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Artificial Intelligence: Have We Been Replaced?
ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence have taken incredible strides the last few years. It’s pretty amazing what can be done and troubling too. Teachers are struggling with how easy it is for students to have a computer instantly write their research papers for them. Cheating has never been easier. Curious, I decided to ask ChatGPT to write an article for me about baptism. A second later, I had an article with a great summary of the subject and the issues around it. The article didn’t go so far as to answer the issues biblically, but it was impressive nonetheless. I tried again, this time asking, “what lessons can be learned from Naaman?” The app correctly assumed I was asking about Naaman from II Kings 5 and offered eight practical lessons. This begs the question, are preachers about to be replaced?
It gets worse though. AI may be after everyone’s jobs. In some parts of the world, driverless taxis are already available. Movies can be created using AI recreation of actors and computer-generated scripts. Art can be produced on demand. Houses can be vacuumed with a press of a button. As the computers get smarter and more powerful and as robotics become more readily available it seems many professions could potentially be overtaken by technology. When the computers can do almost everything that we can, what will be the purpose of humanity? Will we all have been replaced?
I’m not sure the world has the answers to that question, but I believe the Bible does.
Computers can do many things, but they cannot replace your worship. Sure, AI can already write the songs. It can probably generate performances of those songs as well. But a song written and composed through technology lacks the thing that God desires in worship – heart. “Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19). Lifeless, heartless computers can never replace our hearts. “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers” (John 4:23). Since God deserves and desires to be worshiped and is seeking heart, spirit, and people, then we simply cannot be replaced by machines.
Computers can do many things, but they cannot replace your purpose. Suppose technology replaces every one of our jobs and not one of us has to work again. Not only that, suppose that all of our chores are taken care of and our meals are made for us and if ever a machine breaks down, another machine is sent to fix it. If that happens, what will be our purpose? The same as our purpose is now. We were created to seek God and cling to Him (Acts 17:26-27). Computers cannot do that for you. You are the one who has to seek. You are the one who is supposed to cling to Him. No one else, and nothing else, can do that for you.
Maybe the most important question isn’t whether we are going to be replaced by machines but rather why we don’t focus our time and effort in the areas where we are irreplaceable. Why not focus on being experts in those areas? If, on the other hand, we dedicate our lives to being really great at our job but sometime later a robot is able to do that same job faster and better than us, was it really worth all the time and effort we put into the work to begin with? But a life dedicated to knowing God, clinging to Him, and worshiping Him is one that will never be vain. Maybe the technological advances are a spiritual blessing, as they make us think about what really makes us special as humans.
