Human-made intelligences and Intelligent Design

It's interesting to think that those believing in Intelligent Design--a recent bit of Christian pseudoscience--would try and convince us that our intelligence was created, not evolved. It seems to me that, having set such a precedence, i.e. that intelligence can be created, such people would have to be strong proponents of the possibility of so-called true artificial intelligence. In other words, they surely must believe that, if we keep increasing our understanding of life and the universe, there is no reason why we could not create our own intelligent, albeit inorganic, beings. If not, then at the very least they would have to believe we will be able to uplift other creatures to intelligence. After all, God may have created the first intelligent species (perhaps, the jury is still out...) but he still had to follow the rules of the universe, rules that we can learn and use ourselves.

Sadly, I'm willing to bet that very few Intelligent Design proponents actually believe that humans will have either ability (AI or uplifts). And this is one of my big beefs with religion. It sets us at the center of the universe while telling us that we are either not allowed or too stupid to go anywhere else. Apparently, we were just supposed to sit quietly in our paleolithic caves and wait for salvation (oops, except most modern religions hadn't been invented at that time).


A response to some comments:

Thanks for the comments.

In response to the I.Q. point--this is true and has been happening throughout history. It's obvious if you think of the things that you know now as part of your general knowledge versus what, say, the average ancient Roman knew. General things about the structure of the atom, space, technology, how things work, different types of wildlife, history, geography, biology... If an unskilled biochemist today went back even 70 years, their knowledge of biochemistry (even just protein and DNA structure) would make them the pre-eminent genius in the field at that time. Almost anyone in the western world today has better medical knowledge than the best doctors of only a few hundred years ago. The 'average I.Q. remains, by definition, at 100 (and, in truth, represents only a very small amount of the population). What has to change, every 5-10 years probably (and soon more often), is what qualifies as 100 on the test.

Incidentally, and on an only minor aside, the future extrapolation of this trend is feared by some (do a search of technological singularity).

Currently, high school student's can do molecular biology experiments that required most of the duration of a Ph.D., and a lot of hard work, in the '70s--only 40 years ago. So...what will the situation be 40 years from now? The fear is that it will be trivial for almost anyone with the desire to create a genocidal pathogen.

In fact, much of technology follows a similar trend:

There a several high school students who have successfully built inefficient nuclear reactors in their basements.
Pre-pubescent kids can lock-up corporate web sites using easily available software and a network of zombie computers without even fully understanding how the software works.

It has even been postulated, due to these trends in technology and general knowledge, that an intelligent species is very fragile once it develops basic technology. Within 200 years from the harnessing of radio waves, based on human progression, a species will not just develop the means (or several means) of autogenocide, but that means will be in the hands of each and every citizen on the planet!

In the 1960s we worried about presidents with the fingers on the red button. In the 2060's we will very likely have to worry about the kid next door...or down the block...or the one who's upset with his teacher...