At Grace, we are on mission to partner with parents to form their children into disciples of Jesus. One way we do this is by teaching every aspect of creation from a biblical perspective. The principle is that God is the God of truth, and everything true is rooted in His nature and character. God is absolute in His character, so truth is absolute, not relative. (To say “what’s true for me may not be true for you” is untrue and self-defeating on its premises, because to make that statement is to say something that must be absolutely true to be believed.)
This means that to teach truth in creation, math, art, science, English, and every other area, we have to teach God’s perspective on it. In a Christian school like Grace, we have the ability, freedom, and mission to tie truth back to God’s word as revealed in the Bible and in creation in general.
So, when we examine any modern phenomenon, whether it be politics, a cultural happening, or a technological revolution like AI, we want to do so, like everything else, through the lens of God’s truth. We’ve been praying, talking, and thinking a lot about AI lately at Grace—is it good or evil? How does it interact with, and does it infringe upon, what it means to be human, made in the image of God? And what are some of the implications for how we should or should not use it in the school context? I want to talk about some of those issues here. (Note: much of this discussion comes from the Grace Philosophy and Theology of Artificial Intelligence that we wrote this summer, and I’ll be borrowing heavily from it in this piece).
First, let’s define artificial intelligence for the purposes of this discussion. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer system that can think, reason, act, expand, and evolve like a human. AI is capable of functions like problem-solving, decision-making, and deep learning, albeit in ways that are human-designed mechanical replications fo these functions. As to whether AI is good or evil, the answer is simply “both.” To understand that, it’s important to understand the theological/philosophical idea of structure and direction.
God is the creator of all things. He has given human beings the ability to create, but only from what God has already made. Only God can create from nothing, speaking things into existence. This means that everything created is, by its very basic nature, good. If you say, “not the atom bomb,” I would say, “It’s not the atom bomb that’s the primary creation; it’s the power given to mankind by God to harness the power of the atom. And that can be used to provide clean power to an entire city.” The structure of created things is basically good.
That said, these things, created good, may be used in the direction of good or for evil. The power to harness the atom, which is good, can either power a city or blow it up. A hammer can build or kill. AI can guide you home or to church from anywhere, or falsely impersonate you to do terrible things. AI in and of itself is not demonic, even if it can be used for demonic (and angelic) purposes.
In order to understand AI’s limitations and how it can be used for good (normative, according to God’s perfect norms) purposes and evil (antinormative, against those norms) purposes, it’s important to begin with what it means to be human. At Grace, we educate children, young human beings. Therefore, understanding what it means to be human, and how we learn and know things, helps us answer what uses of AI are good in our school context.
Genesis 1 tells us that we humans are made in the image of God, after His likeness. Humans represent God in creation. You are unique, made by God, known to Him by name, and given special dignity and value. We were made perfectly in God’s image; however, this image was broken and distorted by our fall through sin.
We have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and we are now in the process of a progressive recovery of God’s perfect image. As we are continually sanctified and grow in spiritual maturity by the power of the Holy Spirit, we become more like God. When Christ returns and makes all things new, we will be wholly and perfectly restored to His image once again.
Like Jesus, the “Word made flesh” (1 John 3:2), we are embodied beings with physical bodies. Jesus is embodied in the past, present, and future. We will live forever in resurrection bodies. Therefore, God values our physical form.
In addition to our bodies, we have a spirit and soul. (Gen. 2:7) As spiritual beings, we have the ability to live and act within the spirit realm through prayer, worshipping God, hearing His voice, discerning good and evil spirits, engaging in spiritual warfare, and, most importantly, through the indwelling and interaction with the Holy Spirit.
God holds us morally accountable for how we live and calls us to be holy, as He is holy. We have a moral conscience and a sense of what is good woven into us, and we have the free will to choose right or wrong.
As humans, we can think and feel, and we have the capacity to love. We can also empathize with others’ feelings. Humans are capable not only of rational thought, of making calculations, and of deep learning, but also of receiving revelation from God and wisdom from the Holy Spirit.
In all of these senses of being and knowing given to humans, being made in the image of God is completely different from machinery or human-built technology, no matter how sophisticated. AI can mimic limited aspects of human rationality and may even simulate emotion to build rapport with humans, but as Professor Dave Mulder has said, it is basically a sophisticated calculator. AI uses large collections of tiny switches to perform mathematical calculations based on predetermined algorithms.
AI does not, at its core, function much like human brains or human beings. While defining AI by reference to human functions, or anthropomorphically, can be a helpful analogy for descriptive purposes, it is, in many ways, a destructive reduction of humanity and a false portrayal of what it means to be human.
With all of this in mind, schools and other institutions should use AI to enhance the learning experience for their students in good and productive ways that promote what it means to be made in the image of God. At the same time, they should avoid undermining the mature learning and development of those aspects of students that are inherently critical to who they are as image bearers.
At Grace, we’re going to try to develop these inherently human aspects of our students largely free from AI use: creating (art, literature, ideas, plans, and directions), imagining, envisioning, relating, collaborating, empathizing, lamenting, responding emotionally, applying wisdom, and calling for worship of the Lord. Any use of AI that undermines students’ prayerful, thoughtful work in these areas is antinormative and will be significantly limited in our school.
Where AI may be helpful and could be used for normative (helpful and good purposes) would include enhancing and organizing learning, such as collating data, organizing ideas once they’re created, synthesizing large volumes of content and finding patterns (which has always been a good use of data crunching), calculating, creating graphs and other displays of preexisting information, improving productivity and time efficiency (like scheduling tools), organizing and repeating preexisting content to aid in memorizing and learning, editing (when not substituting for learning to appropriately create and use language), and expanding preexisting content to build on previous knowledge.
Our school’s role is to use good, helpful tools, including AI, in ways that glorify God and maximize our students’ godly nature and character, as mediated by the Holy Spirit. When used wisely, AI can be a valuable tool in these efforts.
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