People of faith need to think about AI like Abram did in Genesis 14. We tend to believe that growth is (1) sure, (2) substantial, and (3) suitable for everyone.
It has to happen partly because we need new ideas and tools to deal with new problems. Progress is essential because if we don’t make any, we might not be able to live (or be happy) in a broken world.
It is suitable for everyone because its fruits make it easy to live in the systems we have made. We, and probably everyone else, are better off now than we would be if we had to live through the problems of the past.
This view of growth tends to overlook the long-standing ways that people make sense of their social worlds. In “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis,” researcher Mark Noll says that after the Civil War, the United States faced “two great problems in practical theology.” The first was that racism was still a problem, and ending slavery didn’t solve it.
The second was “the growth of consumer capitalism, which gave people never-before-seen chances to get rich but also led to widespread alienation and a lot of poverty in both rural and urban America.”
If Noll is right that consumer capitalism was mostly ignored after the Civil War, God’s people would do well to think about how economics affect the world today, especially in light of recent “technological advancements” like artificial intelligence (AI).
Even though AI is the most talked-about topic right now, we need to be careful not to focus on the symptoms (like the social problems AI can cause) instead of figuring out what’s causing the signs in the first place.
The economy of AI must provide enough benefits, whether financial or not, for businesses and investors. Even though we know that social media has harmful effects, we seem to follow a routine similar to how many people use it. Even though AI has known problems and risks, economics is one reason why new products are being made.
To be clear, I’m not asking for a move toward socialism. Making a false choice between capitalism and socialism keeps us from having more in-depth conversations about the problems with consumer capitalism and the different ways to solve them.
As Christians look at new tools, we must ask how they create new symptoms that distract us from the real problem. If we aren’t careful, “the distractions will start to become our reality.” This will keep us from dealing with real issues, which will cause more symptoms.
For example, many tech companies make the most money by hiring cheap workers. Matteo Wong writes in The Atlantic, “Much of the data that train AI models is tagged by people making poverty pay, many of them in the global South… Armies of content censors, most of whom live in the global South, make social media proper and desired.
We might think that even low wages help some people worldwide, but when we learn about the work ethics needed to advance technologies like AI, we start to doubt the ideal vision that AI supporters often push. AI models will not only cause problems that we can’t see coming, but they will also make problems worse that we already know about but tend to ignore.
At this point, it’s clear that companies working on and releasing AI models are well aware of two things: (1) there are and will continue to be significant problems with AI, and (2) they’re more likely to gain from AI while others suffer from its problems.
As customers, we implicitly agree that the good outweighs the bad and that our bad will compensate for others’ wrongs. We risk unthinkingly accepting that suffering is necessary for growth, especially when others make sacrifices.
As the faith community finds new ways to use AI to spread the Gospel, it’s important to remember that, like the other things we enjoy, AI models result from too-often-anonymous human work.
As Christians think about how to get around in the world, we must develop the sense-making Abram shows in Genesis 14.
After Abram beat the four kings, he “gave him [Melchizedek] a tenth of everything” to show his gratitude to God for helping him win. The king of Sodom can’t say that he made Abram rich because Abram won’t take anything from him (Gen 14:22–23).
But he doesn’t hurt himself or those with him by taking “what the young men have eaten and the share of the men who went with me” (14:24).
Abram gives, but he doesn’t take anything for himself. Instead, he takes the share that will make him and his friends whole.
Like Abram, we need to know when to be kind, when to turn down money, and when to care for our friends, even if they are the people who make the things that make our lives easier.
