When the Created Tries to Become the Creator

There is so much discussion at the moment about the warnings and potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

We hear concerns about increasingly autonomous AI, about how rapidly the technology is advancing, and even warnings from some of the very people involved in developing it about where unchecked advancement could lead.

And I understand those concerns.

I also use AI, I can see its benefits.

I can see how technology can help us research, organise thoughts, communicate, learn and accomplish things that previously took considerably more time.

So this isn't really a blog about whether AI is good or bad.

I find myself looking at it through another lens.

What if AI is simply revealing something humanity has been doing for thousands of years?

Not the advancement of technology itself, but our continual desire to create something, elevate it, place our confidence in it and eventually attempt to supersede the Creator through the things we ourselves have created.

We Have Seen This Pattern Before

When I think about humanity's pursuit of greatness, my mind goes back to Babel. Gen 11:4

“Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”

There is something fascinating about those words.

Let us make a name for ourselves.

Human ability wasn't necessarily the problem, Humans were created with intelligence, creativity and the capacity to build.

After all, if we believe we were created in the image of God, then our ability to imagine, discover, design and create should hardly surprise us.

The problem at Babel wasn't simply that people built something impressive. It was what their creation came to represent.

Look what we can do.

Look how high we can reach.

Look what humanity can accomplish.

Let us make a name for ourselves.

And thousands of years later, perhaps our towers simply look different.

Sometimes the Thing We Build Becomes the Thing We Serve

This pattern isn't limited to technology and it certainly isn't limited to people outside the Church. That would be far too easy.

When I read the New Testament accounts of the Pharisees and Sadducees, I find another confronting example.

These were religious people, they knew Scripture and they had traditions, they had systems intended to preserve what mattered. Yet particularly in Jesus' confrontations with some religious leaders, we see what can happen when human interpretation, status and tradition become so dominant that people can become blind to the very God they believe they are defending.

Jesus said in Matthew 15:6 :

“You nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.”

Christians can read those passages and think, I wouldn't want to be like the Pharisees.

But perhaps the more uncomfortable question is:

Where do I do exactly the same thing?

It could be elevating a pastor until we stop examining Scripture ourselves, or it could be becoming more attached to a denomination, movement or theological camp than to Christ. It could even be making worship music, church culture, spiritual experiences,

a ministry, a teacher or a particular way of doing things so central that we stop noticing when the created thing begins taking the place of the One it was supposed to point towards.

Humans have an extraordinary capacity to take something useful, even something good and make it ultimate.

And perhaps this is the thread that runs through all of it.

“They traded the truth of God for a lie. They worshiped and served the things that were made by man. But they did not worship and serve the God who made those things. God should be praised forever. Amen.”

Romans 1:25, ICB

I love the simplicity of those words, because the problem isn't the “thing” and perhaps that is where we need to be careful when talking about AI.

AI isn't the villain, technology isn't the villain.

The question is what place we give them.

There is a difference between using something created and placing our trust in it.

There is a difference between appreciating human ingenuity and believing human ingenuity has made the Creator unnecessary.

Perhaps that is the ancient pattern we are seeing play out again.

We create.

We become impressed by what we create.

We begin depending upon what we create.

And eventually, if we aren't careful, the created thing begins occupying a place that belongs to the Creator.

AI Isn't the Creator

What fascinates me about artificial intelligence is that ultimately it begins with us.

Human beings built the systems.

Human beings supplied the information.

Human beings designed the architecture.

Human beings continue to develop it.

And yet we ourselves are created beings.

Genesis 1:27 doesn't say humanity created itself.

It says:

“So God created mankind in his own image.”

Perhaps this is where I see an irony in our current technological race.

Nations compete.

Companies compete.

Researchers compete.

Everyone wants the next breakthrough, bigger, faster and more capable, more autonomous.

We continually push toward the question:

How far can we go?

But Scripture continually brings humanity back to another question:

Who gave you the capacity to go anywhere in the first place?

Our intelligence does not make us God.

Our creativity does not make us God.

Our technology does not make us God.

Creating something that resembles aspects of human reasoning certainly doesn't make humanity the Creator.

We remain the created creating from what has already been given.

Maybe the Warning Isn't Simply About AI

This is why I find some of the fear surrounding AI strangely revealing.

The same humanity racing to make increasingly powerful technology is simultaneously becoming frightened by what it is capable of making, perhaps there is something worth noticing in that and not as proof that technology itself is evil.

Because every technological advancement inevitably ends in destruction.

But because human history repeatedly demonstrates what happens when capability advances faster than wisdom.

Scripture repeatedly warns about pride, power, self-sufficiency and trusting in the works of our own hands.

Technology changes.

Human nature doesn't seem to change nearly as quickly.

AI may be new, the temptation behind it isn't.

We can do this ourselves.

We know what is best.

We can build higher.

We can become greater.

We don't need God.

And eventually we discover again that human knowledge has limits. The answer isn’t to stop creating, I don't believe the answer is to fear technology. Nor do I think Christians need to reject every new development simply because it is unfamiliar.

God gave humanity an extraordinary capacity to create.

Medicine is created.

Music is created.

Buildings are created.

Technology is created.

Tools can serve human beings extraordinarily well. The question for me is not simply:

Should we create?

It is:

What place does our creation occupy once we have created it?

Does it remain a tool or does it become our authority?

Does it serve humanity?

Or do humans slowly organise themselves around serving it?

Does it point us towards wonder at the intelligence woven throughout creation, or does it convince us that because we can manipulate parts of creation, we have somehow outgrown the Creator?

That distinction matters.

The Tower Keeps Changing

Perhaps Babel never really disappeared, the tower just keeps changing. At one point it may be wealth and another, Empire. Religion.

Status. Scientific achievement. Political power.

A charismatic leader.

Technology.

And now, perhaps, artificial intelligence.

The object changes, but the invitation remains remarkably similar:

Look what we can build.

And Scripture continues quietly reminding us:

Remember who gave you hands capable of building.

Remember who gave you a mind capable of thinking.

Remember who gave you a world containing the materials you manipulate.

Remember whose image you carry.

Because humanity may create astonishing things, we may discover things previous generations could barely have imagined.

AI may become vastly more capable than it is today but perhaps our greatest danger isn't that our creations become too intelligent.

Perhaps it is that

we become so impressed with what our hands have made that we forget who made us.

And maybe the question Christians should be asking isn't simply,

How frightened should we be of AI? Perhaps it is something much older:

In all our creating, advancing, striving and knowing have we remembered the Creator?