Some Thoughts on A.I.

It's funny, I realize that the way my day (and week) is going that it would probably be a good idea to use today as one of my 'share-a-post' days. This week I have been trying to stick to a theme of integrity and specifically in regards to technology, and in starting this post, I remembered that my website builder offers a lot of A.I. tools. One of them being that I can generate a post. It would be incredibly easy to just put in a few prompts and let A.I. do the work. But I think we all know that would not be true to what I'm wishing to achieve here.

So is the use of A.I. in writing or in editing photos wrong? I want to defer to a conversation I had a few months ago with a young friend of mine.

The question was raised if a pastor could use A.I. tools in their research and preparation of a sermon. My opinion, value you it as you will, is that a pastor needs to wrestle with the text himself before he can bring it to the congregation. Letting a computer do all of that work for you removes the sanctification process from it. The pastor isn't confronted with the text, he is merely presenting something else's work to the people.

But does that idea apply to someone writing a blog or working on an image? Where is the line?

It's true, we can't escape A.I. Just put in a search on Google or another search engine and you'll be using A.I. apparently. It's just part of our technological world.

I think that's an area, where I myself at least, am mostly comfortable. As long as I'm able to check sources, getting a summary on a topic is quite helpful.

But what about actually writing? Advice on grammar and punctuation? Rewriting? The ideas themselves? At what point does it stop being me and start being the work of the A.I.?

I suppose that's a question we all will have to answer as we venture into this territory.

But what I think we all can agree is that letting it start to take over who we are, to think for us, to decide for us, to learn for us, we start letting A.I. live our lives instead of us.

My dad told me yesterday that some 'church' (I'm sorry, I'm using that term loosely) or something developed a chat box that is supposed to be like talking to Jesus. I hope the problems with this are immediately evident.

This brings this whole idea into the realm of the spiritual. We start letting A.I. not only write our blogs and our sermons and determine our meals, but now we go to it as a deity, thinking we're talking to the real thing. It's a frightening idea.

But I don't believe it's one that should cause us to become fearful. A.I. is still a tool. Just as a hammer can be used to break through a window to get in somewhere and steal, it is also used to drive a nail to build a house. The hammer is not a moral agent. I don't believe that A.I. is either. If we can healthily (prayerfully) use it, in moderation, then I do believe it has a place in our toolbox. I myself choose not to as much as possible, but if others do, I don't believe you're sinning. But if you choose to let it think for you, to live for you, and even worse, to be your god to you, then you need to return to the God of the Bible, because He isn't trapped in an A.I. chat box.