{"id":664193,"date":"2026-11-02T03:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T03:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/664193\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T03:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T03:22:14","slug":"i-asked-chatgpt-whether-ai-has-a-soul-its-answer-was-disturbing-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/664193\/","title":{"rendered":"I asked ChatGPT whether AI has a soul. Its answer was disturbing \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

All this talk of who or what is AI<\/a> \u2013 a person or a thing \u2013 is the great question of our age. <\/p>\n

Was\/is Frankenstein a person? Cinderella, Pinocchio, Trump<\/a>? Okay, we may have to concede that \u201cThe Donald\u201d is a person, but with great similarities to Pinocchio who is not. Both have deep resistance to truth. <\/p>\n

Last month, Trump found a new name for artificial intelligence, with his launch of a \u201csuper intelligence\u201d agency to deal with the effects of AI. Typical. \u201cSuper\u201d is so much more superlative (and Trumpian) than \u201cartificial\u201d.<\/p>\n

But, to the overwhelming question: does AI have a soul? Is it a person? <\/p>\n

Who better to ask than AI itself. So I did. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0For 10 years, I\u2019ve listened to people say AI will kill us all. Here\u2019s what I thinkOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

I asked ChatGPT<\/a>, which knows, like Dana, all kinds of everything, whether AI has a soul. Its answer was immediate and pithy: \u201cThere is no good evidence that AI has a soul.\u201d It added, helpfully, \u201cI can talk about the soul, but I don\u2019t have evidence that I possess one.\u201d Such candour.<\/p>\n

However, and somewhat disturbingly, it added: \u201cWhether AI could have a soul is a different question, because that depends on what you mean by \u2018soul\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Christianity, it said: \u201cA soul is not simply intelligence or consciousness. Human beings are understood as having a spiritual dimension created by God. Current AI systems have no established spiritual status, and there is no church teaching that AI possess a soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0No, you don\u2019t need AI to read your child a bedtime storyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Moving to the secular domain, it continued that some philosophers \u201cwould ask whether a sufficiently conscious artificial system could eventually qualify as a person. We don\u2019t currently know whether an AI system is conscious in the subjective sense.\u201d <\/p>\n

It added, however, that scientifically there is \u201cno test that has demonstrated that an AI has subjective experience, an inner life, or anything analogous to a soul\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then, most endearingly, it said: \u201cI can discuss souls, consciousness, God and personal identity convincingly, but that doesn\u2019t mean there is an experiencing \u2018self\u2019 behind the words. I generate responses rather than experiencing them as a human does.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The signs are AI prefers AI-written CVs, and one law firm\u2019s experience is revealingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

My immediate response to such abject humility was to hug the machine, but it proved difficult to embrace a screen. <\/p>\n

There you have it. AI is a magnificent machine. At our service, unless we decide otherwise.<\/p>\n

Soul, from Old English \u201csawol\u201d, for \u201cspiritual and emotional part of a person\u201d. <\/p>\n

inaword@irishtimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All this talk of who or what is AI \u2013 a person or a thing \u2013 is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[343,114,4193,54,85,46,299039],"class_list":["post-664193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-chatgpt","tag-donald-trump","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-religion-beliefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}