AI or GI

AI—artificial intelligence, can do a lot of good things that will help simplify many everyday tasks. Many are finding it to be good some of the time. GI—God Intelligence is good all the time.

There is an inherent danger with AI. It presents a product that appears to be real, but is not authentic. I know a couple of preachers who have gotten into trouble because they used AI to write articles or write sermons, and let it pass as if it was their own work. Many folks could not tell the difference—but a few could. What AI produced did not represent the truth.

I read recently where a folk singer, Emily Portman, was startled when a fan praised her new album, Orca, that was supposedly released on several streaming sites and on Spotify. Emily knew that she had not released a new album and discovered that the ten songs on the album were generated by AI, trained in her style. It was an excellent job of presenting something that wasn’t real.

Emily was not the only entertainer who had been targeted for AI duplications. She has professed that she really doesn’t know who has done it or why they would be doing it. She claimed that this imposter album of her music is “the start of something pretty dystopian.”

AI is good. I personally have wondered if I could get an AI production of my singing and make it sound like I am a really good singer. I don’t think AI is that good!

AI has also entered the religious field. Saint Peters Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland is the oldest church in the nation. It now is using a computer-generated AI Jesus. It is cutting edge technology that allows people to talk with an AI version of God’s Son.

A life-like avatar on a computer screen greets you when you enter a confessional booth. It offers advice on the Bible and can be heard in 100 different languages. It must be fairly good because over 900 conversations between people and the machine have been registered.

The church does offer a warning that people coming to confess should not give personal details because they are not sure where that would wind up. They also are warned that their interactions with the avatar are at their own risk.

When it comes to genuine confession, AI–artificial intelligence loses out, GI–God’s intelligence–always wins.  Only God can hear us and forgive us. GI is validated in I John 1:9 where it says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Don’t yield to the temptation to substitute something false for something real. Let me suggest:

• Don’t substitute technology for truth.
• Don’t substitute the life-like for the live Lord.
• Don’t substitute an avatar for the Advocate.
• Don’t substitute a transactional fake confessional for transformational real forgiveness.

You don’t have to go to a church to confess, you can do it anywhere. God can hear it in any language. You are free to tell Him anything, and it will never go beyond you and Him. Encountering the real God makes AI-generated experience appear to be a pale substitute—which it is. 

Are you following AI or GI?