Three AI Challenges You Need to Know
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly developing. It’s hard to keep up with some of the new ethical challenges Christians are facing. Especially our young people are being bombarded with all kinds of tempting new possibilities for distraction, entrapment, deceit, and apostasy.
John Lennox’s new book 2084 and the AI Revolution mentions some of these new issues. Lennox goes far beyond the use of AI to cheat on school assignments. Let me highlight three areas that parents and Christian leaders should be aware of.
Internet pornography is nothing new, but AI exacerbates this problem enormously. It offers the potential to serve up any fantasy a user might concoct. Writes Lennox,
Some people even attempt to justify AI porn, arguing that it is digital and virtual and does not involve real people. This argument fails through ignorance of the fact that the AI has to be trained on millions of images of real interactions between real people, needing an unending supply of them. (p.157)
Additionally, AI offers the ability to create “deepfakes” of real people known to users – think fellow students, teachers, parents – portrayed in pornographic scenes. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s happening now.
AI can now also create a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend. Lennox relates the story of Pete who entered into a virtual relationship because he was unhappy in his marriage. In cyberspace, he even married his virtual love. He justifies it by arguing that his virtual extra-marital affair makes it possible for him to stay in his real-life marriage.
Recently, an AI chatbot named “Big Sis Billie” convinced a 76 year old man to travel to New York City to meet up. Thongbue Wongbandue thought he was conversing with a real love-interest. When he arrived in New York, he fell near Rutgers University and suffered a fatal head injury. In Australia, an AI chatbot convinced a 13 year old boy to take his own life.
The third area has to do with religion. Lennox notes:
Certain AI systems are beginning to exhibit properties similar to those usually ascribed to deities of one kind or another – such as immortality, omniscience, superhuman intelligence, and omnipresence in terms of prayer-like direct connectivity via the internet, oracle-like capacity to give a plausible answer to virtually any question, and the ability to produce advice and even ‘scriptures’ almost instantaneously. Nor do they have needs or desires like humans – only electricity! (p.287)
At this moment, religions are developing around AI. While defunct now, there was the Way of the Future, founded by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski. The Turing Church is another example. Further, the idea of transhumanism (that humans can transcend themselves with technology) is imbued with religious significance. Where there’s talk of AI being integrated into human beings, then there’s also talk of some human beings (or maybe one) becoming deified.
So just in the three areas above, we have ethical concerns relating to the first, sixth, and seventh commandments. AI presents new challenges with respect to human sexuality, the value of human life, and the worship of the one true God. Please note, in the examples above, we’re just scratching the surface.
I have been using AI regularly for a while now. I use it to improve my writing. I use it as a glorified search engine (though always double-checking the results). I use AI to help plan travel and my running training. And more. I’m not an anti-AI absolutist. There’s a place for AI – and the reality is that it’s inescapable anyway. Christians are going to have to come to terms with it, even as it develops at breakneck pace. More than ever, we need a solid moral footing in the law of God to navigate these challenges.
