1. We trade wonder for efficiency
It’s like we’re in a race to trade away the very things that make us most human. In our obsession with efficiency, we’re increasingly outsourcing creative acts – writing, composing, illustrating, designing – to machines. Our capacity to create beauty – expressing ourselves through stories, music and images – is one of the clearest easy we reflect how we are created in God’s image. And now we’re giving that up?
Most AI-generated art isn’t even that good or inspiring, and most of it is literally derivative – cobbled together from vast databases of existing work. However, the quality will continue to improve. When it does, will we even notice what we’ve lost?
Real artists – designers, songwriters, painters, poets – are finding it harder and harder to make a living, not because their work is less valuable, but because it’s undervalued in a world whose gods are efficiency and profit. We are racing to find a way to innovate our way out of inspiration.
In the words of Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi: “If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
2. AI is good at pretending
Just yesterday, ChatGPT confidently declared I (Josh) have an Master of Divinity from Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary (I do not) and inferred my Myers-Briggs and Enneagram types based on my “writing style, ministry focus and professional storytelling approach.” This is also a stretch, considering I adapt my writing voice to my audience and only share about the relevant parts of how I approach ministry.
The problem is that these confidently-stated inaccuracies are often surrounded by truth. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve asked ChatGPT, “Is that true?” and it responds, “Actually, no, it isn’t.”
I’ve come to realize that AI is very much like that annoying co-worker whose mantra is “Fake it ’til you make it.” Never be afraid to challenge an idea AI confidently puts forward as a fact – we need to stay curious and critical.
3. AI is here to stay
Sometimes my nine-year-old kid brings up AI, and, based on what he hears at school, some of the messaging he’s receiving is . . . off. Like “stranger danger” in past decades, it’s time for parental figures to develop a new kind of literacy, one that balances caution with competence.
Like it or not, we are amid a profound rewiring of Western society during which AI is being embedded at a fundamental level. I have teacher-friends who are no longer telling kids AI is banned from their school work. Instead, they are now teaching them how to use it intelligently and see it for what it is – a fallible tool to be mastered.
4. AI can be used for good – if we stay human
Part of my job at Mennonite Central Committee is responding to a mandate to help French- and Spanish-speaking communities connect with MCC’s work, which involves developing a system for translating our website, MCC.org. Due to the sheer volume of content that’s posted every day, we are developing a workflow that involves DeepL – an AI-powered translation service.
Although we are still very much at the front end of this process (most of the website is still just in English), this month we took a big step forward and hired a uniquely qualified, quadralingual staff person to oversee website translation. Very importantly, a central part of their role is to ensure every bit of content translated by AI is accurate, authentic and shaped by a human’s touch.
Having worked for MCC just over a year, I can attest that MCC’s relief, development and peace work is impactful. The stories I help share are a testament to what happens when an organized group of people strive to be Christ’s hands and feet, both where they are and around the world. Crossing the language barrier so these hopeful stories can be accessible to more people is a good thing and, in itself, an act of peacemaking . . . and AI (under human subordination) will help us accomplish that.
5. Faith communities can be an oasis
Despite the relatively short time AI has been available to the general public, there is already a growing cry: “Stop putting AI in everything!” Many people also have a visceral reaction against AI-generated content once they realize that’s what they’re consuming.
In an increasingly artificial world, churches don’t need to compete with or deploy the latest tech. Instead, they can lean more deeply into their 2,000-year-old tradition of creating space for community. A commitment to authenticity – through singing and serving together, shared meals, prayer, fellowship and discipleship – and rejecting the notion AI will deliver us a better encounter with the Divine may continue to offer the world the one thing that resists being commodified: the human experience.
After all, the gospel was never meant to be optimized. It was meant to be lived.
