The age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is upon us. Are you a boomer (“AI is the best thing that has ever happened to me”) or a doomer (“oh no, AI is going to take over the world”)?
The age of AI is well and truly upon us.
Whether or not you consider yourself an AI enthusiast, chances are you use it almost every day. From searching on Google to interacting with large language models like ChatGPT, from receiving personalised playlists on Spotify or YouTube to having phishing emails automatically filtered into your spam folder. All of these are applications of AI. Even ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Bolt use machine learning for dynamic pricing, route prediction, and driver–rider matching.
And if you’re in Kenya, like I am, you’re likely familiar with M-PESA; a mobile money service that employs machine learning for credit scoring and micro-loan services through platforms like M-Shwari and Fuliza, as well as for enhancing customer support.
So yes, the age of AI is well and truly upon us.
AI is not a single technology, but rather an umbrella term for a set of loosely related technologies. What unites them is their ability to learn from data. Whether you are developing AI, training the data that powers it, deploying AI systems, or simply consuming them, your Christian duty is to cut through the hype and consider how to live as God calls us to, in the age of AI.
Below are six reflections for approaching AI with a biblical perspective.
1. God’s Glory
“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). When God, through Paul, instructed us to do everything to his glory, down to the minutest act of eating or drinking, he must have had AI in mind as well. And why not? Isn’t he the omniscient God, knowing the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10)? So, what exactly does it look like to glorify God in the age of AI?
Avoid the twin traps of either making AI an idol or demonising it.
A good place to start is to remember the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Once we acknowledge that God, as he has described himself in the Bible, is to be worshipped, we will think twice before worshipping AI. After all, people have bowed before far more bizarre things, such as a golden calf.
On the flip side, we will also think twice before calling a good gift evil. Make no mistake, AI is a good gift from God (James 1:17). It is a common grace, as all other technologies are. I suggest that one way of glorifying God in this age of AI is by avoiding the twin traps of either making it an idol on the one hand or demonising it on the other.
2. Imago Dei
“God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Humankind is the only creature made in the image of God.
Humanity is the apple of our Creator’s eye.
Now I’m an AI enthusiast. Not only because I work at an AI company, but also because the technology has such immense power to democratise knowledge. I can now learn analytical chemistry through my favourite chatbot. Never before in history has this been possible. Even the age of the internet pales in comparison.
However, make no mistake. AI isn’t made in the image of God. Even if we were ever to reach the age of Artificial General Intelligence, or the so-called Artificial Superintelligence, the technology will never topple humanity from being the apple of our Creator’s eye.
3. The Fall
When Adam and Eve reached out for that alluring fruit, they condemned the rest of humanity to damnation. God cursed all our efforts. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). This means there is a certain futility to all our labours under the sun, as the writer of Ecclesiastes so rightly observes.
The tools we develop will reflect a fallen, evil humanity.
This also means that the tools we develop will reflect a fallen, evil humanity. AI isn’t inherently evil. But we are. It is we who use it to the damnation of ourselves and our fellow neighbours. I suggest that much discourse on AI ethics and safety should start here, looking at ourselves in the mirror of God’s word and humbly accepting that AI reflects our fallenness.
4. Common Grace
“He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). A helpful way of understanding grace is putting it side by side with mercy. Grace is getting what you do not deserve; mercy is not getting what you deserve. AI is a common grace. It’s given to all humanity, believers and non-believers alike, an undeserved goodness.
God freely gives AI to both the righteous and the unrighteous for their enjoyment.
There are so many ways in which God saw to it that AI will become the hype it is today. From John McCarthy (Father of AI) to Demis Hassabis (Founder, Google DeepMind), to Sam Altman (CEO Open AI), to Jensen Huang (CEO Nvidia), to every other AI engineer out there, they are all doing God’s bidding. Whether they know it or not. He remains sovereign.
Abraham Kuyper, a former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, once said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine.'” What does God say about AI? He declares it “mine.” And then he freely gives AI to both the righteous and the unrighteous for their enjoyment.
5. Special, Saving Grace
Yet, we see in scripture that God has called some out of the fallen world, given them new hearts of flesh in place of their earlier hearts of stone, and asked them to live in him, through him, and for him. Indeed, these “called out ones” no longer live for themselves but for their Saviour. They are aliens in this world. Yet they still work 8 to 5 like the rest of mankind, and they still use AI, just like the next-door neighbour. How then must these “called out ones” live in the age of AI, in light of this special grace?
How must we live in the age of AI, in light of God’s special grace?
A good place to start is by remembering that when a believer comes to faith, he is justified through the life and death of another (read: Christ). He is thereby granted positional holiness. Then God calls him to grow in Christlikeness, continually progressing in holiness. Finally, he is promised glorification on that last day, when he will attain perfected holiness.
Thus God commands his people to be holy, like he is holy (1 Peter 1:16). How, then, can a Christian apply holiness to AI? By remembering that whether you eat, or drink, or develop AI, or consume it, or train it, or annotate, or write about it (like I do), or govern it, you should do it all for the glory of God and in the pursuit of becoming more like Christ.
6. Christ Will Return
The Christian does not need predictive AI to glimpse the future. God has already revealed the end in scripture. Thus Christians live in hope of hearing those blessed words when Jesus returns: “Well done, my good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your Master” (Matthew 25:21).
The Christian does not need predictive AI to glimpse the future.
Until that day, we regard AI as a tool entrusted to us by our Creator. We receive it with joy and gratitude, while refusing to use it for self-aggrandisement or to cause harm. It is a means of loving and serving others. Finally, we must not forget that when Christ returns, it is humanity (and not AI) who will stand before the judgment seat of God.
