Artificial Intelligence. The subject is seemingly as vast as its capability. This is not a doomsday post nor an article to argue broadly for or against the use of A.I. I simply contend that Christians would do well to consider whether and for what tasks they will use it. To that end, I'll share some of my own thoughts as I’ve tried to navigate its use for myself.
Stewardship is the main factor driving my decisions regarding A.I. Surely, the stewardship of time should be a priority for us (Eph 5:15-16; Col 4:5; Psa 90:12). If time were the only factor, the answer would like always be, “use A.I.” It will always be faster at a given task than we are. However, we are stewards of more than our time.
The Bible has many exhortations indicating that we are to be faithful caretakers of our minds. For example, in Matthew 22:37 Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment is to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This places intellectual engagement at the heart of loving God. Surely, the content of our thinking is a major topic in the NT (Col 3:2; Phil 4:8). Each of these commands to think certain things assumes the ability to think. 1 Peter 1:13, which calls us to “prepare [our] minds for action,” requires the ability to think well and logically. All this is to say that stewarding the mind will involve the skillful exercise of the mind.
Stewardship of the mind is a factor in the use of A.I. because we tend to lose abilities that we don’t use. The more cognitive tasks I assign to A.I. the duller my own mental faculties will become. There may be some cognitive skills I don’t find worth retaining. However, differentiating between essential and non-essential mental abilities may not be straightforward. Some less important mental skills may serve as the “stabilizing muscles” of more obviously essential mental skills; therefore, losing some less important mental skills may make me duller in my more essential tasks. For example, can I delegate outlining an article to A.I. (a less essential skill?) and retain my ability to be a good, logical writer? I’m not so sure.
Before I use A.I. for a task, I want to know, “what is the cognitive ‘opportunity cost’ of using A.I. for this?” In other words, is there a mental benefit that I would gain from just doing the task myself, a benefit that will make me a better thinker, a better steward of my mind? This may not be an easy question to answer in each case, but it’s worth considering in my opinion.
Similarly, the Bible commands stewardship of our souls. Proverbs 4:23 reads, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” This command assumes that we are caretakers of our souls. Additional commands in the NT assume that there are activities detrimental to our spiritual well-being and others that are beneficial (1 Pet 2:11; 1 Cor 9:27; 1 Tim 4:16). We must make deliberate choices based upon what is good for our souls.
Stewardship of the soul is a factor in the use of A.I. in that I derive spiritual benefit from doing some tasks myself. In many cases, “the work is the reward.” A.I. could outline a prayer meeting far more quickly than I can, but it’s good for my soul for me to think deeply about the needs of the congregation, pray for the Lord’s leading, and discern the best course for our corporate prayer. There are many tasks about which this is true. Planning worship for my family, developing discussion questions for a reading group, and discerning the meaning of this morning's devotional reading, just to name a few.
How does stewardship come into play in my decisions regarding A.I.? I’ll just give you a couple of personal instances, one where I chose to use A.I. and one where I didn’t. Hopefully, these will help to illustrate how I’m applying stewardship principles to the decision.
An example where I’ve chosen to use A.I.:
A number of months ago, I realized that using an app to manage my prayer list might be helpful. After looking at the available options, I found that nothing out there had the features that would address my reasons for using an app. I could have spent months learning a programming language in order to create an app myself. This did not seem to be the best use of my time, given my responsibilities and calling. I could have spent money to pay someone else to do it. Frankly, I didn’t want to spend the money…not when I was uncertain of the net benefit an app would bring to my prayer life.
A.I. was a great option in my mind. I could not think of a downside in terms of the stewardship of my mind. That is, I have no coding skills that would be lost by having A.I. write the code. Similarly, I could think of no spiritual benefit forfeited by having A.I. write the program. So, that’s what I did. In a matter of hours, I used A.I. to create a tool that has been a great help to me in my prayer life. Again, as far as I can tell, there was nothing lost to me by using A.I. for this task. Only gain.
An example where I’ve chosen not to use A.I.:
There is a task that I do anytime I study the Bible for any reason: I diagram the passage. That concept may not be familiar to everyone. Essentially, I reformat the passage in such a way as to show the relationships between words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. It’s time-consuming and tedious, but it's helpful to be able to see these relationships at a glance.
A.I. could diagram the whole Bible for me in a matter of seconds. Yet, never in a million years would I use A.I. for this. Handing that one task to A.I. would save me tons of time, but cost me inordinately more in terms of intimate familiarity with the text. The benefit of the diagram is not just seeing the relationships. The benefit is in reasoning through the relationships in order to create the diagram. I can’t afford to lose the spiritual benefit of that slow, careful reasoning through the text. I also can’t afford to lose the cognitive sharpness afforded by such attention to detail. This is true for my other normal Bible study tasks.
I am sufficiently convinced that we need criteria for making these decisions. I have suggested stewardship as one criteria. If I don’t have criteria to guide my decisions regarding A.I., I’ll use it in ways that end up being costly for me. No matter what your station and calling, I encourage you to consider: what are the factors by which you will decide whether and for what tasks you’ll use A.I.?
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