We need to slow down
Ethics professor Jason Thacker on how Christians should assess the rapid threats of artificial intelligence.
This past year, CBC News reported a story of a Newfoundland senior who received a panicked call from her grandson, saying he was arrested for drug possession and needs to be bailed out of jail. Jane, the grandmother, agreed and confirmed a payment of $58,000 over the phone. One major problem . . . the grandson was an imposter.
Telephone scams have been around for decades, but with the recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), scammers can now digitally clone someone else’s voice with ease, making the receiver rarely second guess the caller’s identity. “I really believed it was him,” said Jane. “You’d do anything for your grandchildren. And [the scammer] took advantage of that.”
In addition to highly sophisticated phone scams, we have seen an uptick in AI developments. AI language models like ChatGPT can write academic essays, wedding speeches and lovely poems for you. Likewise, deep fakes (videos that use AI to manipulate facial appearances) have been surfacing on social media; most of these clips convincingly put facetious words in the mouths of celebrities or politicians.
Some use this technology for generating laughter or beauty; others use it to defame their rivals, cheat the system or steal money. For better or worse, these new technological developments affect us on a daily basis and give Christians a unique opportunity to apply basic principles of our faith to a rising phenomenon.
I discussed this opportunity with Jason Thacker in a recent interview. Thacker is an author and professor of philosophy and ethics at Boyce College in Kentucky. He spends most of his time thinking about the ways in which theology and technology intersect. He also serves as a senior fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and published articles that have appeared in Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition.
CC: What made you want to study and write about the intersection of Christian ethics and technology?
Jason Thacker: I have always been comfortable around technology. But when I started working at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), I read Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari. In the book, Harari put forth a vision of technology and where we’re headed as a society. As a Christian reading this, I was struck by the materialist mindset that was driving so much of today’s technology and Harari’s lack of direct engagement with religion and philosophy, so I decided to read more of it and write more about it.
How would you define artificial intelligence?
AI is simply non-biological intelligence. It is the ability of a machine to perform specific human-like tasks at a human-like level. AI is growing in its complexity and nuance, but I don’t believe it can develop consciousness or perform at a human level of general intelligence.
How does artificial intelligence affect us on a daily basis?
You can’t avoid AI because the conveniences of our day are driven by it. Anything that is a “smart” device (smart phones, smartwatches and smart glasses) and anything digital that is personalized for you (social media or online shopping) is using some form of artificial intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, a famous computer scientist, once noted that if tomorrow, all of the machines decided to wake up and rebel against us, our money would disappear. Everything in our society – manufacturing, defense, communications, bank accounts – would grind to a halt.
Generative AI particularly poses a lot of unique challenges by creating art, text, video production, audio production, etc. Our culture has been formed around the idea that if we see an image or video of something, we assume it’s true. They are even used in criminal courts as hard evidence to adjudicate for justice. Now, we live in a time where we almost can’t even trust what we see or hear on digital platforms because of AI. These systems create a new opportunity to ask, “what if it’s not real?” and take personal responsibility to question ideas right in front of us.
How should Christians shape their perspective on AI? How can we use this perspective to face this rising phenomenon of AI-generated phone scams, deep fakes, and so on?
In Romans 12:2, Paul writes, “do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Paul is assuming we are already being conformed, which for today, means that nothing is truly neutral including our technologies. These tools have a profound shaping influence on our understanding of God, ourselves, and the world around us. We live in an increasingly digital and technological society, and we can’t avoid these things in vain, but we must engage them.
My encouragement is to slow down. The cultivation of wisdom and maturity in an age of efficient technology is a very slow process. By slowing down and asking basic questions, like “what is AI?” , “How is it forming and shaping me?” we can avoid the assumption that anything is true just because it came through audio or text.
Also, Christians need to engage these technologies not out of fear or pure optimism, but out of a very realistic hope. There is both good and bad in AI, so more responsibility is needed to use these tools for the love of God and the love of neighbour, and not to defame God or dehumanize our neighbour.
Is there any encouragement you would give to the church and the broader Christian community?
Take a holistic approach to technology and realize that the questions we are asking are not new. Ironically, our digital culture often humanizes our machines because we give them names; at the same time, we dehumanize ourselves by saying we’re nothing but a machine. This drives us back down to the question “what does it mean to be human?” a question that the Christian tradition has long debated. Is being human based on attributes and capacities? Or is humanity rooted in a status that God has given through Imago Dei, bearing the image of the almighty God?
