{"id":395,"date":"2015-03-06T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/?p=395"},"modified":"2015-03-05T21:57:31","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T03:57:31","slug":"would-chappie-go-to-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/2015\/03\/would-chappie-go-to-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Would Chappie Go to Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Chappie<\/a>Director Neil Blomkamp\u2019s Chappie<\/em>, about robot who becomes a high-tech version of Pinocchio, officially hits theaters today. He\u2019s a robot who can think and feel\u2014and a far more humane depiction of artificial intelligence than we see in, say, The Terminator.<\/em><\/p>\n

But in a way, this sort of AI actually bothers me more.<\/p>\n

The raging self-aware machines in the Terminator <\/em>movies or maybe the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron<\/em><\/a> are bad robots. They may have some sort of cognitive awareness, but they lack that complicated stew of emotion and morality that seems intrinsic to a human soul.<\/p>\n

But Chappie\u2014at least from what I can tell in the trailers\u2014is different. He processes the world like a toddler at first, learning from the humans around him. \u201cHe\u2019s just a kid,\u201d someone says. \u201cHe could be the next step in evolution,\u201d his creator insists. \u201cI am alive,\u201d Chappie himself tells us. And that forces us to ask what, exactly, alive<\/em> means. And that notion can be pretty challenging.<\/p>\n