Can Christians Embrace AI?
By Movieguide® Contributor
While many people of faith are leery of emerging AI over concerns of job loss and ethics, AI lab at Christian university Biola believe AI is something to embrace, but within a biblical framework.
“If we don’t engage, we risk falling asleep at the wheel,” Dr. Michael J. Arena dean of Crowell School of Business at Biola said.
The AI lab will serve as “a crucible for shaping the future of AI,” that will provide “education, fostering dialogue and leading innovative AI projects rooted in Christian beliefs,” Arena told Fox News.
He believes that “proactive involvement” in AI development is essential, citing that Christians fell behind in engaging when social media was on the rise to “bring a strong approach to moral values” and is worried history may repeat itself.
“The rise of [social media] has produced a sharp decline in face-to-face social engagement, particularly among teenagers — exacerbating feelings of loneliness,” Arena stated.
“Elevating humans, not AI” is the foundation of the lab’s work and one that is “rooted in core theological beliefs,” Arena said.
Christ-Centered Apps
The students at the lab are currently working on AI apps that are Christ-centered as well as other Christian resources such as databases with the “primary objective of facilitating open access to these resources for research purposes,” according to Arena.
“By prioritizing ethical discernment, the lab strives to better facilitate the mitigation of potential biases, promote greater transparency and uphold human dignity within AI,” Arena continued.
Arena likens AI to a “rebellious teenager” that can “stray without proper guidance.”
For example, in the area “potential bias in the area of algorithms” per Fox News, the school aims to “mitigate bias and uphold ethical standards,” Arena said.
Even Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, admits that AI can give biased output reported CBN News.
Altman tweeted, “There will be more challenges like bias (we don’t want ChatGPT to be pro or against any politics by default, but if you want either then it should be for you; working on this now) and people coming away unsettled from talking to a chatbot, even if they know what’s really going on.”
The AI team at Biola is not the only one that is using AI for faith-centered purposes. Company 16: Fifteen Church Media and Communications uses AI to create graphics for sermons, social media posts along with other media needs for churches.
“A lot of times, pastors will ask for something where they want to see the modern and the ancient come together, right. They want to see modern construction workers working on you know, the Ark…, or they want to see Jesus with a modern-day family in Times Square…as part of a sermon series idea that they have,” cofounder Kyle Scheren told CBN News. “[B]efore that would be something like we really can’t pull that off with excellence, where the lighting is right and everybody’s in the same perspective and they’re all looking at the same thing. And it just looks natural. But now with AI, that’s something that we can do.”
Artificial Intelligence Limitations
Scheren and fellow cofounder Ryan Cook of 16: Fifteen agree that as powerful as AI is, it still has its limitations.
“[O]ne thing I think the GPT really struggles with is anything that’s kind of spiritually nuanced. It doesn’t really understand because it’s not human. There’s a very human element to the gospel,” Cook explained.
“I think that’s the one thing is the landscape of communications changes all the time, but the gospel never does,” Cook added.
Another AI faith resource, Christian AI, is an app that can be used to write blogs and sermons and can even offer advice from a biblical perspective.
“Christian AI is continuously learning and growing, gathering knowledge rooted in Christian principles. Ask questions about theology, biblical history, or Christian practices, and receive insightful responses that align with your faith and the Bible,” it says on its website.
While more Christians embrace artificial intelligence as a tool to help them learn more about the Bible and even spread the gospel, there are many that are still concerned about its influence as previously reported by Movieguide®:
The American Bible Society’s State of the Bible survey examined how Bible-believing Christians feel about technology, specifically artificial intelligence.
The survey included four positive and four negative statements regarding AI and its effects on faith, the church and culture.
“The greatest levels of disagreement came on positive statements about AI’s spiritual and moral value (68% and 58%, respectively). Note that these weren’t only Christians saying that AI could not ‘promote spiritual health’ or ‘aid in moral reasoning.’ This was the general public. Those two statements also garnered the lowest levels of agreement (9% and 13%),” the survey reported.
“More than half agreed with the negative statement that AI would bring about ‘an increase in unemployment’ (51%)—by far, the highest level of agreement. And yet, when asked to weigh the good and bad effects of AI, only one in three said the bad would outweigh the good, while nearly as many (28%) said the opposite,” the survey continued.
“Americans are more fearful than hopeful about Artificial Intelligence. Our survey also shows a great deal of uncertainty,” concluded John Farquhar Plake, the American Bible Society Chief Program Officer and State of the Bible Editor-in-Chief.
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