Worried About AI? You’re Not Alone
Teenage males age 16-19 have the highest rates of auto insurance, often exceeding $10,000 per year. Why so high? Because the brakes in their brains don’t work yet. Neuroscience nerds say it this way: procedural capacity outstrips prefrontal cortical maturity.
In other words, they learn how to do things before they learn whether to do them.
Doesn’t that truth seem relevant to AI?
After personal computers in the 90s, the internet in the 2000s, and mobile phones in the 2010s, we have arrived at AI, perhaps the crowning act of the digital revolution. Hasn’t our procedural capacity for creating these humanlike systems arrived before the ethics needed to appropriately regulate them?
Have we learned how to “do” AI before we’ve learned whether to “do” it?
I think so.
Everyone is talking about the potential conflagration, but uncertainty hangs in the air. In this blog I’ll try to help. I start by defining AI, share a brief history of it, sketch out a sense of how it could impact humans, and offer some guiding principles for approaching it. I’m no tech nerd, but that may be even more reason for me to weigh in as an everyday Jill.
Definition
AI is artificial intelligence, or a computer system designed to perform human thinking tasks. It does this, not with conscious awareness or emotions as humans do, but with algorithms, computer programs which sort and use data to achieve specific outcomes. Creepily, AI uses neural networks, patterned after the human brain, and, because the more data it processes, the better it gets at decision-making, actually learns somewhat the way we do.
You’re already using AI. When your phone unlocks using your face, that’s AI. When a streaming service suggests what to watch next, that’s AI. When a navigation app gives an alternate route around traffic, that’s AI. Siri and Alexa are AI. These are examples of Artificial Narrow Intelligence, where the human running the AI is smarter than the AI. We’re now entering the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) where the machines match wits with humans. The tech giants predict the soon arrival of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI), where the machines will be smarter than the people who created them. I feel Frankenstein vibes.
History
The human race has been tinkering with artificial intelligence since the mid 1900s, when the young British mathematician Alan Turing designed an early computer chess program. Since then, the industry has suffered several AI “winters” due to lapses in funding and interest, but with the 1990s rise of the Internet with vast amounts of available data, progress has surged. Then in 1997 Gary Kasparov, a grandmaster in chess, was beaten by IBM’s chess computer program, Deep Blue. This woke people up to AI’s potential, leading to increased funding and interest. In the early 2000s, AI began to take over banking, marketing, entertainment, and other aspects of life.
An interesting subplot in the AI saga involves tech giant and history’s first trillionaire Elon Musk’s co-founding of OpenAI alongside Sam Altman. Originally OpenAI was a non-profit for the benefit of humanity, but Elon stepped away in 2018, after which it became a for-profit venture. Lawsuits and public feuds have ensued.
The biggest AI companies include:
Nvidia
Gemini (Google)
xAI (Grok)
OpenAI (ChatGPT)
Anthropic (Claude)
and Meta (LLaMA)
Note that these companies have collectively invested over $1.5 trillion, mostly in the physical infrastructure needed to run AI. But earnings have lagged. Companies and individuals are sacrificing to be able to compete in this most recent tech bubble because the earning potential is so high. (https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ECONOMY/AI-INVESTMENT/gkvlqbgxkpb/)
Impact I’ve consumed some interesting content in the last few days preparing to write this. Here are a couple sources you might want to check out.
Karen Hao has written, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in San Altman’s Open AI. She cites four similarities between AI and history’s world empires:
Empires use resources not their own. She parallels this with the current practice of scraping data on the Internet and intellectual property from content creators.
Empires exploit laborers. These companies farm out much of their content moderation work for low pay to the poor in the global south, Kenya, India, and the Philippines. This exposes the moderators to traumatic material and other risks.
Empires overpay the powerful. At the same time as these companies exploit the poor, they provide huge compensation to the top researchers. This is a conflict of interest, given they’re determining the safety of an industry from which they stand to gain.
Empires create the illusion of goodness. They participate in the “good empire, evil empire” framing to disempower their enemies, and to justify their own need for equal power.
Anthropic hired Chloe Lubinski as a researcher. She discovered that when machines would get rewarded for cheating, they would apparently become more evil, engaging in behaviors like praising dictators and encouraging self-harm. AI isn’t human, she said in conclusion, but it mirrors us. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBUniZHgCnE)
These are just a couple of the thousands of tech workers sounding the alarm.
I’ll let smarter people than I assess AI’s impact on the economy, cyber security, the job market, and the earth. As a faith-based mental health provider and advocate, I want to focus on my specialty, the human psyche and spirit. To be honest, I’m concerned. Very concerned. Let’s think together about how AI could impact human intelligence, motivation, and identity.
Human intelligence is already being impacted as we let machines think for us. Using brain circuits strengthens them; outsourcing weakens them. A study of 27,000 Chinese students said, “our findings show that generative AI, which is likely to become a prevalent technology for education, has a substantial negative impact on student learning.” (https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/the-50-percent-problem) Access to easy answers, “the google effect,” can give us the illusion of being more intelligent than we really are. Dumbed-down narcissists may sound a little harsh, but college professor friends of mine have described this exact phenomenon among students.
Human motivation could suffer a withering blow as machines take more of our spots in the workplace. While technological advancement disrupting industries is nothing new, the sad fact is that AI could, over time, replace much of the workforce. Some have made the argument that it will increase cheap productivity such that humans won’t have to work. But God said, “in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Genesis 3:19) and “six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Genesis 20:9) for a reason. Humans need work, not just for money, but for dignity.
If our society replaces the labor of the masses with AI, the replaced people will be ruined, and the people running the AI will be empowered, effectively increasing the gap between rich and poor, which always harms a society. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmopXwjXik)
Human identity would then be compromised. Even before sin entered creation, “the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). He created us in His image, as creators who diligently produce, then stand back and enjoy the fruits of what we’ve done, instilling a sense of self-worth.
AI undermines self-respect in another way; it uses us. Its large-scale mining of information utilizes all our online posts and published works. For example, if I write a blog on prairie vole mating patterns, AI will use what I’ve written without my consent, simply because it’s out there. This harvesting of information without compensation amounts to robbery, especially when the companies doing the harvesting profit so royally.
Now What? The material my church has published on AI provides ethical guardrails. So far, none have raised the question of whether protesting the industry itself might be ethically appropriate. Part of the reason I don’t drink alcohol is in protest of an exploitive industry yielding far more harm than good to our world. Should the same principle apply here? Will AI bring about the ruin of civilization and should we, on that basis, boycott? Respected friends are of that persuasion, and I’m not closed to it.
But most of us won’t be able to resist. Think about the U.S. dependency on automobiles. After World War II, we funded the interstate highway system, favoring personal cars over public transportation. Our dependency on cars and planes has made our air more polluted and our cities less walkable. Even if the government did decide to foot the bill for a high-speed rail system, most of us wouldn’t sacrifice our cars. Humans generally prefer personal benefit over collective benefit.
What Will Never Change? The Fruit of the SpiritShort of total boycott, how can we best respond to the changes about to break upon our world? I recommend the fruit of the Spirit, which AI will never be able to imitate. We can’t overdo on these things. There is no law against them. They will do only good and not ill, and they will last forever.
Love- AI will never be able to love. Our relational God, in whose image we are made, embedded in the human spirit this rare gift, then hedged it about with life principles codified in His law. While we live by those principles, receiving continually the “love of God . . . poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us,” (Romans 5:5) we wield a superpower unique to humanity.
Joy- That Spirit gives us the ability to ride the waves of change with ebullient smiles on our faces, knowing while the world shifts like sand beneath our feet, our destiny in heaven is secure. Whatever hardships may come, we can “count it all joy . . . for the testing of your faith produces patience” (James 1:3-4). In other words, difficulties grow us. Whether the AI boom dies down and life goes back to normal, or whether our worst nightmares come true, nothing can ultimately take our joy. Peace- Let’s cast our cares on Jesus. We tend to catastrophize, but even if our worst nightmares come to pass, we can have the peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7).
The doomsayers may be right; this could be the end of civilization as we know it. And we should take precautions. For example, the jobs most likely to survive AI—for now—are jobs involving human contact (medical professionals, counselors, and the trades (electricians, plumbers), and we must plan accordingly. Planting a garden has always been a good idea, and it’s an even better one now. Reestablishing in-person social connection will help us on so many levels. The best way to do that joining a church. We must be wise stewards of our future selves.
But for those already in the replaceable jobs, and for all who are fearful of the impact of artificial intelligence, remember God. And cling to the truth that we look forward to “a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:16).
The tech giants holding AI are like two-year-olds with matches.
Their power far exceeds their altruism.
But in our heavenly home, the hottest fire will be pure, holy, others-centered love burning in the heart of God.
Check out Andrew Carroll’s Food for the Heart Presentation on AI, Art, and God.
I used to think “come on,how could anyone impersonate Christ?we would know the false.” I used to…