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Authentic Truth about Artificial Intelligence
Heath Lambert
The AI Revolution Is Here
Artificial Intelligence has been in the news a great deal lately, and that is not going to change. But in the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the dangers of AI. In early September, Jacob Coxon, a researcher and developer for artificial intelligence at Anthropic and OpenAI, publicly resigned, saying he could no longer accept the risk of working on the products. He said the various corporations developing AI are more concerned about beating one another in a contemporary AI race than they are about deploying the technology in a safe way. He ominously warned that AI could threaten the existence of human life by the end of the decade.
Many statements have followed this warning: some have said the statement dramatically overstates the risk posed by AI, others have said the statement understates the risk, others have called for governmental regulation to protect against the supposed threat, others have said that no governmental regulation can adequately address the threat we now face. This week the President of the United States seemed to acknowledge that AI has a real PR problem as he called on Americans to refer to the technology, not as artificial intelligence, but as super intelligence.
If nothing else, the swarm of attention at least means that the AI revolution is here, that the revolution can feel scary at times, and that every Christian needs to think carefully about where we are in this moment. I want to make a start at this careful thinking by highlighting three truthsin the uncertain world of artificial intelligence.
The AI Revolution Cannot Be Stopped
The first truth about this revolution is that there is no way to stop it or even slow it down. One of the most significant conversations recently has concerned the best way to regulate the advance of the technology. Some, including Jensen Huang, arguably, the most significant leader in the AI revolution has said the best regulation is for AI companies to regulate themselves. He advocates this approach because every company wants to avoid failure in the marketplace, and the best way to ensure failure is to release a destructive product. Others, including the leaders of some technology firms, have asked the federal government to regulate corporations, who will be unwilling to impose accountability measures without legislation.
There are problems with any effort to impose regulation. Jensen Huang’s argument that private corporations will avoid releasing damaging technology out of the selfish desire to achieve success in a competitive market overlooks the law of unintended consequences and the possibility that a company interested in success could accidentally release a threatening technology. The appeal for governmental regulation is, if anything, worse. Governmental regulation has two serious flaws. The first problem is competency. There is no way legislators in Washington, D.C. will be able to develop the competence to fashion coherent legislation in a highly sophisticated and rapidly developing segment of technology. The second problem is jurisdiction. Even if the American government could figure out how to craft helpful legislation, their laws would have no force in places like China where people are working just as hard as Americans to be on the cutting edge of development.
There is no way to stop the AI revolution, to slow it down, or to grant any one person or control over where we go from here. There is no pause button, and there is no rewind button. As my papaw used to say, the horse is out of the barn. Our best bet is to unleash the ingenuity of countless inventors and entrepreneurs. In the past, when we have developed technology that caused problems, we have had to work hard to develop more technology to solve those problems. We need to pray we will be able to do that here.
AI Can Neither Destroy nor Perfect All Human Life
Many will receive it as a hard truth that AI is an unstoppable reality because of the fears and predictions of many that AI will bring about the extinction of human life.
Processing this concern requires understanding a few realities.
First, expert opinions about the results of the AI revolution exist on a continuum. On one extreme are the AI Skeptics. Skeptics are the experts who believe the AI revolution is going to bring about the most dire consequences, including the extinction of the human race. Skeptics are the ones we hear about most often because doom and gloom increases views and clicks that generate advertising revenue. But AI skepticism is only one perspective. On the other extreme are AI Utopians. The utopians believe AI will generate such remarkable advances in technology that an idyllic society will be the result.
When people of equivalent expertise make opposite predictions, it is fair to say we do not actually know where all this will lead us.
What we do know is that AI is guaranteed to be a bigger phenomenon than anyone can imagine. Regardless of how significant you think the revolution is going to be, it will be bigger than that. The AI revolution is going to dwarf the industrial revolution, the communication revolution, the technological revolution, and the digital revolution. People who are concerned that this is going to impact every area of life are correct. Some of that impact will be good, like the marvels that are certainly on the way in medicine, communications, and travel. Some of that impact will be bad, like the challenges to morality, privacy, security, jobs, and even the loss of life.
In spite of all the blessings and curses that are coming, Christians know that AI does not have the power to lead either to utopia or an apocalypse. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says, “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
AI is going to make some things better and some things worse. Some of those improvements are likely to be better than you can imagine right now. Some curses of AI will be absolutely horrifying. But history ends and eternity begins with Jesus, not with anything human beings can make.
AI Will Increase the Value of Relationship
Right now, AI appears to be a threat to human relationship. We read reports of people asking AI questions they used to ask their parents, of church members raising theological problem to AI that used to go to pastors, and even hurting people using AI as a digital therapist. As concerning as such practices are, I suspect one of the blessings of AI will be the ways it increases human relationship.
God designed human beings to interact with other people. He designed us to be instructed and to grow and change through relationship. The isolation that comes with interacting with the shining blue light of a screen glowing in your face will create an environment of cold detachment from others that will, at first, create decay in our relationships. But the decay of those relationships is the very thing that will eventually create increased desire for personal contact and authentic human interaction.
This is already happening.
The other day, a group of students from First Baptist came up to me and started asking theological questions. They had very clearly been chewing on these matters for a while, had been waiting to speak to me specifically, and were reading their questions from text messages they had been sending to one another. As they read the questions from their phones and expressed gratitude that I was talking to them, it occurred to me that the very phones from which they asked their questions also had AI applications that could have answered their questions long before they came to me. I asked why they waited so long to talk to me when they might have asked ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or any other AI app.
These students look at me with incredulous suspicion. It was quiet for several moments. The look on their faces made it seem like they were trying to decide whether I was insane or not. Finally, one spoke up and said, “Well, we want to know what you think, not AI.”
I think we can expect more statements like that in the future, not less.
The AI revolution poses definite challenges for Christians these days. But I think the opportunities are far greater. Jesus has been building his church for two millennia, and he is committed to that work even in the midst of the AI revolution. In these days full of chaos and concern, it is Christians who can be a steady source of stability, a pillar and buttress of truth, and a place where people can find love and relationship in a digital world.
