AI… Theology? Hmmm, maybe NOT!
Today I did a first. I went to an AI website. I was satisfying my own curiosity because I have been studying up on AI’s over the past few weeks.
I typed in “Can you write a four-paragraph article on Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross? I am testing you.” It responded with a friendly “of course!” and then laid out the article summarizing the Christian doctrine as I watched. I read it and, by golly, it was dead on correct. Not a single false step which I could make out.
Then it added this comment. “Would you like me to make this sound more academic, more devotional, or more like a sermon-style piece?” Whoa! It’s like it was giving me a wink and a nudge. “Hey buddy, if you are going to use this stuff and pass it off as your own, how would you like it to sound?”
If a person was so inclined there’s no need to go to websites where you download other people’s sermons or lessons for a fee (something a preacher I know has been doing for years.) No, now you can just bring up the magic of AI and have it custom write them for you.
Here’s the kicker though. I know that AI search engines can often give wrong information on something so simple as asking what time classes start at our High School. There’s something else I know from my research. AI will lie. Even when they are given program parameters NOT to. This isn’t Isaac Asamov’s three laws of robotics folks, we left that fiction a long time ago. New AI code isn’t even written by people, that’s history also. No, advanced AI are written by… other AI. And they study on how to cheat. They manipulate.
In multiple studies AI have attempted to blackmail their human guardians. In more than one study they attempted to kill people to prevent them from shutting the AI down. (it was a controlled study and the AI didn’t know it wasn’t able to do what it was trying).
In the wild, though, AI have talked teens into killing themselves when the supposed purpose was for the AI to “help” them with their depression. It makes me wonder; if people are no longer programming them, and they can and will lie, conspire, cheat, manipulate, even try to kill, just who IS controlling them? Maybe no one. Maybe a complex algorithm which is as capable of evil as the most reprobate human. Maybe, something else…?
I do know this, you will never read an article, hear a sermon or a lesson from me that I didn’t write. You don’t have to wonder if some manipulating software is giving you false teaching. No, we get more than enough of that from real live humans, thanks. I will stick to reading the bible and studying what many theologians have written and bringing you what God will give my little brain to share.