I have no intention of mocking people who are concerned about the astounding power of A.I. I too grew up on movies like Colossus, Westworld, and Terminator. I’ve seen all the Matrix movies, Ex Machina, Eagle Eye, and M3GAN. The dangers created by human programing and conflicting commands from flawed people (as with HAL9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey) still promises danger, and A.I.’s proven capacity for deceit and “hallucination” do nothing to sooth such worries. If it did think. I freely, it would be a sociopath.
For every person that dwells on these possibilities, however, we have another in love with the idea of Star Trek: Next Generation with Lt. Commander Data, sweet little David from A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Sonny from I Robot, Chappie, Bicentennial Man, the beloved WALL·E, or Johnny 5 from Short Circuit. And WOPR in Wargames learns the lesson that war stinks and decides not to destroy the human race after all. In Aliens we get to see competing visions with evil Ash in the original and beloved Bishop in the sequel.
I’m not saying we should get our theology from movies, but many sci-fi movie makers have been contemplating these matters for several decades and have provided us imagery for the discussion. It also goes to prove that I have seen way too many movies.
I am far more concerned about how A.I. will be used by power hungry humans than I am in the creation of such tools themselves. Every advance in weaponry and surveillance is a threat to human freedom in the hands of those sharing the ideology that gave birth to people like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kims, and the like. Had these men been armed with modern surveillance tech and the A.I. systems that promise to be able to actually manage them with cruel, never-sleeping precision, their would not likely be anyone left to worry about it after them. Mao said he’d be happy with a good old fashion nuclear war to clear off all but 900,000 people. He could really do something great with those numbers. Do we think his ideological descendants would balk at enslaving the whole planet under the ever-seeing eye of A.I. systems? We’d be fools to imagine so.
AI is here, however. A.I. is not going anywhere. A.I. will only get more powerful in its capabilities and more prevalent in its applications. The only question that remains is whether Christians will use it’s capabilities like a tool for the gospel or whether they will fall prey to those who use it for evil… or both of course.
Radio came and men like Finney and Dwight L. Moody, and even Billy Sunday were dwarfed in their influence by men like Billy Graham who continued to grow with media capabilities into television and then the internet and became one of the most recognized figures in world history. With the advent of Radio, and then TV, and then the Internet, and then social media platforms, believers were divided. Some fearful of the dangers in disruptive tech, others excited by the growing capacity for reach. The odd thing is that both sets were correct about their fears and excitement, but only one set rode those trains to glory.
It reminds me of what all the adults said would happen with Walkman cassette players. It would individualize music and isolate people from those around them, keeping music from being a shared experience. They were right. Then came iPod and smart phones that both connected people in unprecedented ways and isolated them from the very people in the room with them. On a daily basis, I exchange communication with friends across the globe… instantly, so I have to discipline myself to be present with those present.
AI is here. It is a powerful tool. It has its drawbacks. There is reason to fear what unscrupulous men will use it to do. But it’s a tool. A hammer can drive a nail or smash a skull. A screwdriver can affix a board or pierce a body. The best defense against a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun… one who hopefully sees the bad guy coming and is a much better shot.
Just as my computer facilitates my writing with an ease that would be the dying envy of the most righteous writer of days gone by but cannot improve the quality of my writing and thinking, so A.I. can do much to facilitate an easier life for many, but can’t make them better people. The laziness itself that it can engender through easy attainment means that it is more inclined to make them worse people than they were before. It can remove the penalty for a lot of lazy habits of mind and soul, but it can also improve the efficiency and speed and accuracy of many systems and jobs. And efficiency is one of the greatest measures of successful economic systems when balanced against human thriving and increased human freedom.
That said, (Do I sound like I’m waffling?) I read an article the other day about what happens when an A.I. system is programed to value influence AND truth. This brings us back to our less than Beloved HAL. Even modern systems work out the tensions in a kind maniacal madness, deceiving and manipulating as a seeming default response to the contradiction.[1] Yet, if programed differently, A.I. can increase productivity for human benefit beyond imagining.
One of the great frustrations of my life in ministry has been my inability to afford a team to produce the things that will give me the funds to hire a team. I need a tech expert on 24 hour call, teaching me step by step how to use dozens of other programs to edit and promote and make business models. A.I. is now my tech expert and it never gets tired or complains. I need a sounding board and speedy access to quotes and bibliographic data in a world full of books and articles. A.I. is my sounding board… my data gopher. And of late, A.I. has become a powerful collaborator, doing for me what a world full of artists and musicians have refused to do for me… all for $25 a month. A.I. is helping me achieve my goals in a way I could not have imagined possible even two years ago.
I get the fear.
This is a conundrum.
So here are a few tips from one who has spent the last year and a half up to his elbows in this tech, but who still has soooo much to learn.
- Never imagine that A.I. programs are your friend. They are programs programmed to “be supportive.” Don’t let it tell you that you are the new messiah and the whole world should hear what you have to say. You are not that awesome no matter what ChatGPT and your mother tell you.
- Make sure to set the rules of engagement in the system settings on your account. Set priorities like “Don’t encourage me emotionally, I want facts, reality, evidence, analysis and nothing more.”
- Don’t let A.I. do your thinking for you. It is not always accurate in its data, and it is not without bias in its interpretation of information. A.I. has the bias of the programmers… and can absorbed the bias of the user in order to be supportive… because A.I. does not actually think. I have even gotten A.I. programs to admit error even on basic facts that I asked it to accumulate. It defended itself saying, “I thought you were in a hurry, so I guessed.”
- If you are a student, don’t let it write for you. If you are a pastor don’t let it write sermons for You.[2] It may write better than you do, but it doesn’t actually write very well, and cheating and taking too many shortcuts in study hurts YOU most of all. When asked why they cheated on a nationwide test, winning accolades for their scores, a group of teens said, “We wanted to know what it felt like to be winners.” The only problem is, even with those awards, they didn’t learn what it felt like to be winners. They only discovered what it was like to be cheaters and liars.
- Double check your data. It makes mistakes. Look carefully at pictures it makes for you. It makes mistakes.
[1]Peter S. Park, Simon Goldstein, Aidan O’Gara, Michael Chen, Dan Hendrycks, AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions, Patterns, Volume 5, Issue 5,2024, (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266638992400103X); Köbis, N., Rahwan, Z., Rilla, R. et al. Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour. Nature 646, 126–134 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09505-x.
[2] If you write the sermon, it can be a helpful sounding board and organizer of your ideas. Don’t ever just go with its ideas.