Last week, a Christian college in Matthews, North Carolina unveiled something unprecedented: a humanoid robot whose sole mission is to explore the ethical and theological ramifications of robotics.

“When the time comes for including or incorporating humanoid robots into society, the prospect of a knee-jerk kind of reaction from the religious community is fairly likely, unless there’s some dialogue that starts happening, and we start examining the issue more closely,” says Kevin Staley, an associate professor of theology at SES. Staley pushed for the purchase of the bot, and plans to use it for courses at the college, as well as in presentations around the country. The specific reaction Staley is worried about is a more extreme version of the standard, secular creep factor associated with many robots.

That’s oversimplifying Staley’s plans for his NAO, though not by much. Despite his desire to steer both religious and secular communities away from an assumption of evil among humanoid bots, his current stance is one of extreme caution. “I think it would be a mistake to just, carte-blanche, say it’s like any other tech, and adopt it and deal with the consequences as they happen,” says Staley. The theological danger, he believes, is in substituting robots for people in social and emotional interactions—a more spiritual variation on concerns about offloading eldercare to robots, or developing machines can act as friends or even lovers. “Ultimately, the end and purpose of human beings is to be in a restored, full and intended, right relationship with God,” says Staley. Engaging too closely with bots might be worse than simply wasting time and energy on an unfeeling machine. He believes it could weaken humanity’s connection with one another, and, by association, God.

Ref: Apocalypse NAO: Are Robots Threatening Your Immortal Soul? – PopSci
Ref: Seminary buys robot to study the ethics of technology – RNS