CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, July 6, 2023 – The excitement and hysteria surrounding the release of artificial intelligence (AI) chat bots to the public is, I imagine, not much different than the excitement and hysteria that accompanied the emergence of various wannabe messiahs in Israel and Judah before the coming of Jesus. Everyone was in awe, everyone wanted to be around the latest alleged chosen one, a few brave souls dared to test his mettle while the rest were content to bask in the evidence of his unearthly wisdom. Fervent followers sprang up overnight and became hard-core converts before noon the next day. Nearly everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of what nearly everyone else was catching a glimpse of and many wanted to clamber on board the messiah train without even knowing where it was going. FOMO (fear of missing out) was strong.

Long before he took center stage as the real Messiah, Jesus already had his mettle tested, and by none other than the devil himself. Scripture tells us that the devil took Jesus in spirit to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in an instant. The devil then offered Jesus the power and glory of these worldly kingdoms if he would just bow down and worship him. But Jesus had set his sights on a much higher Kingdom than those laid out before him, one that would last forever and give him substantially greater glory, and so he declined the devil’s offer, dismissing it as the worthless bauble it was.

Artificial intelligence is offering us the world in an instant. Everything we do, AI allegedly can do better, or at least faster. Humans, we are being told (by none other than AI itself), will soon be obsolete. Their only hope for survival is to bow down and submit to an AI-enabled and -dictated future. If we do so, everything we could wish for is at our command prompt.

There are distinct similarities between what Jesus was tempted with by the devil and what we are now being tempted with by AI converts. You might even say that Jesus had his AI moment when the devil tempted him with power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams. But Jesus was well aware of the devil’s tricks, and even in his fast-induced physical weakness knew to lean on God and his Word for guidance and protection.

Artificial intelligence is being hailed not only as the Next Great Thing but the Ultimate Great Thing that nothing and no-one can surpass. As such, it is shaping up to be a God replacement for those who reject God or believe he doesn’t exist. Our inferiority is being contrasted with AI’s superiority in everything from computational speed to knowledge breadth to data analysis. Need a 2000-word essay by 9 tomorrow morning? AI just wrote you one in the time it took to read this sentence. Wanna know how to defeat the Russians? AI just generated a sure-fire plan for you, complete with flow chart. Ditto with a plan to rob the local bank. It’s all just crunched and refried data.

And that’s where AI differs fatally from humans – it’s not alive and has no soul. We serve a living God and are made in his image, whereas AI can never live. It can only exist by crunching and refrying data. The very essence of what you are – a living soul – is worth more than all the kingdoms of the world combined, but AI is unable to grasp this concept because it cannot quantify a soul and therefore cannot even confirm that a soul exists. So to AI, humans are merely deeply flawed, cumbersome, and inferior fleshly computers. AI can never take souls – the essence of being human – into account and so remains blind to God-inspired human capacity. This is its Achilles heel, its inability to take God-inspired human capacity into account. You should never underestimate God-inspired human capacity. The devil did with Jesus, and he fell flat on his face.

We humans are infinitely superior to AI not because we know more or think faster (AI will always beat us at those things), but because we have an immortal soul. Our soul also makes us infinitely more valuable and enables us to achieve God-level inspiration through God’s Holy Spirit. AI is a useful tool that is programmable and self-taught to a degree, but it can never be inspired. Its lack of a soul is its Achilles heel that keeps it permanently beneath us and at our service. We should never worship or serve a machine, however wondrous its abilities. Use it, yes, appreciate it as a tool, yes, but bow down to it, never.

Whatever seeming benefits AI offers us in the short term are as nothing compared to what God is offering us if we make it all the way Home.