AI and Us: Dr. Eve Poole about Her New Book,“Robot Souls”

"Robot Souls" is a book as much about us humans as it is about robots and AI.

Text transcript, lightly edited for readability.

Douglas Giles
The topic of Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been all over the news lately, quite often discussed with a sense of foreboding doom and a plea for someone to do something to save us from the effects of AI. Much of this discussion has been among techies and corporate bigwigs. And if, as the doomsayers say, AI poses an existential threat for humanity, then perhaps the people who need to be discussing the future of AI are those in everyday life.

I’m fortunate today to be joined by Dr. Eve Poole, an expert in leadership and leadersmithing the day-to-day craft of gaining real experience in the critical incidents of humans leading other humans. That’s pertinent to AI development because AI is being developed by humans. Dr. Poole, I greatly appreciate you being with me today to talk about your book.

Eve Poole
Hello, and thank you for the invitation.

DG
Oh, definitely. I’m so glad that your publisher got in touch with me. The book is Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity as in programming the humanity into artificial intelligence. It’s published by CRC Press, which is an imprint of Taylor & Francis. It’s a wonderful book, It really is. They’re not paying me to say that.

Where I’d like to start and then I’ll shut up and let you talk. You write about how we’ve called it “artificial intelligence” rather than “artificial humanity,” and you say elsewhere, have we copied intelligence but not soul? What do you mean by these concepts?

EP
I got very intrigued by that piece of nomenclature, particularly because my background is as a theologian before I did business and wrote about capitalism and leadership more generally. And of course, in Christianity there is quite an emphasis on the body because of the idea that God became a human body in…