The industrial revolution changed humanity. Jobs were created and inventions enhanced mankind’s daily life. However, “The official numbers of injuries and workplace fatalities are staggering. Many of the accidents were catastrophic in nature [-] collapsed mines, derailed trains, factory explosions, and others. Between 1870 and 1910 there were over 10,000 major explosions from inside America’s factories.”¹ The industrial revolution enabled us to drive across country and see distant loved ones. Nevertheless, it also enabled vehicles to be used as getaway cars. With revolution comes good and bad possibilities. The same is true for the technological (or AI) revolution that has descended upon us.

Recently, I read a good portion of 2084 and the AI Revolution by the well-known Christian mathematician John C. Lennox. The book was helpful for a beginner like me to begin to grasp the AI conversation—the blessing, the concerning, and the uncertain. AI is a complex world to enter into and understand. How might we as a church begin to process this revolution and lead our children through it? Here are some pastoral reflections for the church to consider.

AI Wants your Attention

AI technology is meant to help people, but it also wants from people. What does it want? Your attention. Your attention provides data and data means revenue. And such offering of data through attention means risk. Lennox states,

“Data that is harvested from us can be used not only to inform us but to control us, and the ethical questions are obvious: Who controls such projects and who owns the data they generate? Big brother may not need a totalitarian regime to empower him if we simply open the door and invite him in. Indeed, it may be too late, for he is already here.”²

As we give AI our attention and they collect our data, where does that data go? How is it used? AI is still new and does not have an ethical system worked into it for the public, at least not one thought through and vetted by outside parties. One could argue that it does have an ethical system—the worldview of its operators.

Lennox demonstrates some of the possibilities of AI gathering our data—surveillance capitalism and surveillance communism. As surveillance capitalism, AI can recognize patterns and “tighten their grip on our behaviors and identities.”³ As surveillance communism, AI can be “implemented to create, in communist speak, a ‘culture of sincerity’ in a ‘trustworthy society.’” This type of society is one where the government uses AI to watch its people and credits them for doing things it approves and discredits them for things it doesn’t. It is a social credit system that allows you to buy, travel, and reap rewards for government approval. Lennox says,

“As your points accumulate, you are granted more and more perks—access to a wider range of jobs and wider access to contracts, mortgage opportunities, reduced utility bills, school placements for children, goods, travel possibilities, even reduced rental costs for bicycles.’⁴

China is already implementing their version of this. And this is not the government acting on its own, but in conjunction with tech corporations.

AI wants our attention for a range of reasons and possibilities. And their power to influence, shape, and maybe even control our attention are not a distant reality, but one our kids will grow up in. Thus, it is wise for the church to process how she gives her attention to AI. At a basic level our attention needs to be more than aimless; it needs to be purposeful. AI doesn’t get to direct my attention, but God does, and His word guides my interactions with it.

AI Socially Impacts Us

Another AI project and concern is virtual reality. Through the metaverse,

“VR [virtual reality] and AR [augmented reality] with social media…create a space of multilevel interaction that imitates reality but also, for instance, supports digital games and facilitates real-world commercial transactions using blockchain security.”⁵

People will be able to escape the realities of the world to create a reality of their own.

A virtual world is not problem free. Walter Pasquarelli states,

“[O]ur ability to be able to do well is based on our resilience and ability to learn how to solve problems and overcome obstacles. If we were able to immerse ourselves into an ideal synthetic world with no obstacles or difficulties, it is fair to assume that it will have a tremendous impact on our ability to thrive in the ‘real world,’ let alone manage relationships with perfectly imperfect human beings.”⁶

Thus, a virtual world can diminish our ability to function in our actual world.

Furthermore, a virtual world can dilute real meaning. Jacques Ellul said (in 1990!),

“‘Technical games correspond very well to Pascal’s diversions. They divert us radically from any preoccupation with meaning, truth, or values and thus plunge us into the absurd. They take us out of reality and make us live in a totally falsified world. This is for me the greatest danger that threatens us as a result of technical development.’”⁷

AI creates a world where you can be whatever you want to be with whomever you want it, but it fails to help you become what you need to be. It changes us socially and not for the better. As a church, we need real relationships with real people. We need more than two-sense (eyes and ears) involvement in a pretend world, we need five-sense involvement in God’s real world. With AI chatbots that can offer pornography, we need elders who can offer wisdom and true guidance.

Let us remember and live out Hebrews 10:24–25. ²⁴And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Going Forward

The AI revolution has an uncertain future but one where many players and billions of dollars are being invested. Opinions vary as well as goals. Some are even predicting a future where humans and technology converge in the evolutionary chain.⁸

As the church, it is important for us to maintain our humanity. We are God’s image bearers who need Him and one another. We never want to escape God’s world and go to another. We want to live under God’s rule in whatever place we are blessed to be. AI is another thing in the world that people, and especially parents, must engage with in biblical wisdom and love for one another. We are dealing with something much bigger than we know. Lord, please help us to navigate and protect our children.