Our world will soon be flooded with essays, poetry, artwork, videos, and even music no one has created. Much of that work will be better than the art created by humans, and many people will think that our world will be a better place because of it, but if we have better content and more hollow people, we have taken a step backward.
There are countless functional uses for AI. From seeking answers to questions to editing a marketing e-mail, AI has benefits, but none of them will help form us into people of virtue. As we speak about AI, we must couch all the benefits in utilitarian language. It seems impossible to talk about the uses of AI in the language of virtue. However, we were created to be people who pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful. AI will never be able to help us do this. All AI can do is synthesize what others have done and regurgitate it in new ways. Eventually, as it becomes more prevalent, it will begin synthesizing its own work, making it less human.
Only humans are created in God’s image, and only we can pursue a life of virtue. Aiming at the true, the good, and the beautiful is impossible without using our God-given creativity and intelligence. Much of this pursuit involves struggling through intellectual and creative processes.
Take, for example, the process of writing. We rarely ever sit down to write thoughts that we have fully formed in our minds. Instead, what usually happens is that we have an idea, and as we write, we continue thinking, and those thoughts grow in clarity. The same goes for artwork and music. What we create usually has a slightly, or often significantly, different character than what we sat down to make. The process of creating regularly takes on a life of its own. Through creating, we often move nearer to a life of virtue, provided our aims were right when we sat down to begin.
Some people may argue that AI is simply a new tool that mankind will learn to wield—like when the nail gun was invented to improve upon the hammer. We are still creating; we are simply doing it more effectively now. However, this analogy falls short. A better analogy would be replacing the hammer with a robotic designer and carpenter. In this analogy, very little thinking is needed, and certainly, no effort is put into swinging a hammer. The mind, body, and soul grow dormant.
For now, all AI technologies are building off the creative work of others. If you were to ask it to write a 500-word devotion on John 3:16 in the voice of Charles Spurgeon, it could only do so because Spurgeon spent years pursuing the truth in a good and beautiful way. It uses Spurgeon’s work to produce a new devotion with a similar feel. Meanwhile, the person who typed in the prompt, experienced zero growth compared to if they had done the work themselves. They also do not possess a work for which they claim authorship. It is an empty reward.
For the Christian, we are to pursue godliness. That is the ultimate life of virtue, as God is the ultimate truth, goodness, and beauty. With all its utilitarian functions, AI may help us produce content, but it cannot improve our lives in anything more than superficial ways. It may be able to flood a website full of attractive content that gets millions of hits and makes the facilitator a significant amount of money. Still, it will all be done with about as much creativity as someone working an assembly line. Working assembly lines may sometimes be necessary to feed the family, but it never fulfills the heart’s desires.
I am not anti-AI. I use it for some practical purposes, but I do not use it, nor ever plan to use it, to write articles on this site. If I did, the writings would be better than they are now, but you would have been duped into believing that these writings are the creative efforts of a man working through his thoughts as he pursues a life of godliness. However, if AI wrote them, they would only be the output of a machine that mimics the writings of a man seeking a life of godliness, and the man himself would be a shell. Or worse, if he were to claim the writings as his own, he would be moving away from a life of virtue. He would be stepping away from the true, the good, and the beautiful. He would be becoming less godly.
-D. Eaton
The Fight of Faith 