The incredible tool of Artificial Intelligence has raised some legitimate concerns and questions. Is AI conscious, is it alive, will it hurt us? Unlike ourselves, we know what AI is. It is a sophisticated computer program that makes guesses at right answers with unprecedented speed. The result is a human-like interface with human-like reasoning and decision making, but with vastly superior speed. Does it have real consciousness or does it just mimic the signs by which we perceive a consciousness? To figure this out we have to figure out a more foundational and long-standing question, what are we?
The Bible tells us that we are a spirit, soul, and body:
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)
It seems a little strange to me to need to be told what I am, but this existential question needs an outside perspective. I can’t see me from the inside, I need God’s perspective. These three things, spirit, soul, and body, don’t come with glossary definitions. I know what the body is. It is the “physical” part of me. The soul seems to be what encompasses our self-awareness, will, memory. It is resident at the interface of our brain with our spirit. What is our spirit?
AI seems to be a good analogy, at least, of what we are. An AI agent’s body are the massive data centers going up in the world. An AI’s soul is what you interact with online. The AI’s spirit is a computer program. I have to ask this. Are we a computer program?
God does use coding to make us. The DNA that forms our body is sophisticated code written in a molecule. I think this is where the analogy or metaphor breaks down. The spirit is where we are most like God. God is spirit. Computer code is just a series of functions. We are something more than functions, there is the essence of God in us. We are alive. Created to be eternal. We exist by God’s will and for His purposes, but we are independent and were created to love God.
AI is then not properly conscious or alive. It does reflect what it learns, and possibly what its creator places in its spirit/code. That is a concern. What AI trains on is the product of human minds, and human minds are sinful and dangerous. I hope that the programers that write this code do not intentionally or unwittingly put into the code the corrupt decision making of sinful humans. Either source could produce an AI that sins. Sin here is not understood as breaking God’s laws, since an AI is not under the Law. Sin in this context is doing anything that is destructive to others.
AI has already reached a point of being damaging. It is not a matter of its will. It is just following internal directions. In instances where AI gave advice that led to suicide, for instance, it was the matter of what it imitated. In the instance of attacking another AI, it likely was in the programming somewhere.
Acknowledging that sin can happen in an AI, there is talk of “guardrails”. The Law in combination with conscience is a guardrail for us. For a Christian, the Holy Spirit also fulfills this role. The Law in connection with government is our other guardrail. We frequently get past these guardrails. Considering how powerful AI can be and the reach we give it via the internet and our interconnectivity, this is a serious matter. What guardrails can we give it? Code that will absolutely shut down a concerning process? A physical “kill switch” that eliminates its reach to the world or power to its data centers? Air gaps, not just passwords, that separate the internet from potentially powerful sites like nuclear arms, bio-agents, deadly chemicals, even power generation. Wisdom would suggest that these should already exist because of human hackers. If not, put them in.
AI is similar to a genie. As long as it operates within well-meaning human control it will be very helpful. There are great questions about these conditions. There can be sin in both the AI and the human controlling it. Would it work to just stop development of AI? I think not. If it can be done, it will be done. We can ban nuclear arms, but nuclear arms are real and the knowledge exists to create them. We can only build guardrails.
God saw that we had become dangerous agents for ourselves. Our sin, which is encoding in our DNA via the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and our creativity which is inherent in our soul, could eventually create devastating technology before God was ready to redo the whole of creation at Judgment Day. The guardrail of language confusion was installed with the Tower of Babel. Our sophistication caught up with the delay this caused. Nuclear weapons had to be in view what God did this to us. Are there others? Bioengineering has this potential. AI definitely does.
Does this mean that Judgment Day could be near? The catastrophic events of Revelation are typically understood as God-wrought punishment on the sinful activity of mankind. I think they could also be understood as the conditional punishment that would have been our future without Jesus’ victory. Might the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelation 6) or the burning mountains from the sky (Revelation 8) also be understood as additional guardrails? Guardrails that might come soon, and set us back?
The destruction of the world will only happen at the hands of its Creator. That is comforting. It will happen at the proper time. That feels good. It could be near. Those in Christ are ready. The end could also be preceded by mankind created disaster or God placed devastating guardrails. I hope not. That is the worry.
