In my novel, Digital Dick, my artificial intelligence protagonist, Dick Young, argues with a radio evangelist about whether or not Dick has a soul.  The evangelist quotes scripture: “It is written in Genesis: ‘And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’”  Since the Bible says that only men have been given souls (presumably this includes women, too), the evangelist argues that Dick cannot have a soul.  Dick disagrees.  He believes that ‘I think therefore I am’ implies that he, as a thinking person, has a soul.

What is the soul?  This question doesn’t seem to have a single answer.  Oprah Winfrey interviewed thirteen people including Dwayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Eckhart Tolle and asked them what the soul is.  (You can find a 5-minute video of these descriptions at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/25/what-is-the-soul-eckhart-tolle-wayne-dyer_n_2333335.html.)  Those interviewed by Oprah describe the soul as infinite, the core part of a person, the person’s essence.  Like Dick and at least one of Oprah’s guests, I associate the soul with consciousness, with the thinking part of us. At some point in the future, humans will concede that artificial intelligences think. At that point, it seems logical to me to conclude that an AI could have a soul.

In an article published in 1950, Alan Turing, often referred to as the father of Artificial Intelligence, said “In attempting to construct . . . machines [that think] we should not be irreverently usurping [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children.  Rather, we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”

How would you describe the soul?  Do you think an artificial intelligence could have a soul?

If we clone an artificial intelligence would each clone have its own soul? Would human clones have separate souls?