OPINION - Artificial intelligence and the Christian faith

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or ‘AI’ was first coined seventy years ago in 1956. However, early AI was limited. It wasn’t until the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 that ‘generative AI’ fully entered the public consciousness. Since then, we have seen rapid advances with the introduction of systems that can answer questions, write poetry, summarise documents, create pictures and even produce videos. All that is required is a simple prompt - ‘create a picture of six bishops riding bicycles through London’ - and within seconds, a suitably trained AI model produces the desired output.

This technology can feel magical because what would have taken hours of human effort can be achieved in seconds.

This technology can feel magical because what would have taken hours of human effort can be achieved in seconds. It lowers the barrier to creative expression, allowing those of us who cannot draw or paint to create images. For those who worry about asking ‘stupid questions’, it opens up the possibility of exploring ideas and areas of knowledge without embarrassment. It can sometimes feel safer exploring feelings and emotions with an AI than with another human.

AI is not without its issues, though, and many of these are well documented. There are concerns over plagiarism when the output of an AI seems remarkably similar to a human artist’s work. It is not always easy to tell whether copyright has been infringed. But when it has, action needs to be taken to ensure that artists and creators are properly compensated.

So-called ‘hallucination’ is another worry. This occurs when an AI produces an answer that looks entirely plausible, but is actually incorrect or subtlety flawed. In one example, an AI system was asked to provide information about the buses that were replacing the trains while the railway line was being repaired. It was then prompted to illustrate this information. The picture that it produced was of a bus arriving at a railway station, but running on the train tracks!

There are concerns about bias. In one case, when asked to produce images illustrating ‘success’, an AI was only able to create pictures of young white businessmen. The output never depicted women, people of colour, older people, or success in an area other than business. There are other issues besides.

It is well documented that AI takes huge amounts of electricity for power, as well as water to cool the vast data centres that AI uses. Less well known is the fact that almost all these resources are required for training such systems. If people were not forever wanting something better, more sophisticated and more advanced, and were content with the status quo, then there would be far less environmental impact. Sadly, enough never seems to be enough. This might remind us of Jesus’ parable of the man who felt the need to build bigger barns (Luke 12.13-21).

How can AI be used in a morally responsible way?

When we ask an AI system to create a picture of bishops riding bicycles through London, how does it know what a bishop or a bicycle looks like? The reason is that during the training millions, or sometimes of billions, of labelled images are needed. A typical label might read: ‘a cat on a mat’. This labelling requires vast amounts of human effort and is usually outsourced to the developing world. There young people spend many hours every simply looking through the pictures on the internet and describing them. This includes identifying the content of some of the most disturbing images. Usually the pay is very low. We are accustomed to avoiding the clothing that is manufactured in sweatshops; maybe we should be cautious about our use of this technology, too.

For Christians, these raise ethical questions about the right use of AI. How can AI be used in a morally responsible way? While there are people in the Church who are considering issues such as these, it would be good if more informed Christians entered the debate.

Equally intriguing are the theological questions that this technology raises. For Artificial Intelligence makes us pause and think about human intelligence and what it means to be made in the image of God. As we ponder this matter, two areas are worth highlighting.

First, every computer that’s ever been built – and AI systems are just sophisticated computers – work on the same basic principle. Some input is given. The computer performs some kind of processing. And an output is produced. We can depict this in a simple diagram:

Input -> Process -> Output

It is common to assess human intelligence using exactly the same paradigm. We give a student an exam question (the input), they think about it (processing) and write an essay (the output). If they do that well, then they are deemed to be intelligent.

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when we worship God, we are not doing any kind of ‘processing’; we are simply enjoying God for who God is.

However, not all human intelligence, let alone all human life, fits this pattern. When a friend comforts us in a time of distress, they may simply sit by our side, saying nothing. There is no ‘input’ or ‘output’. When we play and have fun, again there is unlikely to be any ‘input, process, output’. Again, when we worship God, we are not doing any kind of ‘processing’; we are simply enjoying God for who God is. In other words, human beings are very different from computers. So, we rejoice in the wonderful way in which God has made us – not like computers but as beings with creativity, value, morality and the ability to form deep relationships with one another and with God.

Second, imagine that you have spent your entire life in a vast library. (You will have to suspend your disbelief for a moment, and not worry too much about how you survived or learned to read.) Within the library is every book that has ever been written. There are children’s books that tell stories about eating ice-cream on holiday at the seaside. There are travel journals that describe rivers, rainforests and great oceans. There are romantic novels that talk of unrequited love and the joy of the ‘happily ever after’. There are even spiritual works that go deep into the realities of faith in God.

It takes a flesh-and-blood person who has walked this earth to truly know the meaning of things.

Now imagine that you have read all these books, but you have never been outside the library. You can write lucid text about beaches, oceans, lovers and prayer because you have read about them. But, how much do you really understand about real life? Do you know the taste of ice-cream? Do you grasp what it is like to swim in a river, fall in love, or find communion with God? Of course not! You have only read the words in the books.

This is how AI models exist. They can use the words with great fluency, but they don’t understand the lived reality. It takes a flesh-and-blood person who has walked this earth to truly know the meaning of things.

This, of course, takes us to the very heart of the Christian faith. Because at the core of what we believe is the man Jesus who became a human being and lived among us. This is the truth of the Incarnation.

There is much more that could be said. In summary, Artificial Intelligence is a marvellous, if flawed, tool which opens up exciting possibilities. However, it is an area which needs to be approached wisely in the light of Christian ethical and moral teaching. Perhaps most surprising, thinking creatively about AI, may help us to understand some of our Christian theology and beliefs in a new light.