AI–Looking at Artificial Intelligence through a Christian Lens

AI is everywhere–banking, coding, automatic emails–and has become a hot topic lately. If you follow AI news, you may know Anthropic just released Claude Mythos to certain companies to begin enhancing their security because Claude Mythos is so good at hacking. It is a little scary! Many people believe AI is going to one day become self-aware (become alive and able to think for itself) and eventually take over the world. Today, I, somebody with technological and programming experience, want to take a look at these claims and disprove them with not just logic, but also the Bible, because as Christians, we should be ready to counter this argument.

I’m not going to give you an in-depth discussion on what AI is, simply that it is a program that uses pre-given examples and training data to determine the next most probable world in a sequence (the AI’s response) based on the given data (your messages). All programming and code, including AI, is simply 0s and 1s–binary code. A 0 represents off in the circuit, 1 is on. At its core, AI is nothing but on or off on a circuit. Speaking with technological understanding, I say with absolute certainty, AI will never become self-aware. It would take so much technological improvements that the Earth will not still be in its current fallen state.

The Bible never mentions humanity being destroyed. The 7 years of tribulation, the final years of the fallen world, happen to people, not robots, meaning that humanity will not have been eradicated by AI.

Now, another large topic is the ethical concerns of AI. Some people believe it’s evil. Now, everyone has their own preferences and can decide if they like AI or not, but it is not inherently good or bad. Do you say guns or swords are bad because they can be used to commit murder? No (if you do… read your Bible a bit more, specifically Joshua and Judges). AI is just software, like your browser or file explorer, simply more complicated. It’s just a tool, not bad, not good. It all comes down to the way the person uses it. A gun can be used for murder, or it can be used for fun at a shooting range. AI can be used for evil purposes, planning how to commit a crime, or cause harm, or it can be used for doing long, complex math quickly, helping in medical scenarios, and performing tedious tasks no person wants to. The Bible doesn’t ban the use of something just because it has the ability to cause harm; your hands can kill somebody, and you probably use those all day (you’re probably using it now to scroll through this post!).

Now, the final point I want to look at is a topic a lot of people get worried about, and that is the fact that AI can, has, and will take away jobs. It can simulate thinking and it learns over time, meaning it is going to replace humans. AI doesn’t complain, isn’t lazy, and doesn’t want a pay raise. It simply does what it’s told, meaning that it is better than people for some tasks. But just because it will take away people’s jobs doesn’t mean we should declare it evil. Cars took away jobs from people, and almost nobody today says ‘cars are evil and shouldn’t have been made’. In the short-term, yes, AI will make some people’s life difficult because they will be out of a job, but in the long-term, it will make people’s life easier.

So, let’s wrap things up. Is AI going to take over the world? Absolutely not. Is AI an evil creation that must be removed from the face of the Earth? No. Is AI dangerous? Yes, it can be. It all comes down to how it’s being used. I’m not saying you can’t dislike AI, and AI will never replace human creativity, ingenuity, and uniqueness. AI is simply a new tool in this world. Its impact on the world won’t be of its own doings, fundamentally, but of what people do with it.