October 28, 7:00 PM | Olathe Campus
JOIN US FOR THIS EVENT:
Theologian and technology expert Dr. John Dyer is our keynote speaker at Navigating AI Through the Eyes of Faith. This event is FREE, but registration is required.
Below is an excerpt from Tom Nelson’s forthcoming book Why Your Work Matters: How God Uses Our Everyday Vocations to Transform Us, Our Neighbors, and the World. In Chapter 10, The Changing World of Work, he writes about the way technology has changed our work and asks the question:
In Technology We Trust?
It is easy to think of idols as something reserved for ancient superstitious people who made statues of stone and then bowed before them in some religious ritual. Yet an idol is anything in our lives that we make ultimate instead of God. Idols are God substitutes. They are what we truly trust for security, significance, meaning, and connection. For most of us in the modern world, idols take a different form than they did for the ancients, yet there are also similarities regarding technology.
Think with me about the work story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. These ancient people gather together and use their latest technology to build an amazing city. We read, “Then they said, ‘Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen. 11:4 ESV). At first glance, it may seem like these people are fulfilling God’s mandate to subdue the earth and have dominion. Yet a closer look reveals the misguided motivation for this massive building project. Of particular importance is where their trust was anchored. They trusted not in God but rather in their technological tools that offered them a utopian dream, a seductive mirage of a flourishing life apart from God. The Tower of Babel is a sobering picture of the idolatry of human technology.
Technism – The Great Savior
We might refer to the idolatry of technology as “technism,” which is a utopian belief that technology is humanity’s great savior, a replacement for God offering us true happiness and transcendence. In a high-tech world, where it may seem we can solve every problem and have everything under control, the one true Creator God becomes unnecessary and irrelevant. We can seek relational connectivity through our phones, watches, and computers which demand our attention by notifications that pull us away from real people right in front of us. Our social media presence can define our self-worth, self-esteem, and mood. As technology makes more and more of life easy and seemingly under our control, we veer away from difficulty and challenge, including real relationships, probing philosophical questions, and much-needed introspection.
Technological innovation is a vital part of our creation mandate to be fruitful and exercise dominion. However, as followers of Jesus in our Monday world, it is important that we are discerning about how subtle and constant technological innovation often comes to us with numbing distractions, better profit margins, and utopian promises. We place our ultimate trust not in technology but in God.
One of the most alluring ways we can be wooed into technological idolatry is with artificial intelligence (AI). As AI advances, we can let it push God off the thrones of wisdom, creation, morality, and our identity. As a society we may drift toward taking all our questions and problems, big and small, to machine learning and ignore God and his Word. We may befriend artificial agents and give them more of ourselves than we do our incarnational, human relationships. We may try to ease the angst in our souls with AI balm rather than the boundless love of God. We need discernment in using AI.
Reshaping the World
Clearly, AI is one of the most dynamic technological tools of our time. An AI bot was asked, “What does AI technology mean for humanity?” It responded, “In the annals of human history, there are moments that stand out as turning points, where the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. The discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the harnessing of electricity—all of these were moments that transformed human civilization, altering the course of history forever. And now we stand at the brink of another such moment as we face the rise of a coming wave of technology which includes both advanced AI and biotechnology. Never before have we witnessed technologies with such transformative potential, promising to reshape the world in ways that are both awe-inspiring and daunting.”[i]
AI brings with it a lot of hope and hype as well as heart-arresting concern. Computers are becoming faster and smarter, inventing tools and technology that we cannot fully foresee or fathom.[ii] How AI itself will evolve and continue to change our lives is unknown. Its potential for good and bad outcomes and unintended consequences are up for thoughtful debate. Yet we can be confident that AI is increasingly becoming a part of our everyday lives and our work. In my workplace, I have a digital research assistant available on my computer that makes an entire world of knowledge available to me. AI can also craft emails, write blog posts, and compose journal articles in my vocabulary style and voice. In many workplaces, AI assists in writing policy, in financial management, and in formulating strategy. AI-driven robots are present in our places of work, especially in manufacturing and warehousing. It is making self-driving vehicles possible. Physicians and mental health professionals use AI to assist them in diagnosing a patient and formulating treatments and patient care plans. This technology is ubiquitous in our ever-changing workplaces.
Like any technology, AI brings with it both possibilities and perils. One of the early developers of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, offers his perspective: “I believe this coming wave of technology is bringing human history to a turning point. If containing it is impossible, the consequences for our species are dramatic, potentially dire. Equally, without its fruits we are exposed and precarious.”[iii] Although Suleyman paints AI as both good and bad, he sees this advancing technology as vital for human flourishing moving forward. He has called for regulatory oversight and containment to mitigate the possibility of grave misuse of AI, such as the evaporation of privacy, deepfake identities, and the destructive potential of its weaponization.
Artificial intelligence will also cause significant workplace disruption. New economic efficiencies as well as new costs will emerge. Almost no job sector will be unaffected. Many jobs will either go away completely or be greatly altered. Although many jobs will be lost or significantly transformed, it is a hopeful possibility that many new less tedious, more creative jobs will be created. Yet it is also possible, because of the sweeping nature of AI and its exponential humanlike capacities, that a more massive economic disruption will take place.[iv]
The Emotional Toll of Technology
AI brings new possibilities and new challenges. Emotional stress and organizational turmoil can be expected during times of disruptive technological transition. Artificial intelligence also presents ethical challenges involving intellectual property and plagiarism. How does proper human attribution and monetization of human creativity and value take place in an AI world? How might machine learning perpetuate social biases and inequality? How will we build an ethical AI?
Many mental health professionals also express concern about the consequences of AI in further isolating people as a result of reduced embodied connection. As followers of Jesus we will need to be discerning about the ethical use of AI and become advocates for preventing its misuse. We must not attempt to replace God with AI. We must nurture incarnational relationships as a priority.
If there is one thing we can be sure of in our Monday worlds, it is technological change. But we don’t have to face those changes alone, nor do we need to fear. What we need to do is wisely embrace change by coming to our risen Savior, who is prepared to help us navigate those changes as his redemptive agents.
[i] Suleyman, Coming Wave, 3–4.
[ii] Some definitional clarification can be helpful. Artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) describes machines that are really good at one thing. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) describes machines that are as good at humans on many fronts. Artificial super intelligence (ASI) describes the possibility of machines becoming better than humans at virtually everything.
[iii] Suleyman, Coming Wave, 7.
[iv] Mustafa Suleyman evaluates AI’s job disruption this way: “On job loss and unemployment—technological unemployment, tech-related displacement—in the past technological changes produced new jobs. But what if new job displacement systems scale the ladder of human cognitive ability itself, leaving nowhere new for labor to turn. If the coming wave really is as general and wide-ranging as it appears, how will humans compete? What if a large majority of white-collar tasks can be performed more efficiently by AI?” Suleyman, Coming Wave, 178.
