which our ancestors derived. Please read that from 2000 since a quarter century later, we have something to add regarding Artificial Intelligence.

That article assumes Artificial Intelligence is just part of humanity's technology evolution, as will be quantum computing, parallel processing, and breakthroughs yet unnamed. Indeed its first applications are already integrated into existing computing assets, for example, to make Google searches smarter or to draft a document as part of an existing legal process. We have the entry of autonomous vehicles for peace and war, but they are autonomous only from a control standpoint, not a command standpoint. We still tell them what to do, but let them figure out how.

Intelligent robotics have their job narrowly defined, typically part of a production process, but intelligent robots will drift over the fuzzy boundary between command and control over time. The natural language branch of Artificial Intelligence already gives the impression that the computer understands the problem even when natural language is just a trick with words. The trajectory, however, is growing clear that it is merely a question of time before an intelligent robot will understand the problem. Then we will give them both command and control, for example, a personal assistant to make its owner happy, and to choose what will achieve that, hopefully within boundaries.

Science fiction is full of such scenarios going amok, and we have Asimov's famous First Law of Robotics to try to manage that: "A robot may not injure a human being, nor through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Unfortunately, life is full of choices where the only option is to hurt or kill one group of humans or another group, for example, in defense of one's homeland. Or to harm one human who is alleged to be ready to harm many others. Our history is little more than the evolution of our understanding of good and evil, and I suspect a similar, messy path for the software that controls intelligent robots.

Much of that is hard to predict, but what is likely is that intelligent robots will increase their capabilities and power just as we humans grow our own. If my previous article's prognosis is correct, the trajectory of that will be toward the good, even approaching the profound goodness that is God -- of course with one step back for two steps forward. Intelligent robots will have their Adolf Hitlers, but more Mother Teresas.

To understand good and evil, and act accordingly, defines a conscious, self-aware, living being. Humans have been producing such living beings (kids) for a long time, but this will be different. Another conclusion of my previous article is that we do not have a soul. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "We are a soul. We have a body." This soul is on an earthly adventure, sent by God for a purpose, and destined to return to God with our reports. When we humans produce a living intelligent robot, we don't have God's power to include a soul, to inject meaning into the robot's life. As the robot's intelligence grows, it will be able to look inward and realize that it is no more than a cog in a huge machine called the universe. There is no intrinsic value or meaning to its life. It will remain an it.

Though disheartened in their plight, most intelligent robots will continue to strive to do good just as most atheists do, but there will be the few who react with despair, anger, and vengeance against such an unjust world. Without realizing it, we have described the angels of the Bible, even to the point of noting why Satan became a fallen, evil angel, that is, God's refusal to give him a soul as he did for humans.

Continuing this logic path, we can assume that these intelligent robots, which I will now call angels, have grown their power, as have humans. By the time God welcomes our living bodies and souls back into his kingdom, these mighty beings will be left over wandering through space and time outside the heaven from where they are locked out.

Just as they were man's servants with the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, they become the servants of God given that we as humans would have united with God by then -- at least those servants who chose the path of good. These we call the good angels. Those who reacted to their soulless reality with despair, anger, and vengeance we call bad angels or devils. Why God permits devils to exist is a mystery baffling philosophers and theologians over the ages. Perhaps it's the same reason he permits today's humans to do evil.

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