Why AI is both a helpful tool and an existential threat

Last month, an imposter created a Signal account pretending to be US Secretary of State Marco Rubio using the display name “Marco.Rubio@state.gov.” The perpetrator then used AI to simulate Rubio’s voice and contacted three foreign ministers, a US governor, and a member of Congress. The actor left voicemails for some while sending invites to others to communicate through the Signal app.

Upon learning of the scam, the State Department sent a message warning those who may have been contacted. An official claimed that the hoax was “not very sophisticated” and had been unsuccessful, but they thought it “prudent” to raise awareness just in case.

However, this was not the first time AI has been used in an attempt to trick high-level diplomats and government representatives. A similar incident occurred in May involving Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff. While that effort was similarly fruitless, it’s only a matter of time before those behind the scams improve enough to succeed.

As Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkley who specializes in digital forensics, warns:

You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says “I have permission to use this person’s voice,” and then you type what you want him to say.

You don’t have to be the secretary of state or a member of the president’s inner circle to become the target of these attacks. Global cybercrime—much of it fueled by innovations in AI—is projected to cost upwards of $10.5 trillion this year, and that number is only going to rise as the technology improves.

But while we are increasingly aware of the risks AI poses for crime, large parts of our society seem willing—and even excited—to welcome its use in ways that could pose an even greater risk.

AI in education

The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest US teachers’ union, announced recently that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic have invested a combined $23 million to help create an AI training hub for educators. This is the latest example of tech companies attempting to make inroads into schools and universities to help teachers and students learn how to use—and become dependent on—AI to augment their studies.

Chris Lehane, Open AI’s chief global affairs officer, hopes that AI will eventually join reading, writing, and arithmetic as a core skill everyone must learn. And, as scary as that sounds, there is something to the idea that learning how to use AI well is important given the costs of using it poorly.

For all the advances the industry has made, hallucinations and lies are still an unavoidable part of the technology. A recent study by law school professors found that AI tools made “significant” errors that posed an “unacceptable risk of harm” when asked to summarize a law casebook.

Moreover, Microsoft found that using AI chatbots to research and write could hinder critical thinking. That one of the creators of these artificial intelligence models would help to publicize such a conclusion is notable considering such tasks are how an increasing number of people, both in the classroom and outside of it, use the technology.

And that risk to critical thinking is, in my estimation, the greatest threat AI poses.

A generational threat?

Aaron MacLean, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, cautions, “The substitution of Large Language Models for genuine thinking is a generational threat. At stake is no less than the life of the mind.”

While that sentiment is perhaps a bit exaggerated, he makes a powerful argument for why the small, everyday ways in which AI has become a staple of people’s lives could have dramatic and devastating effects on people’s ability to reason and interact with their environment in the future.

To illustrate his point, MacLean recounts a time during his freshman year of college when a classmate told their professor, “I know what I think, I just can’t get the words down on the page,” to which the professor responded, “Well, you don’t actually know what you think, then. The act of writing the thing is the same thing as the thinking of it. If you can’t write it, you haven’t actually thought it.”

Now, you have to have a thought before you can write it down, but the professor’s point was that there is something in the struggle of taking ideas and learning to convey them in a way that makes sense that is instrumental to developing our ability to think and reason well. Taking disparate thoughts and turning them into a coherent argument requires a mastery of information that goes beyond the simple possession of data.

AI makes it possible to get to the answer—or at least something approximating it—without having to do the work, and that’s a problem.

The person God created you to be

Ultimately, for all its downsides, AI can be a helpful tool. It excels at accumulating information, though it’s far less trustworthy when it comes to knowing what to do with it. Moreover, there are a number of questions that just need a simple answer, and relying on AI for those—with the caveat that you check its sources—is fine.

But, increasingly, that’s not how it’s used.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people would be enticed to take the easier path. And that’s especially true when, as is the case in many circumstances, the final product can be just as good or better than what we could do on our own.

ChatGPT is going to write a better paper than most college freshmen. It may even create a better presentation or write better emails than many professionals.

What it cannot replicate are the unique thoughts and Holy Spirit-given insights that God will only give to people. Nor can it help you learn to hone and develop skills that the Lord may want to use to advance his kingdom in the future.

Even Jesus had to grow “in sophia”—the Greek word for “the art of using wisdom”—as part of the Father’s will for his life (Luke 2:52). If that was true of the incarnate God, it is most certainly true for each of us as well.

However, that process requires that we place a higher value on the people we will become by committing to the work than on the chance to finish the work quickly. And that is a difficult ask when we face a seemingly endless list of demands on our time and attention.

So, when you are next forced to make that choice, what will you do?

Again, AI has its place, and the Lord can use it to help facilitate his calling in our lives. But it must remain a tool and nothing more, or we risk becoming more reliant on artificial intelligence than on our God-given intelligence.

That is a line we cannot afford to cross, but also a line that will continue to blur as AI gets smarter and the masses who become overly reliant on it go in the opposite direction.

So please don’t settle for the person it’s easy to be rather than the person God created you to be. He has gifted and called you to something greater than that.

Will you commit to that calling today?

Quote of the day:

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” —Galileo

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Last Friday morning, several storm cells merged and then stalled over Kerr County in Central Texas. As a result, an entire summer’s worth of rain fell in some areas—a one-in-one-hundred-year rainfall event for the region. The Guadalupe River, which runs alongside several summer camps, rose from about three feet to thirty feet.

A flash flood emergency was issued at 4:03 a.m., but the darkness of the night made it difficult to see rising water levels. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said the area floods frequently, but officials “had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.”

Nonetheless, critics are implicating the Trump administration, Texas state officials, local officials, and the National Weather Service in the disaster.

Three reasons we assign blame after tragedies

When tragedy strikes, it is never long before people begin looking for someone to blame. Why is this?

One positive reason is to prevent future tragedies. If storm detection technology and early warning systems can be improved, lives might be saved when future floods strike. Obviously, we should always strive to get better at protecting ourselves from natural disasters.

A second element is that politics are now a constant factor in nearly every dimension of American society. Many in our post-Christian culture have replaced consensual morality with political “solutions” they advocate through partisan tribalism. If floods strike in “red” states or wildfires in “blue” states, we can expect partisan politicians and media to leverage them for political purposes.

A third factor is our innate desire to control the future. If we convince ourselves that people could have prevented the July 4 floods, we can convince ourselves that people can prevent future floods. I have known parents who lost children and blamed themselves for years to come. Their reaction is not just grief—if they admit that they could not have prevented their child’s death, they are tacitly admitting that they cannot prevent the deaths of their other children.

Religion is often used for this purpose. The many altars I have seen in Ephesus and Athens attest to the transactional religion of their culture—sacrifice to the god of war so he will protect you in battle, and so on.

Christians are by no means immune. When our oldest son was diagnosed with cancer, I was surprised at the subliminal anger I felt toward the Lord. I had prayed for my son’s welfare from the moment we knew he had been conceived. My theology taught me that such prayers are no guarantee, that “in the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). Nonetheless, I realized that I had felt I had done my part for my son, but God had not done his.

“The way to pay for the priceless”

In the face of an unpredictable and uncontrollable future, we have three options.

One obvious response is to double down on ourselves, to try even harder to exert more control over our lives and world.

In my latest website article, I note David Brooks’s argument that we need an “education in morals” that “involves the formation of the heart and the will as much as the formation of the rational mind.” His appeal is commendable, but I responded in the words of the famed psychiatrist Karl Menninger: Whatever became of sin? Fallen humans cannot transform human hearts, which is why the gospel is so vital to our flourishing. Nor can education control the future, which is why we must trust our omniscient and omnipotent Father.

A second response is to abandon hope, choosing nihilism and chaotic existentialism in its place. However, as researchers continue to demonstrate, hope is crucial for mental health, resilience, and meaningful lives.

This is why our best way to face a perilous future is to work as God works. When we submit to his empowering and follow his leading (Ephesians 5:18), we join him as he advances his providential kingdom in our fallen world.

• When the priests stepped into the flooded Jordan river, its waters “were completely cut off” and the entire nation crossed over into their Promised Land (Joshua 3:14–16).
• David testified, “I pursued my enemies and overtook them” because God “equipped me with strength for the battle” (Psalm 18:37, 39).
• Paul could say of himself, “With toil and labor we worked night and day” (2 Thessalonians 3:8), but he knew that he worked “with all [God’s] energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29).

In each case, as they worked, God worked.

Our best response to our Father’s grace is to pay it forward. As G. K. Chesterton noted, “The way to pay for the priceless is to live lives worthy of the gift.” Then God anoints those he appoints and equips those he calls. As Martin Luther observed, “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.”

“The one purpose worth living for”

Ask God how he wants you to join him in responding to suffering in the present and fears for the future. With regard to the Central Texas floods, be especially mindful of people you know who have previously lost children. As my wife wrote in her blog yesterday, they are reliving their tragedy once again in these tragic days.

And remember that our ultimate purpose in life is not to be happy or healthy, but to experience personally the God who made us. Brother David Vryhof of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston is right:

“The one purpose worth living for is the end for which we were created, namely, to know God, to love God, and to serve God.”

To this “end,” let’s close with a reflection by Frederick Buechner that speaks honestly to our questions and pain but then offers a word of transcendent hope. Preaching at the 200th anniversary of the Congregational Church in Rupert, Vermont, Buechner quoted Psalm 23 and commented:

“I shall not want,” the psalm says. Is that true? There are lots of things we go on wanting, go on lacking, whether we believe in God or not. They are not just material things like a new roof or a better paying job, but things like good health, things like happiness for our children, things like being understood and appreciated, like relief from pain, like some measure of inner peace not just for ourselves but for the people we love and for whom we pray.

Believers and unbelievers alike go on wanting our whole lives through. We long for what never seems to come. We pray for what never seems to be clearly given.

But when the psalm says “I shall not want,” maybe it is speaking the utter truth anyhow. Maybe it means that if we keep our eyes open, if we keep our hearts and lives open, we will at least never be in want of the one thing we want more than anything else. Maybe it means that whatever else is withheld, the shepherd never withholds himself, and he is what we want more than anything else.

What—or whom—do you “want more than anything else” today?

Quote for the day:

“The depths of our misery can never fall below the depths of mercy.” —Richard Sibbes (1577–1635)

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