AMANDA DUVALL | GUEST

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere—in the news, in my internet searches and online shopping, and even my personal conversations. The advances and changes are coming so fast, I teeter between growing excited about how this tool will help me get more done and spiraling down a rabbit hole over all the ways technology is changing the world as we know it.

In my limited usage, I’ve already found AI powerful and useful for a variety of tasks. AI has helped me get my one-year-old to sleep better, research for and edit work quicker, gain ideas to treat odd health symptoms, plan travel, and more. AI can do it all—in mere seconds!

Still, there are so many moral and ethical concerns surrounding AI, regarding privacy and data, content and regulation, intellectual property rights, threats to creative work, relational confusion, and massive disruptions in education, the economy, and health care. It is easy to give in to fear and frankly, I prefer to delegate these concerns as “out there,” for someone else to unravel. I am just a normal nobody trying to keep up and figure out how to use AI to make life a little bit more manageable.

Then, I remember the day I got my Facebook account. As a college freshman sitting in my dorm room, suddenly I was connected to college students across my campus and the country. Social media opened a world of possibilities, what could go wrong? We know so much more now than we did then about how social media affects our brains, our ability to focus, and our mental health, to name a few issues.

Haven’t we learned our lesson, then? I’m not sure. Too often, we are so desperate to adopt a new technology with the promise of optimizing our lives without considering, “just because I can use it for all these things, should I? We need to be discerning, not just about how AI is changing our world, but also how it is changing us.

With all this change spinning out of our control, we cling to the promise, “the Word of the Lord remains forever” (1 Peter 1:25). We can turn to Him in this, and in every situation. Here are three questions, grounded in what God tells us is good and true, to ask when using AI.

How is AI changing my dependence on God?

Some of the most disconcerting headlines around AI are those promising a god-like superintelligence. AI feeds the human notion that we can be all-knowing and that such knowledge would fulfill us in a way God never could.

Sound familiar? It is as old as the original sin in the Garden, as we too are tempted to doubt God’s Word and desire what He has withheld. To be human is to be needy and limited. And sometimes, when turning to AI for a problem or challenge, it could be because we want more knowledge or control than what God has allowed.

There are so many examples in Scripture of good weakness— the kind that sends us to our knees, forces our reliance on God, and gives glory where glory belongs, to Christ alone. It is no small thing to say with Paul, “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:19). Yet, this is the very God-dependence we were created to have.

Let’s commit to a simple pause to pray before we prompt on weightier subjects and ask the Spirit to reveal our hearts’ motivations in using this tool. Because AI is only that— a tool— but we can easily turn to it for much more. The true peace and security we seek is only found in bringing every concern to God (Phi. 4:6).

How is AI changing my relationship to the Body of Christ?

With my first child (pre-AI), I often talked with other moms about struggles or concerns. Now, it is easy to ask an AI about all manner of things— sleep, feeding, etc.— and get a reply immediately.

The struggles over naptime or potty training or picky eating may seem so small and inconsequential but going to AI instead of a friend did change my experience of relationships. I missed laughing with other moms about the crazy things we do to get our kids to nap or feeling such gratitude when a friend checked in on me with a coffee because she knew I was struggling.

And perhaps at an even deeper level it is good for me to be vulnerable and humble before others and receive their help. This is one important way we experience grace, as members of One Body who tangibly love and care for each other in our need (1 Cor. 12:12-27).

We fool ourselves when we think all we need is more information. We need each other. AI is not the Body and it won’t ever be a substitute for it. AI may be helpful, but it can’t give a hug when we are feeling defeated. It can’t bring our requests before God. It can’t be present with us in hardship. Let’s be aware of the subtle ways relying on AI, instead of a flesh-and-blood friend who can represent the hands and feet of Christ, might be creating a shallower experience of the Body.

How is AI changing the fruit of my life?

One of the great promises of AI is that we can forgo the process for a result— it’s a quick fix, an easy answer, or a task completed with minimal mental or emotional investment. Of course, there are times when this is an appropriate asset.

But AI can’t grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. It might give us helpful answers sometimes, even pulling wise advice from good resources, but it can’t produce wisdom in us. Let’s be cautious about outsourcing God-given opportunities for growing in Christ-likeness because we don’t want to wrestle through a hard question or walk the slow path of obedience and faithfulness.

This is not about legalism or forcing ourselves to take the hardest path forward out of an attempt to earn our righteousness. If we are in Christ, we already received His righteous record. And the purpose of our lives is not optimization or efficiency or productivity, but to be conformed into greater likeness of Christ (Romans 8:28-29) So, we will reap what we sow, and it is worth asking ourselves, when using AI, am I sowing to my own flesh, or to the things of the Spirit? (Gal. 6:7-9)

So, let’s get practical, and say we have a difficult relationship with a co-worker and we need to have a conversation about some conflict or sticking point. We pop open our favorite AI application and enter in some prompts about the co-worker, the situation, and ask for advice about how to email her or broach the conversation and even do a practice interaction.

It goes well. So, we use it again and again. The relationship seems to have improved, or at least it’s taking less mental and emotional energy from us, so what harm is done? Well, maybe nothing.

But maybe we are missing out on the opportunity to depend on the Lord inside of something uncomfortable. We are no longer bringing it to Him in prayer, and maybe we stopped talking about it with our spouse, who now misses the opportunity to pray for us, or lean on the Lord in being patient with us as we process through the hard relationship. Perhaps we have the “right” answer for conflict resolution but not the patience or humility or long-suffering we might otherwise have gained.

Ultimately, moving forward, our lives are not going to be an “either/or” reality. AI is here, and it is useful for many good purposes. Many of us are already using it for our jobs and daily lives. We will each need to discern the answer to these questions with the Lord, and hopefully alongside our local church community.

As AI advances into every area of our lives, we will surely be swimming upstream. Yet the community of believers will have something attractive to offer a watching world— a reality where being human is acceptable, needing each other is beautiful, and who we become is more important than what we produce.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash