Kerby Anderson

A recent issue of The Spectator attempted to tackle the difficult questions surrounding artificial intelligence. The opening editorial was appropriately titled, “The real threat of AI is spiritual.” It provided disturbing quotes from two Silicon Valley experts.

Peter Thiel was asked whether he wanted the human race to endure. After a long awkward pause, he merely said, “I don’t know” and then acknowledged that “there’s so many questions implicit in this.” Marc Andreessen imagined a future where people leave the real world and instead spend most of their time online because the “online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling.”

The editorial concludes by reminding us, “Every great human invention brings with it both opportunity and great danger. The same printing press that made the modern world was used to produce The Communist Manifesto. The same railways that sped up journeys facilitated the Holocaust. The same nuclear reaction that Ernest Rutherford discovered would, three decades later, be used to kill up to 225,000 Japanese citizens.”

This balance is important to remember. Frequently on radio, I have quoted studies and researchers documenting how artificial intelligence in already increasing efficiency, reorganizing supply chains, and providing life-changing information.

But we should be concerned that people will end up spending more time on computers and expect artificial intelligence to do all the thinking for them. And there is also the nagging concern that a superintelligent computer won’t value human life and decide we are expendable. We need wisdom and we need to apply biblical perspectives to this new technology.