God in the Machine

This is past off-topic, but I felt it worth sharing. Over the past few days I have spent time at an undergraduate researchers' conference in Salisbury. Maryland, where I had the greatest pleasure of meeting Dr. Anne Foerst. I'm not sure if anyone from last semester's science-fiction class knows anything of her, but she is one of the world's top minds in designing robots and advancing them toward the ultimate goal of Arifitcial Intelligence.
She has some very interesting ideas, being a theologian, cognitive reseacher, and roboticist. She is really cool, and an excellent speaker, as she also gave her views in a seminar about what it means to be human. From her biblical studies, she has gathered that "being made in God's image" implies that it is our duty as well to create beings (a throwback to self-replicating automatons in Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters"). That is why people are supposed to create robots. Foerst describes how God made Man imperfect, knowingly, and so nothing perfect will ever be able to come from our hands. However, in our attempts that lead us down the long, long road to creating A.I., we will come to full realization of what it means to be human, and so our differences may possibly be settled (no racism etc.) Man's hate for each other, Foerst explained, stems from a garbled definition of what makes a *person* and what makes a *human*. Fascinating stuff.
She is currently an advisor to those at MIT who have built the famous robots Cog and Kismet. Just wondering if Andy knew anything of her?