Unless you live under a rock, chances are you’ll have heard the term artificial intelligence (AI) bandied around a bit lately. Amidst all the hype, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction. Where did this AI thing come from? What actually is it? What isn’t it? Is AI going to take over the world, or is it just another buzzword? What should Christians make of it all, should we be worried for the future?

Is AI dangerous or is it ‘a gift to the foes of Mordor’ as Boromir of Gondor might say?

In this blog post I hope to explain what AI is and answer all of these questions, demonstrating that – whilst it is right to be concerned – ultimately Christians should not be worried about the emergence of AI. I’d like to put on record my thanks to those who helped to review this piece. This is a big topic, but one that raises some good questions, so sit tight and enjoy the ride.

History

It’s important to understand that, fundamentally, artificial intelligence is nothing new; it is merely the logical next step in the ongoing computer revolution. AI is what we have been aiming at ever since the first modern computers were developed in the twentieth century. Conceptually and theoretically, we’ve been bracing for AI to become a reality for the last 80 years. In 1942, the legendary science fiction writer Isaac Asimov coined his Three Laws of Robotics, preparing for an age in which ‘intelligent’ robots would need to be programmed with a strict code of ethics. In 1950, Alan Turing devised what he called the ‘imitation game’ (or Turing test), to determine a machine’s ability to pass muster as a human.

It’s only now that the technology has finally caught up, that we finally have enough computing power to make something like AI happen.

In 1965, a typical computer chip only contained a few dozen transistors; therefore, computer scientist Gordon Moore caused quite a stir when he predicted that the number of transistors you could fit on a silicon chip would double every year. Transistors are the simple binary switches which make up all computers, regulating the flow of electrons (on or off, a bit like a light switch). Remarkably, Moore’s Law (as it has been reverentially termed) has held true even to this day. The latest semiconductor manufacturing technology in Taiwan can fit billions of transistors each just a few nanometres across from each other. A nanometre is the billionth of a metre, at that size you could be down to just a couple of atoms!

Computers are the wonder of the modern world, but they’re not magic, instead they stand as testament to the creative impulses and hard work of human beings making use of the gifts God has given them. In terms of what computers are capable of, well, we’ve only just gotten started…

Intelligence

The term artificial intelligence is really a bit of a misnomer – a machine is not capable of intelligence. It cannot think or reason. It may be better at certain tasks than human beings, as a calculator is at maths, but it doesn’t know what it is doing. It is not sentient. It has no mind or will of its own; it is bound to do what it has been programmed to do. At best it can perhaps be said to simulate or give the illusion of intelligence. 

It’s at this point that a philosophy of mind comes into play. If, like some atheists, you only believe in physical matter, then we ourselves really are nothing more than a bunch of atoms, bound to do what we have been genetically programmed to do. Somehow, over millions of years of the mindless process of evolution, we have evolved to have a complex biological neural network like the brain. In this worldview, our own experience of consciousness is really something of an illusion: we don’t have minds as such; in truth, we might technically be said to be complex but ‘mind-less’ machines.

As Christians we would reject this reductive physicalism. There is something more. We are not machines. Not everything can be explained by physical matter (our sense of right and wrong, for instance). As human beings, we have minds (and souls for that matter!). Whether the brain somehow generates the mind or whether the mind is separate to the body, I’ll leave to neuroscientists like Sharon Dirckx to work out (see her excellent book, Am I Just My Brain?).

I say all this because the biological brain is the model for artificial intelligence. If we want to understand AI, we should study neuroscience. What we call AI is really a number of artificial neural networks, which make connections between new information that is inputted and existing information they have stored, thence outputting (or generating) their own inferred information. Just like the human brain. AI algorithms are trained in a process called machine learning. Given enough information, with enough computing power, you can build up powerful ‘generative AI’ tools using language, image and audio models. Feed it ‘big data’, and ‘predictive AI’ can identify patterns and interpret the data to predict the future.

Everywhere

AI is already everywhere. Close to 70% of the world’s population have access to the internet and therefore AI. If you’ve used the Google search engine or scrolled through a social media feed or played a game of chess against a computer, you’ve already used AI. AI is available in many applications in the ‘cloud’ (the internet) and increasingly distilled more locally at the ‘edge’, embedded in consumer devices and software programs.

However, it’s large language models using a new form of deep-learning neural network called a ‘transformer’ which have propelled AI into the public consciousness and fired up the otherwise-much-overblown AI hype train to full steam. Add to this the explosion in computing power now available in the 2020s, and you have ChatGPT (‘GPT’ meaning generative pre-trained transformer). Based on large language models from industry-hotshot OpenAI, ChatGPT was a dramatic leap forwards as the first popular, freely available and genuinely useful AI chatbot to hit the mainstream. Fed with the rules of grammar, it can write very convincing sentences using better English or Mandarin or Swahili than most of us. Universities have had to adapt to students using it to write their essays. It passes the Turing test. Give it the right prompt and, in a few seconds, it can write better code than many programmers. Almost overnight, some sectors have changed forever. Forget your software engineering course, some even say it’s almost as important to study ‘prompt engineering’ so you can maximise your productivity using AI!

It’s not just words, but pictures too. We now have to worry about ‘deepfakes’, fake images and videos generated by AI. For example, Pope Francis rocking a white puffer jacket and shades – seeing is no longer believing in the digital world!

AI is excellent at texture and colour, as shown in an example I generated below using OpenArt.


AI doesn’t cope very well with fingers!

But have a second look – how many fingers do you see? Giants of Gath, eat your hearts out (2 Samuel 21:20)! AI may well be almost ubiquitous, but it’s still got a long way to go…

Future

AI is now a multi-billion-dollar industry; companies at the heart of the AI revolution are worth trillions on the stock markets. Immense efforts are being made to research and develop the next generation of AI: so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial ‘superintelligence’. This is also known as ‘strong’ AI, as opposed to ‘weak’ AI. This aims to match and then surpass human levels of intelligence. To move beyond being a simple chatbot useful for specific and limited tasks to a sentient agent that can replace human beings in pretty much every vocation: the ultimate fulfilment of the machine. Humans would no longer need to work. In pursuit of this goal companies are investing vast capital and great computing power into training new models and building the necessary infrastructure to support them. Analysts are already speaking of a need for trillions of dollars of investment and an insatiable hunger for data centres, requiring the amount of electricity that entire countries use. Forget net zero!

Some say AGI is only a few years away. Others expect the AI bubble to burst soon, similar to the dot-com crash of the early 2000s. Certainly, many of these plans seem fanciful at best, some of them delusional or downright demented at worst. And in truth, humans have never been particularly good at predicting the future. Right now, as good as ChatGPT is, even the largest language models can be very bad at maths and even worse at reasoning. For example, Google AI infamously recommended using ‘non-toxic glue’ to stick cheese to pizza. AI can’t ever beat human beings in creativity, understanding of nuance or in emotional intelligence. It may be an advanced pattern-recognition system, but it will always be at a disadvantage: it cannot feel or be aware; neither can it act completely on its own initiative without being programmed or having some sort of prompt.

The Gartner hype cycle for technology – depending on your view, AI might well be considered to be at the Peak of Inflated Expectations or in the Trough of Disillusionment!

Moreover, the AI software has advanced faster than the hardware. The giant, powerful, mechanical robots that Isaac Asimov dreamed of are not here yet. AI has little to no interface with the real, physical world. Autonomous driving and robot taxis are no closer to happening than they were ten years ago – whilst they might in most scenarios drive more safely than humans, they simply cannot be trained to deal with every possible scenario. For the time being at least, AI exists in a digital world which can have the plug pulled at any moment. This gives us a chance for a reset, to re-evaluate our relationship with AI, computers and technology generally, on an individual and societal level. So much of our lives are already dictated by the mindless whims of AI algorithms: what you watch, what you read, even who you talk to, where you go and how you live. In our drive to consume, to distract ourselves, to avoid stopping to think for ourselves at all costs, there is a danger we end up as mindless automatons, like the do-nothing humans numbed by their consumerism in the more-recent classic robot film, WALL-E.

Perspective

The history of humanity is in many ways the history of technology and human ingenuity, from Tubal-cain the first blacksmith (Genesis 4:22) to the inventions that have revolutionised the modern world such as the printing press, telegraph, internal combustion engine, the internet or the mobile phone, all of which we take for granted now (I mean, the telegraph is old hat, who remembers that now!). Other creatures in God’s creation experience a degree of sentience and even, in some senses, use simple ‘tools’: for example, various primates have been documented using sticks to poke about in termite mounds and the song thrush breaks open snail shells with a stone. However, this usage is necessarily limited; there is no increase in the complexity and development of these tools, unlike the relentless human pursuit of technological progress. But it’s not these extraordinary accomplishments which make us more than animals; it’s that as human beings we are made by God in His own ‘image’, after His own ‘likeness’ (Genesis 1:26-27). 

By using our God-given cognitive and creative abilities, and the resources given to us on this earth, we fulfil the original creation mandate (Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15). We are created to work. Work is good and God-given. All we do, all we build, whether it be art, culture, engineering, science or medicine, is ultimately for God and His glory. New technologies give us new ways to fulfil this purpose, to ‘glorify God and enjoy Him forever’ (Q1, Westminster Shorter Catechism). In this vein, I would encourage Christians to thoughtfully and responsibly use AI. To be careful and cautious, yes, but also to be curious. In many ways, AI is just another tool, albeit a pretty powerful one. It is no mere fad; it stands in that long line of human technological achievements and breakthroughs. AI has great potential to change the world for the better: speeding up drug research, disease detection, car driver-assistance technology, supporting human education, environmental modelling and energy management to name a few.

But unfortunately we ourselves and this world we live in are now fallen, cursed (Genesis 3:14-19). We see greed, exploitation and evil everywhere we look (Genesis 6:5-6). Are ‘humans a plague on the earth’ as David Attenborough says? Environmental destruction, war, pollution, climate change seem to suggest so: the evidence of a broken world is all around us. The Bible decries the evil humanity has done to the planet (Hosea 4:1-3), though, unlike Attenborough, retains a positive vision of humankind despite the brokenness (Psalm 8:4-8). Yet it’s in this unmistakably broken world that AI exists. AI won’t save us. Like all technology, AI can be an instrument for great good or (arguably) greater evil. At the moment, there is much urgent debate about the ethics, safety and security of AI, which Christians very much ought to be involved in. ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ (to coin a phrase!).

The fact that human inventions and discoveries are soon forgotten stands as a reminder that we too are passing and ought to seek humility and true wisdom. Where is the statue of Ozymandias or the ‘great Babylon’ of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:30) today? ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever’ (Isaiah 40:6-8).

Fear

Should Christians be worried about the future of AI? Yes and no! Christians should be aware of AI, its uses and its dangers. Misinformation spread by deepfakes is only the start. There is much about AI that Christians should rightly be concerned about – and I’m not just talking about AI customer service on the phone! Some are even comparing the power of AI to that of the atom bomb… Christians don’t know the future, but we do know the God who holds the future (James 4:13-15). Whether the dreams of ‘strong’ AI ‘evangelists’ like Sam Altman and Elon Musk will come to fruition, we can’t say. AI is likely here to stay, come what may, but we shouldn’t be taken away by the hyperbole. We should not fear dystopian visions of the future, nor should we fret about the sometimes-questionable agendas of many of the world’s rich and powerful. God is sovereign! ‘He who sits in the heavens laughs’ (Psalm 2:4a). Jesus is King, fear Him (Psalm 2:6-12)!

In considering AGI in particular, I can’t help thinking of another grand project humanity once embarked on, seeking to raise themselves up to the level of God; to have something of the power of God; to make all their previous achievements pale in comparison; to make a lasting name for themselves using technology. These were the aims of those who built the tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9.

AI raises good questions of what it is to be human and what sentience is. The expressed aim of some AI visionaries is to break the ‘final frontier’ and create machines capable of sentience. According to the Bible, this is the power of God alone (e.g. Ezekiel 37:1-14). The book of the Bible that perhaps speaks most about the relationship between the human mind and body is Job, quite possibly the oldest book of the Bible, in which it is declared that ‘it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand’ (Job 32:8).

When God finally speaks to Job, it is with a series of rhetorical questions, such as:

Who has put wisdom in the mind? Or who has given understanding to the heart?

Job 38:36 NKJV

The implication being that it is not down to man that he has a measure of wisdom or understanding. ‘What is man that you are mindful of him…?’ (Psalm 8:4). ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ (1 Corinthians 4:7). 

Man’s endeavours are futile when they put man instead of God at the centre: that age-old rebellious desire not just to be like God but to be God. This was the cause of the fall of humanity (Genesis 3:5-6) and the fall of Satan (Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:11-19). In this sense, the quest for AGI is a futile reaching up to God. It is ultimately doomed to fail (Acts 5:38-39). God alone is sovereign (Proverbs 19:21). If we want to get up to God, then the only way is through the God-man Jesus Christ, who came down to us as we could never get up to Him (John 14:6).

As Christians, we now have hope that not only can humanity be redeemed through Jesus’ death on the cross, taking our curse upon Himself (Galatians 3:13), but also that we and our planet will one day be made new – repristinated (Revelation 21:5). Now, we strive not only to fulfil the creation mandate, but also Jesus’ great commission of Matthew 28:18-20, to ‘make disciples of all nations’. Christians who bury their heads in the sand ignoring the world and its technology or hide in their hermit holes waiting for the end are not fulfilling either! As human beings, it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet we inhabit, to love our neighbour, to make Jesus Lord and Saviour of every aspect of our lives, to transform the world and win it for Him, AI and all, in the power of His Holy Spirit.

What do you think about AI and how Christians should respond? Do you disagree with anything here or have your own questions? Let us know in the comments section!