Theology of Decision-making and Artificial Intelligence

The article studies the phenomenon of decision-making by humans and by artificial intelligence in the context of the Orthodox theology of person on the one hand and of the theology of knowledge on the other. God’s eternal sentence may be regarded as the source of theology of decision-making. An important role in the process of taking decisions by an individual is played by the hypostatic and synthetic character of knowledge together with aspects of personality, which are refl ected by the terms πρόσωπον and ¤πόστασις and which are understood as the “centre” of decision-making. Patristic personalism teaches about the link of mind and heart in decision-making and characterises cognition as a “logos- and heart-related feat”. In the patristic hypostatic, nature- and energeia-related ontology, the energies and the essence as a knowable and non-knowable modi of God’s nature and man’s nature possess an unlimited depth and incomprehensibleness. Whereas artifi cial intelligence, devoid of the hypostatic element, is fully comprehensible. The processes which it superfi cially and hypocritically imitates are totally diff erent from human thinking. When a human makes a decision, there takes place a synergy with the Holy Spirit; man coordinates his thoughts with divine thoughts-logoi, the energies of the Holy Trinity. Artifi cial intelligence does not have this ability of vertical alignment with higher ontological levels of thinking. Its behaviour will always remain an inventory of cliches and will always be inferior to a person as to the potentially infi nite array of personal qualities refl ected in the decisions which a person makes.