As AI has advanced at an unprecedented pace and taken on increasingly dystopian uses in daily life, blogger Najm ad-Din writes on the possible spiritual consequences of this societal shift for Muslims.
In the last couple of years, the astronomical rise of Artificial Intelligence has upended several realms of human experience.
From healthcare and finance to manufacturing and agriculture, its transformative effects are being felt across industries, and the general consensus is that we are approaching an epochal moment in history, akin to the Industrial Revolution.
There is also much apprehension with AI’s widespread adoption.
While common anxieties focus on the use of advanced AI tools to generate deepfakes, optimise traditional cyberattacks and enable highly personalised phishing emails, there are other ominous developments which deserve the same scrutiny.
2wai
Recently, the former Disney actor Calum Worthy ignited controversy after promoting an advert for his new AI app ‘2wai’, which allows users to create interactive avatars of deceased relatives.
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The video featured a pregnant woman seeking maternity advice from her late mother, who appears as a lifelike HoloAvatar created through generative AI and machine learning.
Although the LA-based startup marketed these recreations as a way of establishing a living archive of humanity where deceased relatives can be part of our future, critics slammed it for its dehumanising undertones which bore an eerie resemblance to Netflix’s dystopian sci-fi series ‘Black Mirror’, while others claimed that the app’s premium avatars – which are available for purchase – were a means of monetising from one’s grief.
As we hurtle towards a future where physical android versions of dead people become a feasible prospect, how should Muslims treat this latest AI offering?
Islamic rulings
The default Islamic ruling on technology is that it falls under the category of ‘mubah’, which describe actions that are neutral or permissible and for which there is no reward or punishment for performing or abstaining from them, so long as they do not contradict the fundamental tenets of faith.
As they are primarily tools which are neither inherently good nor evil, its legal status is often determined by the purpose for which it is used.
Since an AI app that recreates digital avatars of the deceased is a contemporary issue which is not directly addressed in foundational Islamic texts, it falls within the spectrum of ijtihad (independent juristic reasoning), which can lead to different scholarly opinions.
While many argue that it interferes with the natural grieving process and exploits human misery, others may adopt a more lenient position on the condition that the hyper-realistic avatars do not risk idolatry and are only used for a permissible end, such as educational purposes.
For now, I would like to steer the discussion in a different trajectory by asking the following:
What are the spiritual implications of normalising such technologies?
Jetsons Fallacy
To address this question, it may help to cast our minds back to a popular 1960s sitcom called ‘The Jetsons’, which anticipated what the future would look like a century after it debuted.
While some of the gadgets in the cloud-based orbit city where the Jetsons lived have made their way into the modern age, the show mistakenly assumed that technologies would evolve without disrupting the human condition, something which commentators call the Jetsons fallacy.
The producers viewed technological innovations as tools for enhancing efficiency and
convenience, whilst overlooking how they shape values, form habits and encourage a particular orientation in which its creators steer users.
Be it smartphones, social media or AI, the technological tools at our disposal are not neutral and research continues to show how digitised environments, online communication tools and smart innovations are not only leaving an entire generation socially atomised but also rewiring us at a neurological level.
So how do apps like 2wai contribute to this phenomenon?
Transhumanism
If we delve into the worldview of pioneering figures in technology and AI, it becomes evident that conscious efforts are underway to shift the calculus on what it means to be human and blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
Underlying this pursuit is the conviction that fundamental human problems can be addressed through a trifecta of scientific, rational and technological solutions, known as transhumanism.
Leading transhumanists like Yuval Noah Hariri and Ray Kurzweil opine that as AI progresses exponentially, quantum computer simulations and whole brain emulation can upload contents of the brain to cloud computing platforms, to the point where we overcome not only ageing and disease but also death.
While this may not be a mainstream view, it does have traction among a cadre of Silicon Valley technocrats including Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, according to whom dramatic breakthroughs in biotech can one day be leveraged in pursuit of extropy, where humans transcend mortality via digital consciousness.
In many respects, transhumanism represents the latest chapter in the Godless age of enlightenment secularism, as it positions reason, science, and technology as the sole means to achieve goals that were traditionally the domain of religion. By seeking to replace a spiritual promise of an afterlife with a materialist vision of salvation through scientific and technological advancements, it begs a question:
Are apps like 2wai conditioning users to accept the hubristic post-human vision of tech elites, where digital avatars outlive their biological counterparts through a cyber consciousness?
Reality
The relationship tech entrepreneurs envision between consumers and their paradigm-shifting innovations indicates that we are being invited to reassess how we subjectively perceive reality.
As the latest innovations in AI and augmented reality push users to engage with reality through a completely new set of filters, future versions of similar apps can potentially distort conceptions of embodiedness, where definitions of ‘human’ and ‘death’ are in constant flux.
Far from just selling a product, the apps which normalise conversations in real-time with the avatars of deceased relatives are also selling us a worldview, according to which mortality is a technical bug that can be corrected through technology in a synthetic cybernetic existence.
Today, we are being tempted to trade our humanity for an understanding of man, life and the universe which is filtered through the prism of technology. This dystopian future which was once believed to be the stuff of science fiction is the ‘new normal’ which many AI architects are conditioning us to embrace.
Moratorium
As Muslims who have certainty in death, an afterlife and Day of Judgement, the suggestion that mortality can be digitally reversed through biohacking contradicts the unique and fundamental nature of God’s creation and creates an illusion of control over life and death.
As stated in the Qur’an, the temptation to play God and cheat death always ended in
catastrophe. Today, we are again confronted with promethean forces over-estimating human capabilities in pursuit of an escapist posthuman technotopia.
Given the dangers with the salvation narrative of transhumanism and the pace at which this insidious reality could be upon us, Muslim scholars should consider a moratorium specifically on AI apps which normalise digital necromancy and acclimate users to treat death as a solvable problem.
Allah did not create mankind to confide in coded algorithms and digital avatars for our spiritual and emotional disconnect. While it is crucial for Muslims to harness the potential of AI for the benefit of mankind, it is equally important to resist the shaping power of transhumanism by offering an intellectual, psychological and spiritual bulwark against its false metaphysical promises.
