In August, my wife Nora and I attended a conference titled “AI & Humanity” in Ōtautahi Christchurch. The conference was hosted by Cashmere Presbyterian Church with four keynote speakers of differing backgrounds in the field – all working heavily with and around AI, but also quite a bit in church spaces as well. Nora and I heard about the conference through the Eco Church network, which Cashmere Presbyterian is also a part of.
There were three significant takeaways from this conference.
Many people engage with it daily, whether it’s automatically included on their computers or their phones, yet proportionally few people have actually read about the risks or benefits of it. We are somewhat swamped in positive imagery and advertising for AI use, so most of the concerns are generally drowned out and need us to actually take the time to look for them and consider them – if we remain passive, we will rarely hear about the downsides of anything society wants to sell to us.
Some great tools which use AI include ones which I often find myself using – from speech-to-text language translation which is very helpful with international guests in my hotel, to things like identifying species from photos with the iNaturalist app and similar ones.
I was surprised further by just how vulnerable that information is – in the weeks leading up to the AI conference, there were multiple large-scale data breaches where one AI hacked into many other systems and acquired all of the consequential information. Whether that information is things like passwords, Google searches, addresses, or now even emails and text messages, all of those are vulnerable to data breaches now. I was surprised by how insecure the systems are.
So what should our local churches be considering around the impact of AI?
I think we need to make sure we try to stay aware and educated about AI or other technologies in the future, so that we can make informed decisions instead of passively and ignorantly causing harm – potentially to ourselves, in the case of information security.
Not all AI is equally resource-intense or energy consuming, and learning to distinguish which ones are more benign than others should be important. A useful guideline would be: “Does it work without internet or data access?” If it can function simply with the information and power of your phone battery, it’s probably safe to assume that it’s not making life harder for your fellow children of God elsewhere on the planet.
Things like ChatGPT, which route through data centres, or things like Smart Glasses, in which objects are manually identified by underpaid and exploited workers, are substantially more impactful.
There are all kinds of resources out there if you want to dive deeper into the topic, and it can be confusing, but engaging our brains on the subject with any books or material is better than not engaging at all.
A massive amount of the risk drops away once we make sure that we pause and think. That being said, there are a lot of excellent books which discuss AI from both a technological stance as well as a theological stance, so I do recommend checking out the selection in the Bishop Sutton Library at Bishopdale College.
The most informative book which I’ve read on the subject so far has definitely been Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao. As an investigative journalist, she started out her project optimistically looking into AI (OpenAI in particular) and came away from it horrified and troubled. For a topic which tech entrepreneurs want us to accept wholeheartedly as risk-free, this book was deeply enlightening on the harm caused not just by the development of generative AI, but the continued harm caused by the use of it.
Additionally – while we are not Roman Catholics – Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, raises many important theological points for us to consider. He does not at all condemn the use of AI, but the thrust of his encyclical is that we ought to make sure we engage with AI in a wholesome manner which respects the dignity of our fellow humans and glorifies God. It’s a superb encyclical, and I think so very well articulates the concerns which we as Christians ought to be having about not just AI, but about any new technological developments – how can we ensure that the dignity of God’s creation is maintained as we engage with these things?
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
In August, my wife Nora and I attended a conference titled “AI & Humanity” in Ōtautahi Christchurch. The conference was hosted by Cashmere Presbyterian Church with four keynote speakers of differing backgrounds in the field – all working heavily with and around AI, but also quite a bit in church spaces as well. Nora and I heard about the conference through the Eco Church network, which Cashmere Presbyterian is also a part of.
There were three significant takeaways from this conference.
Many people engage with it daily, whether it’s automatically included on their computers or their phones, yet proportionally few people have actually read about the risks or benefits of it. We are somewhat swamped in positive imagery and advertising for AI use, so most of the concerns are generally drowned out and need us to actually take the time to look for them and consider them – if we remain passive, we will rarely hear about the downsides of anything society wants to sell to us.
Some great tools which use AI include ones which I often find myself using – from speech-to-text language translation which is very helpful with international guests in my hotel, to things like identifying species from photos with the iNaturalist app and similar ones.
I was surprised further by just how vulnerable that information is – in the weeks leading up to the AI conference, there were multiple large-scale data breaches where one AI hacked into many other systems and acquired all of the consequential information. Whether that information is things like passwords, Google searches, addresses, or now even emails and text messages, all of those are vulnerable to data breaches now. I was surprised by how insecure the systems are.
So what should our local churches be considering around the impact of AI?
I think we need to make sure we try to stay aware and educated about AI or other technologies in the future, so that we can make informed decisions instead of passively and ignorantly causing harm – potentially to ourselves, in the case of information security.
Not all AI is equally resource-intense or energy consuming, and learning to distinguish which ones are more benign than others should be important. A useful guideline would be: “Does it work without internet or data access?” If it can function simply with the information and power of your phone battery, it’s probably safe to assume that it’s not making life harder for your fellow children of God elsewhere on the planet.
Things like ChatGPT, which route through data centres, or things like Smart Glasses, in which objects are manually identified by underpaid and exploited workers, are substantially more impactful.
There are all kinds of resources out there if you want to dive deeper into the topic, and it can be confusing, but engaging our brains on the subject with any books or material is better than not engaging at all.
A massive amount of the risk drops away once we make sure that we pause and think. That being said, there are a lot of excellent books which discuss AI from both a technological stance as well as a theological stance, so I do recommend checking out the selection in the Bishop Sutton Library at Bishopdale College.
The most informative book which I’ve read on the subject so far has definitely been Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination by Karen Hao. As an investigative journalist, she started out her project optimistically looking into AI (OpenAI in particular) and came away from it horrified and troubled. For a topic which tech entrepreneurs want us to accept wholeheartedly as risk-free, this book was deeply enlightening on the harm caused not just by the development of generative AI, but the continued harm caused by the use of it.
Additionally – while we are not Roman Catholics – Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI, Magnifica Humanitas, raises many important theological points for us to consider. He does not at all condemn the use of AI, but the thrust of his encyclical is that we ought to make sure we engage with AI in a wholesome manner which respects the dignity of our fellow humans and glorifies God. It’s a superb encyclical, and I think so very well articulates the concerns which we as Christians ought to be having about not just AI, but about any new technological developments – how can we ensure that the dignity of God’s creation is maintained as we engage with these things?
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
