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Dear Friends,
How’s that for a headline image? I asked DALL-E3, the Artificial Intelligence machine, what it thought it would look like if it had corporeal form. Pretty menacing!
Today I’d like to talk about Artificial Intelligence, since it is all the rage these days and is causing much fear and anxiety. I should first give the caveat that I have no special expertise in the actual technologies involved in AI. So these are thoughts of a “humanities” guy with pretty much a casual interest. And maybe that actually helps me have a bit of perspective.
I was asked last week whether Artificial Intelligence “concerned” me, particularly as a theologian. Am I bothered by the fact that this machine is capable of unfathomable research skills and can write sermons and, theoretically, real and serious theological treatises? Is it okay to have a machine teach the Bible or doctrine to people? Does this bother me?
The short answer is no.
Artificial Intelligence is just that: artificial. It is a human creation. While it is certainly mysterious and frighteningly impressive in many ways, it is still a technology. It is a product of human ingenuity. As such, it will never be the master of humanity. It is our servant (for good or ill), not the other way around. Now, certainly we are by nature idolaters and we worship and serve created things—enslave ourselves to them—but as a matter of fact that is called “exchanging the truth for the lie” (Rom. 1:25). We might think created things are our master, but it’s a lie. This is a critical and foundational dogma that is grounded in a Christian doctrine of creation. Human beings are imago Dei, the “image and likeness” of God. We, through Adam’s representative headship, are the ones tasked to have dominion and to “rule” over God’s creation.
That task did not end when Adam and Eve sinned; much less was it overturned. The mandate to cultivate creation, to tap into creation’s potential, to shape and form and manipulate material reality (like ones and zeros on a silicon microchip) was hindered by the curse God made on “the ground,” but not revoked. Thorns and thistles notwithstanding, the earth still bears its fruit in obedience to human effort and cultivation.
This clear teaching of the Bible ought to be a great comfort to Christians worried about the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence. There is no reason to engage in vain and anxiety-laden speculation about AI being “demonic”—that is classic superstitious nonsense. If we don’t understand it, we should suspect dark powers? That, my friends, is something I find would-be serious Christian figures saying, and it isn’t Christian at all; it is pagan animism. It brings me back to the youth retreat I once attended where the speaker went on and on about how the television set is demonic. That guy was out of his gourd.
I’ll just lay out my cards here and then flesh it out a bit. Artificial Intelligence is, and has the potential to be, better at a lot of tasks than are human beings. But it will never be better than human beings at everything, much less will it make actual human beings superfluous. Let me give you an example of something it is better at, and something it isn’t.
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