AI and the Incarnation

No, AI Jesus isn't the real Jesus

I received an email this week informing me I could speak to Thomas Edison. No, this wasn’t an invitation to a seance. It was an invitation to buy an AI product. “Because there is no better way to understand characters from history—like Thomas Edison—than to stand in their historically accurate location and simply ask them about their motivations, inspirations and failures. With [our product] this happens in real time.”

Color me skeptical. If I could travel back in time and speak with Thomas Edison, I would undoubtedly learn quite a bit about him. But the AI Thomas Edison is not Thomas Edison. It is a representation of him based on a digital compilation of available online information about him. A person, however, cannot be reduced to the available information about him or her. In fact, some of that “information” could be entirely wrong. This is why the task of historians is so complex. One has to sift through the available data and other analyses to form a hypothesis. The historian has to make judgment calls and work with explanations that are probable, but ultimately unverifiable. What was Custer’s demeanor during his last stand in which he was killed in a battle against the Lakota and Cheyenne? What accounts do we have of his last moments? What was his character like? What would we expect of a person of such character? Facing death, how likely is he to have stayed true to form? An AI will provide you a summary of the available hypotheses on these matters, but little if anything more.

Ask yourself what it would be like if you were having a Zoom conversation with someone, but instead of attending yourself, you used an AI representation of yourself. How accurately do you think a computer program could anticipate your thoughts, emotions, and reactions? How well would it see into your motivations, your inner life? Would the person on the other end be able to tell that it wasn’t really you? Perhaps if the conversation were to stay at the surface level, no glaring differences would be apparent. I suspect, however, that deeper engagement would make apparent the deficiencies of the AI representation. There is danger in confusing the real McCoy and its avatar.

The Christian Post reports on megachurch pastor Ron Carpenter who was selling an AI version of himself for a monthly fee. When I read things like this, I have to avoid the temptation to tear out my hair. At my age, it might not grow back. The article reports, “A video demonstration shared online by Protestia features Carpenter using the app to request ‘Pastor Ron’ to pray for recovery from an illness.”

I’m remaining calm.

Here’s the problem. Wait… let me rephrase that. Here’s one problem. This isn’t really prayer. It has the form of prayer. It sounds like prayer. Yet prayer requires intention. It is an act of communication and communion between the creature and creator. It is the joining of our spirit with the Spirit of God. In the case of an AI healing prayer that sounds like a pastor, there is no communication with God. There is no communion with God. There is no spirit to join with the Holy Spirit. There are only sounds that mimic human prayer. That’s it. Moreover, healing prayer is an act of love that draws on the authority given to us in Christ. But an AI cannot love, and it bears no authority on Christ’s behalf. You’d be just as well off asking the AI Pastor Ron to read the phone book.

To put it another way, imagine you had a button on your counter, and every time you hit the button a voice would say, “I love you.” How often would you push it? You probably wouldn’t do so very often because there would be no actual love involved. Pushing the button will generate the form of the expression of love, but that form is entirely empty. And the reason we like to hear others say “I love you” is that the expression corresponds to something in reality—a relationship between two people. This is why it can be painful if someone says “I love you,” when you know they don’t mean it. The formal expression doesn’t correspond to the real relationship.

Alenoach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Far more egregious than an AI representation of Pastor Ron, however, is the Swiss AI Jesus. (What would Calvin say?!?!). Get this: they call it “Deus in Machina.” It’s a clever name, if entirely false. God is not in the machine. The machine produces a representation of what Jesus might say when confronted with certain questions, and that representation is based on its programming. And before anyone says it, no, this isn’t the same thing as an icon, either. An icon is meant to direct the mind to God, not the icon itself. The icon provides no answers, but rather points to the source from which answers may come.

According to an article in the Guardian, “While data on the installation will be presented next week, feedback from more than 230 users suggested two-thirds of them had found it to be a ‘spiritual experience.’” Okay. Fine. But what spirit did they experience? “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

If only there were some way of communicating directly with Jesus….

I know AI isn’t going away, and I know both good and bad will come of it. Churches will find appropriate and inappropriate ways to use it. As with social media, we will in time come to see its ethical pitfalls and begin to regulate its use. Also like social media, AI has already become politicized and profit-driven.

I am hopeful that, in time, the use of AI will help to clarify the differences between human life and computerized minds. We will see that we can only copy, but never supplant, the creative work of God. We will come to understand more clearly that there is no substitute for humanity, that God’s handiwork is irreplaceable. We will gain insight into the image of God that is imprinted upon each of us. Humans matter as humans. The particularity of our existence is an indispensable feature of God’s design.

After all, when God acted decisively to bring salvation to all of creation, he did not come to us merely as Spirit. God became flesh. God did not take on the appearance of flesh or simply wear flesh as a disguise, but became flesh (Greek: sarx egeneto, John 1:14). He assumed every aspect of humanity in order to redeem every aspect of humanity (hat tip to Gregory of Nazianzus). If he had only appeared to be human, then our redemption would be likewise illusory. He became like us in every way, but he did not sin. Thus we read in the Definition of Chalcedon, “He is of the same essence (homousios) as the Father according to his deity, and the same one is of the same essence (homousios) with us according to his humanity, like us in all things except sin.” Yes, Jesus was truly divine, but he was truly human as well. His true humanity was necessary for our true redemption.

Humanity matters. We are God’s handiwork created in his image, and no representation, regardless of its sophistication, can substitute for true human presence and intention. Our created nature is not a bug but a feature, and it is not replicable. Perhaps the growing presence of AI in our lives will spur on our work in the area of theological anthropology—our understanding of humanity in light of God’s self-revelation. One can hope. We need not fear technology, but its proper and ethical use is an increasingly complex topic, and we ignore it at our peril.