The Unfinished God in a Techno-Driven World 

My name is Elia Delio I’m a Franciscan sister and Catholic theologian who works in the area of science and religion.  

I’m very interested in the questions of artificial intelligence and human becoming. I know that we are concerned today whether or not AI will overpower us, overtake us. Will we lose our humanity? Certainly religion has played an important role in the past in identifying the human person and giving us a reason for getting up in the morning. Do those reasons remain, or are things changing with technology? I do think there is a certain way that technology has come to supplant religion, and so far as cyberspace is the new place of the infinite, the realm of infinite possibilities, infinite longings. Even if religion is the quest for our ultimate concerns or what we’re ultimately passionate about, we can, in a sense, realise some of those concerns or at least begin to visualise them with technology. 

And that does, in a sense, raise the bar on technology, as in some sense, if not adhering to religious principles, it’s in some ways, replacing religion at times. On a practical level, I think young people would rather go online than to church. 

But let’s put this in a different framework. 

The French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin thought that the name ‘God’ points to this power of life, a power of love at the heart of unfolding life or evolution, and that power of life can come into more explicit unity and consciousness, through technology. So he foresaw that computer technology could link to a greater sense of interdependent global mind and maybe we could realise our capacity for ultimate values of unity and justice together more.