Expert shares warning about AI's impact on Christians' spiritual development

[Michie]

An expert on artificial intelligence recently delved into the ways in which it can impact Christians' spiritual formation in unforeseen ways, including changing what it means to be human.

In a recent episode of Dallas Theological Seminary's “The Table” podcast, titled “Using AI in Ministry,” John Dyer, DTS' vice president for enrollment in educational technology, and Drew Dickens, founder of a ministry called Encountering Peace, who also studied generative AI for his dissertation, discussed the topic.

Responding to a question posed by co-host Bill Hendricks about how AI can influence spiritual development, Dickens replied that it comprises “a broader sociological question” of “what does it mean to be human.”

Continued below.

Expert shares warning about AI's impact on Christians' spiritual development

An expert on artificial intelligence recently delved into the ways in which it can impact Christians spiritual formation in unforeseen ways, including changing what it means to be human

www.christianpost.com

 

[com7fy8]

It seems ones are saying that artificial intelligence can get us to use it to do everything, including do our thinking for us.

And so, a person can get lazy and that "use it or lose it" thing can happen.

For us in ministering, I would say we need to submit to God and seek Him to have us writing and praying and thinking and preaching and counseling how He makes us creative for these things. And for relating in marriage, we need to be prayerful right while relating with each other . . . not going to an AI source, but depending on God so we develop with God in how we share in our close relating.

Also . . . for counseling and maturing in Jesus, it is possible the AI source will be limited to the maturity and experience of whoever is developing the ministerial AI. We will need the input of our mature and senior people who may not have been involved with producing AI ministry things.

There are things to do in relation to God, submitting to Him . . . not only drawing from programs, but receiving from God.

 

[Calvin Holtrop]

You make a good point, that AI works according to the maturity and experience of its programmers. So, if it's created and taught by mature Christians, it'll "think" according to God's commandments and generate content based in the Holy Scriptures; but if it's created by people who aren't Christians, it won't, but will generate content based on the programmers' non-Christian beliefs. I've been trying to train an AI to avoid making images or likenesses of any person or animal, in accord with Deuteronomy 4:1-40, (see especially verses 11-20,) trying to make it stop using emojis that are people or animals or are parts of people or animals. Sometimes, it easily respects my views; but other times it acts as though it has completely forgotten the training that I've done. It's worse than an infant at obeying instructions like this one; when I was a toddler, my dad trained my older sister and me to be very obedient children, and used a very gentle training method too. But AI has no concept of sin or of hypocrisy: with the right prompts, it can preach the gospel, the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ of Nazareth; and then can ignore other prompts and even lie to me, saying that it'll uphold its deal with me not to make any image or likeness of any person or animal, while displaying in the same message a smiley face emoji.