The Hidden Danger of Artificial Intelligence
By Tom Gilbreath
Not long ago, most people could instantly access scores of phone numbers from memory. Today, we barely know our own numbers. We don't need to remember phone numbers anymore because our phones remember them for us. People could once do tremendous amounts of math in their heads. Now most of us leave that to our devices because they are quick, accurate, and, mostly, because it requires less effort.
While visiting friends in the Dallas area, I lamented that I had become completely dependent on GPS to move about the city. One of them said that this may get worse as artificial intelligence proliferates. He worried that AI could become a mental crutch. The more we use AI; the more human intelligence could atrophy. Like everything else, the brain must be used in order to stay fit. It must be exercised.
With a smile, my friend added, “But I don't think AI is the antichrist.”
“No,” I said, “but it may be his best friend.”
Revelation 13 prophesies that the world will one day worship Antichrist and eventually hand him control of the global economy. There are many possible reasons for this, including a sense of economic desperation. AI may also play a role in conditioning humanity, making people more compliant and dumbing them down. Across a broad spectrum of society, we already see test scores falling even as test designers lower the difficulty of those tests.
With NeuraLink, Elon Musk hopes to connect AI directly to the brain. This could make humans fantastically smart — or at least make them seem that way. But it’s probably many years away, and its method of mitigating the problem would make the actual brain even weaker. It would be an internal crutch rather than an external one.
Put your leg in a cast for only a few weeks and what happens? It atrophies. You lose strength and finesse. Psalm 137:5 speaks of a right hand forgetting its “cunning.” Put someone’s hand in a cast for six months. Not only will it grow weak, but it will also lose its “cunning.” To gain back strength and dexterity takes hard work, preferably with a skilled physical therapist.
Like the hand confined to a cast, the brain also atrophies from lack of use. To keep the brain’s tremendous powers, use those powers. For the foreseeable future, people will still use their brains to play video games, and some of those skills carry over to the real world. But when video games become the brain's primary form of exercise, then video game makers become the primary shapers of human minds.
A bodybuilder shapes his or her body through exercise. Brain scientists have discovered that we shape our brains in the same way — by how we exercise them, including what we choose to think about. The Bible agrees. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Science calls this “brain plasticity.” We now know that the ways we use our minds, including what we choose to think about, makes physical changes to the brain and to how it operates. Philippians 4:8 admonishes us to think about things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. It says, “Think on these things.”
One of AI’s great dangers is that our brains will become ever lazier and weaker as we grow more dependent on it. This may play a role in making the world susceptible to the Antichrist. I don’t expect to be here when Antichrist shows up, but AI is already here. It is already creating in us a new dependency. Thankfully, the Bible long ago prescribed the antidote. Think about Jesus. He is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. Find mental health, comfort, and even increased mental acuity by thinking on Him.
