Reincarnation and RobotswithBen Goertzel

Books Mentioned In This Interview

Ben Goertzel, PhD, is author of many books on artificial intelligence including Ten Years to the Singularity if We Really Really Try; Engineering General Intelligence, Vols. 1 and 2; The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind; and The Path to Posthumanity. He is also editor (with Damien Broderick) of an anthology about parapsychology titled, Evidence for Psi: Thirteen Empirical Research Reports. He is chief scientific officer for Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong.

Here he notes that, while the question of reincarnation in robots seems outlandish, most of our present technology would have seemed nonsensical and incomprehensible to earlier generations of humans. He quotes the 14th Dalai Lama who suggested (half-jokingly) that artificial intelligence programmers of the future might incarnate into robots. He cites Stephen Braude’s book, Immortal Remains, as demonstrating that we must consider some version of consciousness operating outside of the body. He outlines the sort of scientific and metaphysical models that might lead to such a development.

(Recorded on April 29, 2016)

Published on May 2, 2016

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