Leonard Nimoy on the Jewish Roots of Spock, Robots with a Soul and More!

Leonard Nimoy on Judaism, Spock and Spirit

After 83 years on this planet, Leonard Nimoy has been called home; beamed up, perhaps, to some place beyond the stars. The man known as the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock truly felt comfortable as the loner, the alien. The son of Orthodox Jewish immigrants, he grew up in a largely Catholic neighborhood in Boston, where he fell in love with the strangeness and mystery of Jewish rituals. He went on to base his Vulcan hand salute and “Live Long and Prosper” on a Jewish blessing he remembered from synagogue.

The Dangers and Divinity of Artificial Intelligence

Physicist-genius Stephen Hawking is worried we might destroy ourselves. “Full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he told the BBC in DecemberOur guests today fear a similar fate–but they also say that studying thinking, learning machines can be a practice of deep spiritual discernment. To study artificial intelligence is really to study the deepest parts of ourselves.  Join Anne Foerst, professor of theology and computer science at St. Bonaventure University and James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era.

 


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