The rapid rate of artificial intelligence’s development is sure to produce almost unimaginable outcomes.

Presently, artificial intelligence is recognized in two forms, “soft” (or “weak”) AI and “strong” AI. Soft AI solves problems like voice recognition (think Alexa and Siri), self-driven cars, identifying plants or insects from a photo, or compiling and synthesizing a patient’s symptoms to offer a diagnosis. Strong AI takes everything to the next level. It can do math, communicate with you, offer advice, write a poem or a novel, create a sermon, write emails for marketers, and pass the MCAT, all while creating the impression that it is consciously self-aware, as is the case with ChatGPT bots. In short, soft AI focuses on specific tasks. Strong AI is capable of learning and processing in a more humanlike way.

People have been responding to the ethical challenges that strong AI presents. For example, the organization AI and Faith is tapping into a broad spectrum of religions and values in an effort to make the greater AI project more humanistic. While such an organization is a start, it is quite conceivable that its conclusions will only be vaguely, if at all, Christian. We can follow Augustine’s lead: if

they have said (or done) things which are indeed true and well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared; rather what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use. (On Christian Doctrine)

Christians have also been weighing in on AI. Derek C. Schuurman, a computer science professor at Calvin University, thinks Christians should “help discern a responsible road forward in obedience to God. Left on its own, AI will likely veer in the wrong direction” (“Artificial Intelligence,” Perspectives on Science and Faith, June 2019). A more alarming perspective comes from British writer Paul Kingsworth, who suggests a raw, aesthetic approach to AI with “the Amish as our lodestone” (“AI Demonic,” Touchstone, November-December 2023).

AI as Utopian Future

It is true that AI can gather and synthesize information more thoroughly and quickly than humans. Attractive outcomes include analyzing folding options in proteins, discovering new antibiotics that humans have missed, or diagnosing diseases from test results that humans could not perceive. It is no wonder that so many are excited about the AI future. However, what is striking is how ChatGPT bots reflect the values and thoughts of the programmers who have created them. Schuurman is right to think that humans are quite capable of making AI the latest option in idol development

Elon Musk has scored points among some Christians for his views on free speech and Twitter, renamed X, after he bought it for a cool $44 billion. However, his views on AI are rather disturbing. In a recent interview reported on by The Atlantic, Musk tried to make the case that the AI future will be like heaven: you won’t have to work, all diseases will be cured, and you won’t die unless you want to. In an April 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk mentioned that we need to ensure that AI will see humans as we see chimps—worth keeping around. Clearly, Musk sees the loss of human dominion as inevitable and only hopefully survivable. When Carlson asked him whether AI will have a soul like humans and be able to discern things like beauty, Musk replied that he wasn’t even sure if he had a soul. He says he thinks about it scientifically and that having a soul “may be an illusion.”

His perspective is not unusual among the big players and the architects of AI. At this point, I am not aware of a tech giant, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill Gates, who is a committed Christian with Christian vision, hopes, and assurances. Instead, they are largely in the spirit of the pioneer AI-utopian thinker Ray Kurzweil and echo the message of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933: “There is no God to save us. We must save ourselves.” Kurzweil envisions a future where the conscious machine linked with human neurobiology will spawn an era of radical life extension and continuous upgrades to eventually achieve immortality.

The first step in this naively optimistic vision is Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip that was approved by the FDA last spring for test trials. It links brain activity and thoughts to the computer. The expectation is that AI will eventually be able to upgrade itself, as it can now in a limited way. Humans’ slow reproductive rate will not be able to keep pace unless we link with the AI. Atheist physicist Laurence Krauss fully expects computers to become conscious and supersede humans within two hundred years. In a 2013 debate sponsored by the Science Network, he said, “It is not a good thing or a bad thing. What’s possible is what is going to happen.”

A Christian’s Hopes and Dreams

What these thinkers and scientists have in common is a profound lack of a biblical definition of reality. They play into the hand of the serpent, who seeks whom he may devour. There are a number of naïve assumptions that they operate under: 1) AI will be conscious and will challenge human dominion unless humans merge with it; 2) immortality is possible if humans physically merge with the conscious AI to beat death by continual upgrades; 3) biblically defined moral regeneration is unnecessary.

They all reject, implicitly or explicitly, the need for human renewal by repentance and forgiveness through the sacrificial work of Christ. Last but not least, they circumvent the promise of the ultimate upgrade: the resurrection of the dead, ensured by Christ, the firstborn among many brothers.

The tech giants’ gauzy, AI-utopian prospect typically does not include transformed bodies and spirits. Their assumption seems to be that extended life without physical suffering answers all questions. However, the reality is that extended life without transformed desires and motivations in line with a perfect allegiance to the Creator of all things looks more like eternal damnation than it does citizenry in the new heavens and new earth. Such hope in AI is another expression of the idol factory of the human heart.

Christians need to be aware of the hopes and dreams of the mainstream culture. For believers in Christ, AI, like any technology, has great potential. If it gets to the point of eroding divinely appointed human domain or becomes a human hope that circumvents the promise of the gospel, we know that it is playing into the hands of the one who seeks to devour us. However, we know it will not spell the end of the human race, as some concerned dystopians claim.

Presently our government has not given us much reason for optimism concerning where this will lead. It has been reported last September that Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, organized a private forum of two dozen tech executives, including Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates, to consider legislation to regulate artificial intelligence. However, The Colson Center’s Breakpoint Commentary indicated that the meeting was conducted without an ethicist and certainly without a Christian presence. If the ethics of the tech giants prevail, you can be assured that the outcome will not resemble one informed by Christian sensibilities. Christians will need to be biblically informed, vigilant, and wise as we selectively use the technology appropriately, or appropriately distance ourselves from its use. By God’s grace, we will be salt and light to our desperate culture.

The author is an OP elder and professor of biology at Grove City College. New Horizons, January 2024.