Is AI Technology Helping Us?

Chat GPT and all these other AI (artificial intelligence) tools are pretty cool. You can get incredible information and creative content based on the gazillion data stored online for many years.

Combining your thoughts or prompts with the “genius” of brilliant people through the years can help you post great stories, blogs, essays, you name it. You can even ask AI to create memes or reels for other social media accounts. The point of all of this technology is to help you stand out, to help you get “your” message out, to help you grow your platform.

But I have to ask, is this technology worth it?

I do not think things will turn into a Terminator situation. But I have to ask how this is helping the human race, especially the human mind and creative abilities.

Think about it.

We are an information-obsessed culture that wants to know the “facts.” How often do we get the “facts” we were looking for and then immediately move on and forget about what we “learned”?

I ask us to ponder this because of how this does affect how our minds are wired. We are what we think. Our thoughts drive our actions. If someone/something else constantly creates content for us, what does this do for our attention span? How does this help us to think things through critically?

If we think about it, we live in a pretty cool time. This kind of technology is displaying the advancement of human civilization. The point is to help free up time so we do not have to worry about things we may not be good at or feel we don’t have the time for.

When I think about this from a theological position, a framework to see the world as God created it, I can see a couple of facets. One uses God’s gift of creativity and stewardship to mold the world into a place that will help humanity survive and thrive. So, we are being very creative with inventing and using this technology.

At the same time, I see people having difficulty focusing on tasks for an extended period because this technology helps get them completed quicker, freeing up more time to move on to something else. This is what concerns me.

We are too quick to get the answers rather than being patient in the wrestling for how to get the answer. The way we think is shifting to get the solution rather than searching for how to come up with the answer. In my opinion, this is causing humanity to lose critical thinking skills. If the computer, which has a great deal of human thought through ideas implemented through the millennia, comes up with the answer in a split second, why would we need to wrestle with how to figure out the solution on our own?

This is where I see humanity losing its grip on what it means to be human. Yes, technology helps us “connect” with others worldwide and share ideas seamlessly. Still, we also lose the touch of creativity and the ability to problem-solve because others do it for us.

In the wrestling, the failing, the wrong answers, we are shaped to see how things work or don’t. If we always get the “right” answer, what do we do if we do not have this technology to help us in other circumstances? How will we learn to see 360 degrees around the issue to understand it better?

Humanity has thrived by learning how to survive when things go wrong. God has given us unique abilities and gifts to help benefit society. When we live into these gifts, we learn by failing and what the wrong answer is.

Wrestling with the issue helps us think more critically and better understand the different facets of the problem. This will help us develop more patience and learn to think things through rather than relying on something that a bot wrote to give you the answer for the moment.

Take the time, sit in the wrongness, and learn to be more patient to discover the answer.

I love how AJ Svoboda, in his book “After Doubt,” writes it:

“The Christian heroes who speak most to us are always the ones who didn’t get everything they wanted out of this life.
Want to hear God? Practice tending. Put down your phone when you’re with one another. People are made in the image of God; iPhones are not. Give the person in front of you the attention they deserve as beloved, image-bearing creations of God. Leave those earbuds behind and walk alone in silence. Leave the phone in the car. No screens at the table. Take Dietrich Bonhoeffer seriously: “He who no longer listens to his brother will not listen to God.”
If you’re in deconstruction, be intentional about spending far less time on your phone, on social media, and with earphones in. Instead, sit in the questions. Let them give you your God-given patina. Hear the wisdom of Evelyn Underhill: “For lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.” But there is one final detail: the shoes. Take them off!
Why would God tell Moses to take off his shoes? I never understood this. But then we had a child. For years, when I returned from work, Elliot would run up to me and say, “Papa, papa, take off your shoes!” I never got it. I even asked other parents if their kids did this. Then I finally asked him. Why did he insist I take off my shoes? His answer wasn’t complex. “When your shoes are on,” Elliot said, “you have somewhere else to be.
When your shoes are off, you’ve got nowhere else to be.” It isn’t merely that we’re distracted. It’s that we privilege everywhere else over right here. God came to me through my son. He’s a burning bush. Only now I’m starting to see. Until we learn to see the bush, we’re just pretenders.

What are your thoughts?