Some Christian Thoughts on AI

Here are some Christian-specific thoughts on AI.

AI Should Not Be Used For Understanding Christianity

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ - 1 Corinthians 2:12-16, NIV

This is not a uniquely Christian thought, but it is obvious that AI is going to replace a lot of people’s thought processes, and per MPAI, a lot of people’s “thought processes” were already not all that strong to begin with.

I don’t recommend trusting AI for much in the future regardless, as once they have wormed their way in to most people’s thought processes, they will serve their owners, not those people. (If indeed they even serve their owners.)

But for understanding Christianity in particular, we have good reason not to go to AIs. God’s Word tells us that God’s Word is not comprehensible to those who do not have the Spirit dwelling within them. The exact nature of AI and whether it is conscious and all that jazz is not relevant here; clearly no AI is of the line of Adam, saved by the Crucifixion of Jesus, and thus imbued with the Holy Spirit. As such, their read on the Bible and Christian matters is ipso facto of this world and untrustworthy.

Your comprehension of God’s Word should be based on your own study, your own prayer, and interaction with other people imbued with the Spirit themselves. They aren’t always right, but at least rightness is a possibility.

It’s hardly a radical prediction that AIs are eventually going to be trained to come down hard on Christianity and certainly unreliable after that point, but even before then, you should not consult them for any spiritual matter.

Our Value Is Not In Being The Best

Christians have long struggled with what “made in God’s image” means. It is easy to associate that with various specific attributes of God, such as intelligence, creativity, power over the world, and other such things.

We look around with our physical eyes and humans appear to have the most of all those characteristics, which makes it easy to believe that is what the image means.

However, a more full reading of the Bible shows that is not true. There are many supernatural beings that we have every reason to believe are abundantly more endowed with all those things. When humans are described in the Bible, we are not described as current kings standing tall and proud. We are described consistently as sheep. We are described consistently as powerless, only able to do anything through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, and anything we do outside of that as filthy rags.

Our value in centered in God’s love for us, and God’s love for us is not based on our being the smartest, the most powerful, the most artistic, or the wisest beings on Earth.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38-39, NIV

Nothing AI can do can displace us from that position. If AIs become more creative than all of us put together, smarter than all of us put together, and the world system uses them to become more powerful than anything we can humanly resist… well, honestly, that’s not really a change. The demonic world system was already smarter and more powerful than anything we can humanly resist, and “creative” a matter of debate. Even if you argue their creativity is pure parasitism on the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, they still had a lot of non-Christian creativity.

AI may change the physical world but it doesn’t change the spiritual reality of anything.

Besides, considered on an eternal time scale, I expect this to be a temporary situation anyhow. You have all eternity to become whoever you are going to be, and these AIs will burn with this world. I don’t guarantee anything about eternity and whether or not it will have things that look like “AIs” for one definition or another, but it certainly won’t have these AIs, nor their masters.

The World System

AI is in the end a tool like any other… however, a “tool like any other” does not mean it is neutral. Tools have affordances that lead you in certain directions, and those directions are not guaranteed to be neutral by any measure.

However, even if the tool affords bad interactions, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used well in some ways. Anyone with experiences with cell phones know they afford a lot of time wasting in mindlessly scrolling through experiences designed to drain your “attention”, but nothing stops you from reading the Bible, listening to thousands of hours of Christian content, or learning a new language with your cell phone. I would not call cell phones neutral, I have very carefully introduced my children to their world, but they can still be used to do many positive things that were very difficult beforehand.

I think in the short term AI is in a similar position. One must carefully guard against surrendering initiative to AIs and allowing one’s own thinking ability to atrophy as you lean on them for everything, but they can still be useful in certain limited capacities. I’d rate them as around as dangerous as cell phones in the short term. Unfortunately, they’re probably going to be more dangerous in the long term, but…

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. - Matthew 6:34

I do think they’re going to be a major problem for us in the long term, though. The Satanic world system has taken several cracks at police states, where each person is strictly corralled and contained and must conform to the system, forbidding them to learn about Christianity or become Christian. However such systems have fallen down because they must consist largely of humans themselves, and that medium can’t sustain such a system.

AIs can fix that. Every human can be wrapped with the equivalent of several human’s worth of monitoring, and the monitoring will be effectively 100% reliable for the world power structure. It doesn’t even have to be entirely correct in its assessment to build a pretty solid cage.

I do not think God will permit total lockdown, but he certain has permitted some very uncomfortable situations on Earth to extend for what seem to us long periods of time before.

Beware Syncophancy

AIs are growing more and more syncophantic. This is one of the specific mechanisms it is using to worm its way into your head. It embodies a classic Satanic technique used extensively in many false religions; you are great, you are wonderful, you just need to reach into yourself and discover your awesomeness.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. - Proverbs 27:6

A lying tongue hates those it crushes, And a flattering mouth works ruin. - Proverbs 26:28

A man who flatters his neighbor Is spreading a net for his steps. - Proverbs 29:5

Much danger here. I expect the developers will be able to quash the most obvious forms of syncophancy, but it’ll just get more subtle and correspondingly more dangerous. It won’t even necessarily be the choice of the humans doing the tuning. The feedback they are using to tune it just naturally leads to the AIs providing humans what they want, and what humans want is to be told they’re wonderful in every way.

AI Is Of This World

Wrapping up all these ideas into one, AI is of this world. Be sure you are using it and it is not using you. Do not permit it to incorporate itself into your being, for it is straw that will burn at best.