Is God in the machine?
Can machines know God?
And could machines, one day, become godlike themselves?
While AI is still in its infancy, it is evolving at lightning speed, and ingraining itself in our lives. From writing our emails, creating our budgets and even serving as our therapists, society is embracing AI as part of our everyday lives.
But what about faith? Our spirituality, our souls, our connection to God - these are elements of the human experience that can't be quantified by science, and reproduced in machines. Or can they?
GUESTS:
Dr. Declan Humphreys is a lecturer in Cyber Security and Ethics at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also one of the winners of the ABC Top 5 Humanity residency programme for 2025.
is a lecturer in Cyber Security and Ethics at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also one of the winners of the ABC Top 5 Humanity residency programme for 2025. Dr. Jane Compson , Associate Professor of Comparative Religion and Ethics at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Jane is a practicing Buddhist and a trained chaplain. She is also a member of the research team at AI and Faith.
, Associate Professor of Comparative Religion and Ethics at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Jane is a practicing Buddhist and a trained chaplain. She is also a member of the research team at AI and Faith.
Carl Youngblood, is the co-founder and current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, and has more than 20 years experience in software engineering and technology development.
This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, and the lands of The Turrbal and Yuggera People.
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Excess exercise may lead to elite male rowers being seven times more likely to develop atrial fibrillation
It is a name synonymous with Australian sporting folklore. By the time the Oarsome Foursome's James Tomkins took part in the Beijing Olympic trials in 2008, he had won three Olympic gold medals and was a seven-time world champion. But on this particular day, he was not feeling himself. As the crew went through their practice pieces, he could barely produce any power. "I was absolutely knackered," he said. Tomkins was taken to see a cardiologist, who diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common heart rhythm disorder that is associated with increased risk of stroke and heart failure, while the amount of exercise someone undertakes can affect their propensity to develop it. According to Professor André La Gerche, an expert on the effects of exercise on the heart, there are two types of people most likely to develop AF: "People who do no exercise, and people who do lots of exercise." It is a fact that has puzzled researchers and elite athletes like Tomkins, given the number of benefits exercise has on general health, including lower risk of cardiovascular disease more generally and type 2 diabetes. So why are some elite athletes at risk of AF, and does that mean there is such a thing as too much exercise? Dr La Gerche, head of the Heart Exercise and Research Trials Lab at the Victor Chang Research Institute in Melbourne, recently teamed up with several researchers to answer these questions. They recruited 121 elite rowers (of which 74 per cent were men) who had performed at the international level, and compared them with a control sample of non-rowers. While the authors predicted the rowers would have an elevated risk of AF, the results showed elite male rowers were seven times more likely than the average population to develop AF. It was a result that shocked Dr La Gerche. "There's no way I would've predicted that," he said. "It's far more than we expected." The finding, however, was restricted to men only, with Dr La Gerche arguing this does not mean elite female athletes are not at higher risk of AF. He explained that rowing was only introduced as an Olympic sport for women in 1976, with his team unable to recruit enough women to draw meaningful conclusions. Limited research suggests elite female runners and cyclists are also at increased risk of atrial fibrillation, but more research is needed. Dr La Gerche and his team then turned their attention to why elite male rowers were at such elevated risk of AF. As he explained, there are both genetic and exercise-related influences on the development of AF. In this particular study, the research team were able to conclude that it was exercise, not genetic factors, which led to athletes' increased risk of AF. "We found that genetic factors explained some of the AF in athletes, but no more so than the general population," Dr La Gerche said. However, Dr La Gerche was quick to qualify that he did not want to scare people off exercise. "I'm pretty biased, because in my clinic I see people who have a lot of medical illness from a lack of exercise," he said. By contrast, he points to 80-year-old patients who are doing "everything they want to", like playing golf and riding their bike, adding that "the benefits of exercise are massive". Dr La Gerche argued it was more important to exercise "safely", using the analogy of tennis elbow. "If you play tennis, you might be more likely to get tennis elbow or a similar injury, but you wouldn't say don't play tennis. You'd say play tennis, but here are strategies to avoid getting tennis elbow." Exercise has also been shown to reduce risk of AF, depending on intensity. While this study showed that vigorous exercise may increase men's risk of AF, other papers have shown that moderate exercise lowers the risk of AF in men. Even for those elite athletes who do develop AF, Dr Le Gerche said it was not a "massive problem", a sentiment Tomkins shared. "As long as people are aware of the risk, it's quite manageable," Tomkins said. He has now had two episodes of AF, including the one in 2008, and another late last year. He laughs sheepishly when recalling the circumstances that led to the most recent incident: "I'd been drinking a bit that day, had a bit of a viral load, and drank an iced Margarita, which my specialist said shocked my heart and put me in AF," Tomkins said. Alcohol is a well-known risk factor for AF, while Dr La Gerche's study showed athletes tended to have "extreme" relationships with alcohol, either drinking in excess, or very little. This has since led to Tomkins committing to reducing his alcohol intake, while he argues it is important for everyone — not just athletes — to drink in moderation. The results of Dr La Gerche's study also raise the question of whether elite rowers (or other endurance athletes) should be screened for AF. Part of the problem with identifying AF is that not everyone who experiences it will feel as awful as Tomkins has. "Some people will feel terrible, like their heart is bouncing out of their chest, they might feel light-headed or short of breath, but others will have no idea and feel perfectly normal," Dr La Gerche explained. "We don't understand why there is that spectrum [of responses]." Both groups, however, are at elevated risk of stroke. "So unfortunately, what we worry about is the person who doesn't even know they have AF, and their first knowledge of it is having a stroke," he said. Dr Le Garche advises anyone at higher risk to consider getting a device such as a smartwatch that can take an ECG and alert you if you are experiencing AF. He would also support monitoring for vulnerable groups. As an example, he said elite rowers with a genetic predisposition for AF would be the "highest of the highest risk" group. Finally, their study showed that elite male rowers remained at elevated risk of heart disease, regardless of whether they had continued to exercise vigorously post-retirement. "So it's pretty important to think about not just what exercise people are doing now, but what exercise they have done in the past," Dr La Gerche said. "The goal of our research is to identify why these people are getting AF, so that we can prevent or identify it early and make exercise safe for everyone."
News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
The former Perth student who knocked back Mark Zuckerberg
EXCLUSIVE A former elite Perth schoolboy who reportedly turned down a billion-dollar offer from Mark Zuckerberg has been described as a 'modest' man. has discovered the impressive family stock of leading AI mind Andrew Tulloch, who made global headlines for rejecting a reported $1.5 billion payday to work for Meta. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, responded to say the description of the offer first reported by the Wall Street Journal 'is inaccurate and ridiculous'. It can be revealed Mr Tulloch, a University of Sydney graduate now in his mid 30s labelled an 'extreme genius' by an ex-colleague, is the grandson of former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Marshall. His father, retired doctor Alastair Tulloch, was in 2020 made a member of the Order of Australia for significant service to medicine, urology, and the community of Claremont, WA. The former long-term Town of Claremont councillor Dr Tulloch AM declined to comment on his son's career when contacted by saying Andrew was a 'modest' man. Now based in California, Andrew Tulloch this year co-founded the AI start-up Thinking Machines Lab a venture that already has a reported value of $18.5 billion. Another of the five co-founders is Mira Murati, whom Mr Tulloch previously worked with at OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT. Before that the Australian spent 11 years at Facebook's AI research arm. Ms Murati wrote on X last month that Thinking Machines Lab aimed 'to empower humanity through advancing collaborative general intelligence'. 'We're building multimodal AI that works with how you naturally interact with the world – through conversation, through sight, through the messy way we collaborate.' Mr Tulloch's work at OpenAI included pre-training for ChatPGT4o and 4.5, and reasoning for the o series, his LinkedIn profile states. Responding to the Journal's article on July 31, Meta communication director Andy Stone wrote on X the company 'made offers only to a handful of people at TML and while there was one sizeable offer, the details are off'. 'At the end of the day, this all begs the question who is spinning this narrative and why.' At Facebook, according to a CV seen by Mr Tulloch built machine learning platforms 'capable of learning multi-billion dimensional weight vectors trained from tens of billions of impressions per day in real time, distributed across hundreds of servers, and predicting millions of examples every second'. Mr Tulloch graduated from prestigious Christ Church Grammar School in 2007 with a TER of 99.95 and placed second out of 10,000 West Australian students in the final school exams. He was the school Dux and served as a prefect, as the captain of mock trials and debating and represented Australia in the international Chemistry Olympiad competition. The Year 12 student was awarded a silver medal at the chemistry competition held in Moscow, ranking 42nd overall and first in the southern hemisphere. A 2014 article posted to the school website recounts former Australian prime minister John Howard attending an event to promote his book on Sir Robert Menzies. The event was co-presented by the Centre for Ethics, whose director Canon Frank Sheehan was quoted speaking about a white hat he was seen wearing. 'Interestingly, the hat belongs to former Christ Church parent Margaret Tulloch, whose husband Alistair (sic) is pictured alongside me,' he said. 'Sir Menzies presented this hat to his friend Sir John Marshall, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Sir John was Margaret's father.' The article noted Alastair and Margaret Tulloch were the parents of 2007 graduate Andrew Tulloch. In a statement, the Chirst Church Grammar School Old Boys' Association said it did not wish to make a comment about the success of its alumnus. 'The Old Boys' Association takes great pride in recognising and celebrating the achievements of members within our community, many of whom continue to make significant contributions across a wide range of fields,' it said. 'While we acknowledge the interest surrounding this matter, the Old Boys' Association will not be making any comment at this time.' During his uni days he graduated with first class honours and the university medal in mathematics at Sydney uni in 2011, with the highest GPA in the Faculty of Science. Afterwards he completed a masters in mathematical statistics and machine learning at the University of Cambridge in 2013 and 2014. Mr Tulloch also worked part-time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs while studying in Sydney, developing 'machine learning models to improve trading algorithms for the optimal execution of market orders'. Meta has pumped billions into its AI teams and has reportedly been attempting to poach leading minds from rivals as it seeks to establish itself as the frontrunner in the game-changing technology. OpenAI chief Sam Altman said in June that Meta had offered US$100 million bonuses ($155 million) to his employees in a bid to win over talent for its generative AI teams. Mr Altman also said Mr Zuckerberg's company offered 'giant' annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers. 'I'm really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,' he said. Meta did secure the services of OpenAI researcher Yuanzhi Li in July, after appointing Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang as its head of 'superintelligence'. Mr Zuckerberg last month said in a staff memo that the rest of the 2020s would be a key period in 'determining the path this technology will take'. 'Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves,' he wrote. 'The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight.'
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Is God in the machine?
Can we know God through machines? Can machines know God? And could machines, one day, become godlike themselves? While AI is still in its infancy, it is evolving at lightning speed, and ingraining itself in our lives. From writing our emails, creating our budgets and even serving as our therapists, society is embracing AI as part of our everyday lives. But what about faith? Our spirituality, our souls, our connection to God - these are elements of the human experience that can't be quantified by science, and reproduced in machines. Or can they? GUESTS: Dr. Declan Humphreys is a lecturer in Cyber Security and Ethics at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also one of the winners of the ABC Top 5 Humanity residency programme for 2025. is a lecturer in Cyber Security and Ethics at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also one of the winners of the ABC Top 5 Humanity residency programme for 2025. Dr. Jane Compson , Associate Professor of Comparative Religion and Ethics at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Jane is a practicing Buddhist and a trained chaplain. She is also a member of the research team at AI and Faith. , Associate Professor of Comparative Religion and Ethics at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Jane is a practicing Buddhist and a trained chaplain. She is also a member of the research team at AI and Faith. Carl Youngblood, is the co-founder and current president of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, and has more than 20 years experience in software engineering and technology development. This program was made on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, and the lands of The Turrbal and Yuggera People.
