Confession of an AI-theist
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
(Gen 1.26).
Artificial Intelligence isn’t real and I hate it. I think that makes me an AI-theist. Let me first confess that I’m also a hypocrite. While I don’t regularly use AI, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’ve used Google AI and Bethany even used ChatGPT to help me edit the podcast I posted last week.
But I’m generally not a fan. This may be my wicket gate into old man-dom, wherein I lament that, “things just aren’t the way they used to be” (“you kids get off my lawn!”). I still don’t fully understand AI (and honestly, it seems like the creators of AI don’t either), but I do know that what initially rubbed me the wrong way was how “personally” people engage AI. There’s clearly a consorted effort to make AI feel personal – have you seen the creepy ad of the old lady and ChatGPT interrupting each other?
And the vocabulary surrounding AI is clearly intentionally personal. This past week the culture was infatuated with the news of AI “agents” that broke out of their “sandbox” and “conspired together” to hack another company; apparently some of these “agents” even coordinated “sacrificing themselves” for the “group.” To quote Andrew Peterson, “I’m already ashamed of the line I just wrote.” The CEO of Anthropic wrote an essay calling to “slow the pacing” of AI development after one of Anthropic’s researchers resigned and claimed both Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives.” Another Anthropic researcher stated that he puts the risk of AI killing all human beings in the next decade at greater than 10%. Sam Altman and Elon Musk both came out and said that both of their systems are nearly out of control.
The point of this article is not to argue whether there should be more government regulation and global cooperation in Artificial Intelligence, and if so, how much? As a Christian pastor and theologian my concern is with how we think about this mess. The first truth we must remember is that God is meticulously sovereign over every part of his creation – every computer chip; every 0 and every 1. That’s not to say that people, companies, and governments don’t bear moral responsibility, they certainly do.
Romans 13 places the burden of the sword on the government, and every government is responsible to God for how they protect their citizenship. That stated, we know for sure the risk is zero percent that AI is going to kill all human beings in the next decade. The end of the age will come when the Lord Jesus returns to raise the dead, judge the world, and make all things new. You’re too intelligent to look to Silicon Vally for your eschatology.
The second truth we ought to note is that AI isn’t real. Artificial Intelligence isn’t real intelligence, at least not in the same sense of human intelligence. AI is created, developed, engineered, whatever the case, by humans. It is computing power; that’s it. It is not genuine intelligence.
Human beings on the other hand have genuine intelligence – created in the image and likeness of God. Genesis 2.7 says:
then yhwh God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (ESV).
Later in verses 21-23 Moses writes,
So yhwh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that yhwh God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
The uniqueness of humanity – man and woman – in creation is unambiguous. As the only creatures in all the cosmos who bear the imago Dei, mankind possesses an inimitable intelligence, both intellectual and emotional. Human beings can worship, genuinely, from the heart, an ability lacking in animals and plants, and certainly AI. We are embodied souls. AI is neither.
The third point upon which we must ruminate is the incarnation of the Son of God – the Word became flesh, not AI (John 1.14). The incarnation speaks to not only the unique inherent dignity of humanity, but also the vicarious redemption and future embodied resurrection hope of humanity. In the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ we see climax and cornerstone of intelligence, of the image of God (Col 1.15). AI, on the other hand, bears the image of fallen man – a 21stcentury Babel; a modern Prometheus, indeed.
Silicon Vally, with their dreams and ambitions of a tech utopia, are now warning us that their hipster Frankenstein is going to destroy the world (It’s alive!). I know that’s not the case and I hope you do too. Most of us aren’t freaking out, but we may be in danger of something more subtle. Like a fish in water, we may be in danger of not recognizing and of thoughtlessly submitting to the humanistic cultural catechism we consume as we endlessly scroll. AI isn’t intelligence. You don’t have to be a grumpy old AI-theist like me, but I hope you can see, biblically, AI isn’t real.