As I prepared to write this blog post on how we are coping with the degree to which AI is being incorporated into so many places in our lives, Microsoft CoPilot offered to write a blog post for me. It took a couple of seconds and produced a cogent essay that hit all the points that everyone before me has tried to hit. It even used larger fonts for paragraph headings.
If I serve you what was done for me, I could move on in my day to other things and claim that AI saved me time and money. If I were anxious about my ability to create an essay or my grasp of the big issues, I might feel relieved that I had escaped a difficult task. At the same time, I would have neglected the opportunity to speak as a human being, to have said things that you might not otherwise have heard.
Can AI Be Used For Good?
When researchers use AI to model how protein molecules are shaped in three dimensions and how they will interact with potential medications, they can accomplish thousands of hours of work in moments. They can bring medications to trials and save lives. It is a wonderful time to be a researcher!
So what do we ask of AI? Do we have higher ambitions than our entertainment? Do we have nobler ambitions than creating plausible lies? Do we have any real sense of what AI programs could do for us that would contribute to genuine good? (I heard about an AI program that takes on the persona of a senior adult who is a tempting target for scammers. The program leads them on for hours trying to comply but never being very good at technology so that the scammer’s time is wasted and an innocent person is spared the indignity of being mugged online.)
Coming soon to a provider near you: AI psychotherapy. You will soon be offered the chance to get psychotherapy from a computer program that draws on rules developed by psychotherapists but uses the words and concerns expressed by you. It is currently being used to train therapists who interact with AI, as a module to augment psychotherapy, and to assist in diagnosing difficult cases. Psychologists are wrestling with what they will do with the inherent bias in AI programming and who will be responsible for “mistakes” made by AI.
A Believers’ Approach To AI
The Body of Christ is famous for being years behind the curve when it comes to technological innovation. We have a reputation for resisting change and trying to hold onto our beloved traditions long after they became irrelevant. (Full disclosure: I have a land line.) But at the very beginning of Christianity, those who came before us took advantage of a brand-new technology: the book. Scrolls, tablets of clay, and pieces of wood were having to yield to the new-fangled book.
How will we use AI to become more interactive instead of more isolated? How will we dig into this emerging technology for the sake of the Good News of which we are the primary stewards? AI can give a succinct statement of the Gospel, but it will be done without relationship. Our genius is now and always has been that we have been loved, we are being loved, and we will be loved until the end.
We have the opportunity to interact with AI and use it for God’s good purposes: sharing cups of water with those who have no source of water, visiting those who are in prison (some prisons are made of iron bars, some are made of fear), and proclaiming the hope of transcendent love to those who are broken.
by Dr. Paul Suich, Parish Counselor
FPC offers a variety of counseling options through the St. Andrew Ministry under Dr. Suich’s leadership.