Central Abbotsford

On several occasions over the past few weeks, I have heard or read things that have given me reason to consider the pros and cons of the use of artificial intelligence – specifically, LLMs (Large Language Models), AI programs trained on vast arrays of written material to be able to understand and generate human language. 

While I was at The Gospel Coalition’s Conference in Indianapolis last month, I witnessed John Piper’s viral moment where he questioned whether ChatGPT can create authentic praise through eloquent words. Over the long weekend, I read Tim Challies’ article ”AI Makes Me Doubt Everything”, where he observes: “[AI] has the power of a nuclear bomb yet is being handed to children and teenagers. Something is bound to go terribly wrong. Based on the modern history of digital technologies, it would be an aberration if something didn’t go terribly wrong.” Finally, I read about the Chicago Sun-Times publishing an AI-generated summer reading list full of nonexistent books by renowned authors. Add into this the number of advertisements referencing AI, and it’s clear that, whatever you or I think of it, this technology is going to be part of our lives in and for the foreseeable future.

If that’s the case, then it is helpful to think through the theological implications of these technologies. This is far from a comprehensive consideration of AI, but more of an initial step in considering the kinds of questions that we should ask regarding this topic. As someone who has spent the entirety of my adult life working with words – whether as a student of the humanities, a lawyer, or a preacher – this is of particular interest to me, but it any time we have a development (technological or otherwise) that impacts the means by which we communicate verbally, Christians should be interested. After all, we follow and serve a Lord and Saviour who is Himself called by the Scriptures “the Word” (John 1:1). So, let’s consider!

First, you’ll note that I wrote above that I have been considering “the pros and cons of the use of artificial intelligence”, and not AI itself. Perhaps it is a hair-splitting difference, but it is a reminder that AI programs such as LLMs are tools. If I say that an advantage of a hammer is that I can use it to build a fence, and a disadvantage is that I can use it to intimidate someone, I am not so much critiquing the hammer as I am the way it is used. Thus, it is fair to conclude that AI is not inherently good or bad, it just is.

Probably the most revolutionary aspect of LLMs is their ability to rapidly generate largely coherent chunks of text with minimal prompting. You can test this easily enough. I went to ChatGPT and, looking at the bookshelf in my office, prompted it with “give me a 1000-word essay comparing the literary styles of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.” It took the program about 15 seconds to do it, and I am pretty confident that the essay that it produced was unique, in the sense that the ideas arranged therein had never been put together in that exact same way before. And herein to me lies the greatest potential threat of AI – the threat to human creativity. 

It is part of God’s good creation for humans that we are also called to be creative. In Genesis 1:28, also referred to as the Cultural Mandate, God said to our first ancestors, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Adam immediately followed this mandate creatively, as we see in Genesis 2:19 – “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” God’s invitation to His people to be a part of His mission of salvation is also a call to creativity. One cannot go and make disciples of all the nations without creatively seeking ways to tell the gospel story anew to a culture that has not yet heard it, but has other narratives and cosmologies. If AI is used to stifle or replace our human creativity, we are not using it well.

We are also not using AI well if it replaces our thinking. Colleges and universities are dealing with the impact of it in real time, as this article shows. (A highlight from the article is when the author tests a software program designed to detect AI-written student essays. It suggested that a student’s paper that was largely written by ChatGPT was 11% likely to be AI-generated, while an excerpt from the Book of Genesis got a 93% confidence level for AI. Seems the computers still have a ways to go!) When the author asked the student about that very same paper (which was on the topic of how learning is one of the things that makes us “truly human”), she answered, tellingly: “I use AI a lot. Like, every day. And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”

Scripture, however, calls us to be critical thinkers. “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” writes Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21. In Romans 14:5, as he works through the difficult questions of conscience that arise in circumstances where Scripture does not offer a black-and-white answer to our questions, Paul’s encouragement for us is to be fully convinced in our own minds so that we may aspire to a clean conscience. This is not a task that we should outsource, especially as we grow in maturity. Any technology that has (seemingly by design) the effect of moving us away from this is something that we should take great caution in using. I am, however, concerned that a widespread use of AI to replace thought is much more likely to lead to the dulling of the mind, rather than its renewal in the likeness of Christ.

Again, I am by no means offering this as a comprehensive guide to using AI – we are much nearer the beginning of thinking about this issue theologically than we are the end. However, it is something that we (especially those of us who have care and control of children or others with developing minds) should not be blind to. Artificial intelligence need not necessarily hamper our God-designed abilities to be creative and to think well, but we should also take caution to not give ourselves over to doing so willingly.