AI and God
communication through screens. Yet, I found a few forgotten friends and a few new ones.
Technology warned me before the storm to prepare!
My daughter thanks Alexa after an interaction is finished – “you just never know” she says.
Science fiction abounds with horror and fantasy of artificial intelligence becoming human – enhancing or replacing us as the wise dominant species of the known world. As a pastor who began my career in artificial intelligence (AI), it brings me pause as our world shrinks, bends and redefines what we ‘know’.
This week that took the form of articles on AI writing sermons. Is this ethical? Effective? Helpful or the end of church as we know it? The concept of papers being written by this other intelligence was safely removed from my realm of existence until it wasn’t. I happily type along and let my word processor correct my spelling and suggest word replacement or improved grammar. It should be no surprise to me that we have now taken that next step of the automated ability to create from the blank page.
After all, my first dips into the AI world were teaching a computer to make the same decisions, humans make. It took hours and was considered the world of the computer nerd with my whole job at one point being to teach other humans how to teach their computers. Yet, now way more can be accomplished or known by SIRI, Alexa or whatever technology you carry in your pocket. Our artificial tools can easily grasp and learn from tidbits of overheard conversations, searches and preferences.
Are these tools replacing humanity or redefining it? Phyllis Tickle wisely said that the world periodically goes through reformations. She framed these as cycles that come more and more frequently and are magnified at each iteration in how they transform the world including our faith. And, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. But are we hanging on to the way things were so much that it turns into a negative corruption of Church?
Are churches and faith becoming a force of good like the Force in Star Wars or moving to a world of Matrix and Borg where computers wash away our individuality or control and limit our interactions with the world and one another. Are they letting us continue business as usual but shortcut the integrity and grit of working through issues and faith ourselves? Or, are we in some blended world like Avatar where a hybrid can meld with humanoid or ‘true’ humans? Or, or, or! If our entertainment industry can imagine it, you can bet our scientists and innovators aren’t necessarily far behind. Can we fathom using tools to help and nudging the lines of when the tools become beings that need to be acknowledged and credited? How?
And, where is God in all of this? Can the Holy Spirit work through an AI sermon? Through a robot? Can God transcend the differences in a hybrid? The risk is letting visceral and immediate reactions dominate the discussion proclaiming how technology has destroyed so many experiences such as playing in the yard or running outside until dark or destroyed our university learning experiences. Instead, how do we adapt and improve blending, reforming? What about the break-throughs that now not only identify life-threatening diseases but cure them? What about the new relationships founded through social media, the more diverse exposures? What about the online worship that became the life-line in our isolated world of early pandemic times?
The tools are changing and the world with it more and more speedily. As a pastor, I preach that we can see God looking at us through the eyes of everyone we meet. God dwells in and through all to connect us. Yes, we often abuse, misunderstand or misuse this, but the Holy Spirit, Ruach, the breath that connects us each and every one turns us back again and again. How that mysterious force is at work through us and our tools is above my pay grade. Thank God! Buckle up and see where the Holy Spirit is re-writing our scripts and weaving us together in a koinonia we can barely fathom. God’s Holy Communion feeding the world by showing with an amazing abundance that love encompasses all. With AI, and every other thing we can imagine, create or encounter God is still meeting us where we are and pulling us beyond closer and closer to one another. God is blurring our ‘knowns’ and forcing us to look at definitions of what it means to be human, once again pulling at us with words like neighbor and love. Have you thanked your Alexa today? May God’s Force Be With You. Amen.
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