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112 Modern Robotics

ISSUES: ROBOTS AND RELIGION

When Honda announced its P2 walking robot in October 1995,
Hiroyuki Yoshino, the company’s president, was worried that some
religious groups might consider it blasphemous for people to create
humanlike robots. He sent two company officials to the Vatican to
ask for an opinion about the robot project.
Fortunately for Honda, the Rev. Joseph Pittau, rector of the
Pontifical Gregorian University, was not concerned. He showed the
Honda representatives a picture of the famous Michelangelo mural
showing God’s creation of Adam, with the finger of God touching
that of the man made in his image. He explained that just as God
put the spark of life into man, he also gave humans the imagination
to create things such as robots. As long as the robots were used for
constructive purposes, the Vatican stated it would have no objection
to them.
In her provocative book God in the Machine, Anne Foerst, who is
both an MIT robotics researcher and a theologian, explored the rela-
tionship between robots, humanity, and God. She placed modern
robotics research within a long line of human exploration, including
the interplay between myth and science, stories and explanations.
Looking at the Jewish tradition of the golem (an artificial human that
is motivated by instructions on a special scroll), Foerst suggested that
when God created humans in his image, that image included the cre-
ative impulse itself. In other words, creation is a “recursive function,”
and in creating robots and other technology, people are continuing
a chain of calls to create what may someday result in our creating
true machine partners.
While celebrating the creativity of artificial intelligence (AI)
researchers, Foerst warned in her book that “If we see the enterprise
of developing artificial intelligence as purely scientific and ignore all
the mystical and emotional elements, we will be in danger of falling
into the trap of hubris [excessive pride].” Foerst therefore urged that
theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, and many others bring their
perspectives to understanding the implications of the technology of
robotics and AI.