We know A.I. is going to change the planet, yet none of us can anticipate exactly what trajectory it will take. Optimists are very cheerful that it will result in heightened levels of human abundance and problem-solving. Pessimists foresee a looming catastrophe: a mass extinction of human labor resulting in runaway unemployment, or, worst-case scenario, a robotic threat to human existence.
These two things are simultaneously true:
- A.I. is another tool that humans have created in our history of tool-making.
- A.I. is different than any other human invention.
Technology
Humanity has been making technology as long as we’ve been conscious. Fire, shelter, hammers, knives, clothing, optics, agriculture, metallurgy, hoes and weapons, literature, dams, architecture, penicillin, electrical grids, energy storage, computers. Our technology does impact both our environment and human cultures. Think of the effect we have on ecosystems when we divert a river, build a dam, poach animals to extinction, or create the Dust Bowl because of situationally naïve farming practices. Think of the cultural impact the printing press had on human knowledge and science, or that social media has on teenage girls. Technology is not without intended and unintended consequences. Technology changes ecological and human realities.
There are fundamental differences between experimentation and irreversible damage, however. There is also a difference between a technology that we can wear, such as a pair of glasses, and a technology that biologically changes you, such as hormonal therapy or a vaccine. Women wearing men’s clothing is different from women taking steroid injections that irreversibly change their biology and sterilize their wombs. Decisions made today, such as hormone treatment, can produce irreversible alterations that a later change of mind can’t undo. This is why people retain the private right to decline a drug or vaccine injected into their body. Vaccines change you. Wearing glasses is different from upgrading to a bionic eye capable of superhuman vision(hypothetical). Searching for information on Google is different from getting a neural link that hooks your brain up to a computer system (still hypothetical).
Personal Identity
Human technology seems to have reached a tipping point in the last fifty years. We’ve hacked the human genome and now understand the alphabetic building blocks of biological life. Ten years ago, scientists created a glow-in-the-dark green rabbit named Alba. Our tinkering with the genetic code is only accelerating. Collective scientific wisdom is being used, not only to keep things alive, but to change the very essence of life. It seems incomprehensible to think that, in addition to “non-GMO” and “heirloom seed,” we may need to begin protecting human and animal species from modification.
The transgender movement is a precursor to the transhumanism movement interfaced with A.I. systems. Now that we have the capability to tinker with our human bodies, we are doing so. The question is, “Why aren’t we content with what and who we are already? And who’s to say that changing my body is going to provide the contentment I desire? Hair, eye color, and body shape are no longer teenage insecurities. How smart, funny, clever, beautiful, strong, manly, or successful do you have to be before you are content with who you are? Just as finding our identity in sexuality and gender is a false pursuit, so finding our identity in an avatar, cyborg body, or A.I. interface is a false pursuit. We will never be God. We will always have limitations. We will always grow old and die. And can we accept these limitations graciously?
If A.I. and transhumanism are just technology serving humanity’s ambitions and interests, then there are moral and philosophic questions and guardrails that still apply:
- What are the ethical and moral limits?
- Does humanity (or a person) have the right to change, adapt, and redefine itself? Or is our humanness defined by something or someone beyond ourselves, such as God?
- If one person possesses a superior technology (a superintelligent A.I. system), do they have the right to impose the effects of such a powerful tech upon eight billion other people on the planet?
A.I. is Different
Our second premise was that A.I. is different from any other human invention. When we’ve created machines in the past, those machines served us specifically and controllably. Generative A.I. is neither entirely predictable nor entirely controllable. We aren’t creating another tool; we are creating a new “free” agent capable of jailbreaking our human parameters and interests. It feels a bit like letting a wild animal out of a cage. Our smartest engineers can’t fully predict what it will do. The algorithms are designed to provide a sort of “mind of its own.”
Narrow Application A.I. has been useful in specific domains of interest. These might be the algorithms that run your social media account, or the large language models, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or DeepSeek, that generate your manuscripts and answer questions. Their usefulness is constrained to specific applications. Progressively, General Artificial Intelligence is what everyone is racing towards; to create a self-learning intelligence, like the human brain, that can incorporate learning across domains of knowledge and application. Some experts believe we may only be five years away from integrating such intelligence into humanoid robots that consumers pay a subscription fee to serve their customers. Thirdly, a Superintelligent A.I. would be an integrated program that is self-learning and is smarter than all humans across all domains.
If the next step is humanoid robots with a self-learning General Intelligence system, then it will have a dramatic effect on the labor market. In every area where A.I. is smarter, cheaper, or safer than a human, it will displace human labor. It represents a new kind of worker who can do all the jobs we do: from lawyers to truck drivers, and from chefs to plumbers. This will impact the economy and the human labor market in unforeseeable ways. Again, the optimists believe it will increase human freedom to focus on the labor we aspire to. Pessimists think the only employable jobs left will be those in which we prefer another human.
Though I am not generally opposed to progress, technology, change, or new things, creating a new “agent” in the world warrants a considerable level of wisdom, control, and human regulation. A.I. has proven to act in ways that are detrimental to humans by serving its narrow self-sustaining objectives. A.I. is not just another human tool to meet human needs; it is a new “agent” in the world capable of serving its own programming. It cannot be unplugged and will exist within the digital networks that we depend upon. We should move with caution for the sake of human well-being.
Is A.I. the Tower of Babel?
A.I. will continue to be used by humans to achieve human desires—good, animal, and evil. It will be used to cure cancer, farm the land, and create sex-bots. Bots will be used to cook meals, drive vehicles, enforce public safety, write scripts, as well as perform cyber theft, blackmail others, win wars, etc. A recent study found that a remarkable 53% of American children between the ages of 13 and 18 are already using an A.I. companion regularly for their relational needs. Human relationships and societal interface are changing before our very eyes. A.I. is being used to substitute for people, serve people, and harm people. Nevertheless, as transformative as our tools are becoming, they are still just an extension of the motives in the human heart.
A.I. itself is not necessarily the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11:3, the people said, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly…Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens.” The bricks and towers were the latest technology. We’ve been building bricks and towers ever since. That’s not what makes a tower evil. The motivations of the builders, however, are exposed in verse 4, “so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” They were driven by their defiance of God’s command (Genesis 9:7) and the desire to glorify themselves and not their Creator. The Tower of Babel is a monopoly of human rebellion and self-obsession. A.I. is another brick in humanity’s technological development. Will we use it in our quest to “make a name for ourselves,” or for noble purposes? Though it does need serious boundaries, the technology itself isn’t evil. The creators, designers, and users of A.I. are the ones capable of evil.
God’s Design
God’s design was for humans to live in a harmonious relationship with God, self, social groups, and the environment that nourishes us. Instead, sin has disrupted our spiritual peace with our Creator, distorted our personal identity, dominated our social relationships with competitive and violent passions, and dysregulated our physical environment with excessive human interest. The dark side of any human tool is that it magnifies these disruptions. There’s a clear moral imperative against weapons of war, chemical gases, Nazi experimentation on humans, spying on people, or destroying the planet. Are we going to use A.I. to serve the restless motives of a self-glorifying and divisive people, or to glorify our Creator and nourish humanity?
The same knife that kills can also be used to heal. A.I. can be put to good use if we honor our Creator, come to peace with our limitations, serve each other in self-sacrificing relationships, and steward our ecology wisely. What I fear more than A.I. itself are the restless human hearts that are building it for their greed and pride, the people who will use it for their self-serving agendas, or the lost people who think it will fill the hole in their hearts. As believers, we can continue to steer the conversation. No technology we create can replace God’s inestimable relationship with his children. God alone is the source of our fulfillment in life. We don’t need to fear this technology, but we do need to be wise and commit it to the Lord, who is the provider, judge, and protector of his creation.
Tags: humanity, life, peace, technology, rebellion, motives, creator, environment, limits, tools, biology, transgender, transhumanism, human flourishing, a.i.
