Babel: Putting the ‘Artificial’ in Artificial Intelligence
by Luke Dorman
The Bible illuminates the ruts and potholes ahead of us in the road towards the good use of artificial intelligence. We should remember that it will make us more powerful, but never more moral, and that the deception embedded in its name can tempt us to shift responsibility and neglect our love of others.
A few years ago artificial intelligence was solving logic puzzles and beating chess players, but with the release of ChatGPT, it became culturally prevalent almost overnight. With the recent release of ‘Deepseek’, China’s viral chatbot [1], and the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit held in Paris last month [2], it’s worth reflecting on the place artificial intelligence should hold in culture, and our lives.
Groundwork
To follow my thoughts, you’ll have to agree with me on a central premise: artificial intelligence is neither conscious, nor morally consequential. This means that we should essentially never ‘care’ about how we treat artificial intelligence in the same way we might care about how we treat another person. This is philosophically contentious, and I can’t pretend to properly justify it. You can, however, enjoy my scattered protestations.
First, though I’m by no means an artificial intelligence expert, even a cursory glance at the statistical machinery driving AI proves it can claim no pretence at consciousness [3]. Artificial intelligence software is performing advanced statistics and is extremely adept at predicting outcomes based on past data. This is, however, theoretically no different from your average year 7 drawing a line of best fit on their graph. To say artificial intelligence is ‘conscious’ is no different from saying the law of large numbers has attachment issues.
Secondly, the Bible tells us that to be human is to be embodied. We are not minds trapped in slabs of flesh but were created and designed to be biological. We did not gain our limbs after the fall but were formed in Eden “from the dust of the ground”[4]. And when the end of days comes, the resurrection that happens will be a physical one [5], not simply souls drifting to heaven. This is important. The status that humans have as beings able to enter into relationship with God and each other is inseparable from our physical bodies. Why else would the Psalms exhort us to “praise [God’s] name with dancing [6]”? This is important because AI is not biological, and so, whether conscious or not, it could never enter into meaningful moral relationship with humans or God.
‘Intelligent’
If artificial intelligence is really just advanced statistics, our instinct might be to treat it like any other piece of technology, and this approach has its merits. Artificial intelligence empowers us, but doesn’t fundamentally change how we’re wired, or our flaws and need for salvation.
The dangers of technological advance are epitomised in the tower of Babel: humans learn how to build with bricks instead of stone [7], and they use this, not to love God or others better [8], but to “make a name for [themselves]” [9]. Technology exacerbates human arrogance, and is thwarted by God accordingly [10].
We see this so clearly in the present discourse surrounding artificial intelligence. The itinerary of the recent summit on artificial intelligence raises concerns about the technology being hoarded by private actors and exacerbating inequalities between countries and people [11]. The conference, and coverage of it, was dominated by speculation about the geopolitical power dynamics at play[12]. Interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots themselves only deepen this picture of human flaws. DeepSeek, China’s new chatbot, refuses to answer questions about Tiananmen Square [13] while ChatGPT, when asked about recent significant developments in AI, deigned to mention its new Chinese rival [14].
Artificial intelligence gives us power to do great good. It has already optimised cancer screening technologies [15], developed remote alerts for seizures [16], and advanced our ability to predict famine [17]. However, the examples shared above should remind us that, while artificial intelligence cannot sin itself, it facilitates our own sinful actions and can lead us away from God into arrogance.
‘Artificial’
But is there anything more unique about AI which we should bear in mind? After all, if ChatGPT is just advanced statistics, why not refer to it as a large language model? Why do we call anything artificial intelligence?
The answer is on some levels an obvious one. Artificial intelligence is unique because it pretends to be human [18]. In this way you could say that a puppet, or the please-mind-the-gap-between-the-train-and-the-platform voice is artificial intelligence, they’re just unconvincing. By this logic an internet search engine is not artificial intelligence, because it doesn’t imitate human conversation or speech in the same way that a chatbot does [19].
It is this quality: essentially deceit, which is so dangerous in artificial intelligence technology. Now deliberate deceit in the Bible is strictly condemned [20], but this doesn’t mean that all artificial intelligence is bad. In the same way that an actor is technically lying when they pretend to be someone else, but we accept them because the context of a play helps us understand that they’re acting [21], I’d argue that the context of a chatbot website sufficiently informs us of the ‘artificial’ nature of the intelligence we encounter.
What is instead dangerous about artificial intelligence’s deceit is that (1) it can be removed from a context that shows it’s artificial, and (2) people can miss or ignore contextual clues and believe it to be real. The first point is obvious. The French president kicked off the global AI summit with a series of ‘deepfakes’ of himself [22] – fake images generated by AI. This deliberate deceit can lead to people believing falsehoods [23].
The second point is more subtle. There are many reasons why we might wish to ignore the fact that artificial intelligence is artificial. Developers of artificial intelligence in military technology, for example, may wish to delude themselves that artificial intelligence is capable of taking responsibility for killing people[24]. To shift blame to something which is not human and cannot accept responsibility, is to avoid ‘carrying our own load’ [25] and owning our actions before God [26]. Alternatively, the trend of ‘AI girlfriends’ [27], or the recent ‘Grief Counsellor’ function on ChatGPT [28], sees people looking to artificial intelligence to fulfil emotional and relational needs [29]. It is not my place to condemn those in emotionally vulnerable positions, however there is no escaping the fact that these ‘relationships’ with artificial intelligence are based on the false idea that it is conscious or can feel emotions. It's important to make a gentle reminder that we are called to love God, and love our neighbour [30], and that loving artificial intelligence does neither of these things.
Further reading
For an in-depth perspective on relationships between humans and artificial intelligence, read John Wyatt’s Artificial intelligence and simulated relationships [31].
For a wider look into biblical perspectives on AI read Calum Samuelson’s “Artificially Intelligent? Grappling with the myths, present realities and future trajectories of AI” [32].
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.
[1] DeepSeek
[2] AI action summit
[3] I’ll admit this is based on no more than instinct, but I’d encourage you to look into it as well: 3Blue1Brown, Transformers (how LLMs work) explained visually | DL5
[4] Genesis 2:7
[5] 1 Corinthians 15:42 - “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable”, Revelation 20
[6] Psalm 149:3
[7] Genesis 11:3 – “They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar”
[8] Mark 12:30-31
[9] Genesis 11:4
[10] Genesis 11:8
[11] AI action summit, Public interest AI
[12] BBC News, World leaders set to vie for AI domination at Paris summit.
[13] The Guardian, We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, until we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan.
[14] BBC News, World leaders set to vie for AI domination at Paris summit.
[15] The Lancet, Screening performance and characteristics of breast cancer detected in the Mammography Screening with Artificial Intelligence trial (MASAI)
[16] Seen and Unseen, Re-enchanting... artificial intelligence
[17] AI for SDGs ThinkTank, Nutrition Early Warning System
[18] Again, you’ll only accept that artificial intelligence is ‘pretending’ if you accept my previous point that it is neither conscious or morally consequential.
[19] Interestingly, there’s evidence that products are labelled as ‘artificial intelligence’ when they’re new and lack an established market, but once they become commercially successful they’re labelled as normal products. This shows clearly that the label ‘artificial intelligence’ has a lot more to do with appearance than substantive technological differences.
[20] I would cite individual verses but honestly there are so many. Safe to say that “no one who practices deceit shall dwell in [God’s] house” – Psalm 101:7.
[21] For some philosophical groundwork on this approach, see the SEP entry on epistemic contextualism.
[22] FRANCE 24 English, French President Macron unveils deepfake video for Paris AI Summit promotion.
[23] False witness, blasphemy, false prophecy, and cursing one’s parents are all illegal under Old Testament law. See Leviticus 24:16, Deuteronomy 13:5, Exodus 21:17.
[24] Harvard Medical School, The Risks of Artificial Intelligence in Weapons Design.
[25] Galatians 6:5.
[26] Ezekiel 18:20 – “The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them”.
[27] Reddit, I have am AI girlfriend and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
[28] OpenAI, Grief Counsellor.
[29] For a detailed treatment of the new phenomena of ‘grief tech’, see the following report from Theos: AI and the Afterlife: From Digital Mourning to Mind Uploading.
[30] Matthew 22:37.
[31] John Wyatt, Artificial intelligence and simulated relationships
[32] Calum Samuelson, Artificially Intelligent? Grappling with the myths, present realities and future trajectories of AI
