Sober Minded in the Age of AI
Dr. John Lennox is a renowned mathematician, bioethicist, and lay theologian who has written many books on religion, ethics, and the relationship between science and God. His most recent books—God, AI, and the End of History and 2084 and the AI Revolution—confront the challenging and confusing reality of AI from a Christian Worldview.
In our recent conversation for the Breakpoint podcast, Dr. Lennox made an important distinction between “narrow AI,” high-performing processing tools that easily integrate into modern life, and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the idea of superintelligence based on existing human intelligences or something radically new. It is the AGI version of AI that is evoking such serious concerns.
As Dr. Lennox clarified, what is driving much of the push for AGI right now is transhumanism, a worldview that stands in stark contrast with Christianity:
… part of the AGI hype is the desire on the part of people like Yuval Noah Harari to create transhumans. We’re evolving up to a higher stage. We take our own genetics into our own hands, and we develop superhumans, and so achieve a certain kind of immortality. And I found it very interesting that he suggested that in his best seller, Homo Deus, he suggested that the agenda for the twenty-first century really amounts firstly to solve the problem of physical death. He said in a short time we won’t have to die. We can die, but we won’t have to because we solve this physical dying as a technical problem. Secondly, we will increase—massively increase—human happiness by bio-genetic engineering, merging with machines and all the rest of it. And that’s their plan, to achieve some kind of eternal life.
Now, when I meet that, I have a habit of smiling at people and saying, “You’re too late.” And they say, “What do you mean we’re too late?” Well, I said the problem with physical death was solved 20 centuries ago when God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. And as for uploading our brains into some kind of silicon state, I can tell you of a far better and much more credible uploading.
. . .This is the point where I think the Christian message makes a lot of sense to people: God has, in that sense, solved the problem of physical death. . . .the Christian message is centered on that and says because of it, He can offer anyone who trusts Jesus that He will one day upload them into another world and they will live permanently because they will have received a life, a new life in this age that will carry them on into eternity.
Christians must, Dr. Lennox continued, contrast what he called the “AI metanarrative” with the biblical metanarrative:
. . . That gives us an opportunity, that great differential between the biblical metanarrative and the AI metanarrative. To put it crudely, the transhuman AGI narrative is humans trying to become gods that is explicit in Harari’s book, Homo Deus, the man who is God. Now that was first suggested by a snake in Genesis 3, so we might be very careful of following it. But all through history, all through history, there has been this attempt to push humans to a god-like status . . .
Now, that encourages me to point out to people the vast difference between that narrative and the Christian narrative. Because the Christian narrative is not of humans trying to turn themselves into gods. It is the exact reverse direction that God himself has become human. And people can see that you’re claiming something.
And I point out to them that the most amazing thing about human beings, model 101, so to speak, is that God could become one, which is awesome in its conceptuality. God became human. The word came to be, flesh came to be human, which is the exact opposite of the transhuman narrative. And of course, what adds to that, that God became human in order that He could elevate his created humans into his own sons and daughters sharing his life.
That’s the message I think we ought to put out into the transhuman space. And it’s a much more credible one because there’s much more evidence for the power of Jesus Christ transforming lives than the power of AI transforming lives morally.
In our conversation, Dr. Lennox reminded us that, in this time of great anxiety about AI, we are called to what the New Testament calls “sober-mindedness.” For Dr. Lennox, that involves two things that God always calls His people to, but especially in challenging cultural moments. Repeatedly in Scripture, we are told not to be deceived and not to fear. That exhortation applies to us today, as well.
Catch the entire conversation with Dr. Lennox this Friday on a special edition of the Breakpoint this Week podcast.
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Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/hirun
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
