Did you catch the television game show Jeopardy this past week when IBM’s super computer “Watson” became the first-ever machine contestant to beat out two other all-time top contestants? One great result of Watson’s victory is that IBM donated $500,000 to World Vision, the Christian relief ministry.
According to some reports, the success of Watson was a breakthrough for artificial intelligence researchers. The supercomputer was built so that it can respond to questions posed in natural language. Now, it’s not ‘are you smarter than a fifth grader?’ but ‘are you wiser than Watson?’
Of course, computers may be superior to humans in many ways, but human beings – not computers (or anything else for that matter) – are made in the image of God. One aspect of the divine image is the ability to make moral choices.
That may not seem like a big deal to some, but it is vital in a day when our government is re-defining the rights of doctors to make a conscientious choice in the care they provide (see news report here). When it comes to deciding do we perform abortions or sex-change operations, or do we refuse to do so on moral grounds, maybe we need to remember knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom. There is no such thing as artificial wisdom. True wisdom comes from God (Proverbs 2:6).
Frankly, that’s elementary, my dear Watson.
