“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
-Isaiah 55:8-9
As a kid, one of my favorite cartoons was “The Jetsons,” a family led by parents George and Jane who lived in Orbit City with their perfect children, Judy and Elroy. I dreamed of one day growing up and having a place of my own right beside the Jetsons in Skypad Apartments. Most of all, I wanted a housekeeper like Rosie, the mechanical robot who handled all the chores the Jetsons couldn’t otherwise do by pushing one of the home’s many space-age buttons. Rosie was a strong authoritarian, a nanny for Judy and Elroy, and generally spoke with an edge about her; a robot with an attitude. Far-fetched, I know, but not so much so for the six-year-old I was at the time.
But 50+ years later, maybe it’s not so far-fetched. Artificial intelligence, or AI, a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, is becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives. Good examples of this are Siri and Google.
Could it be that Rosie the robot has already arrived and is currently on the job?
Cornell University psychologist Solace Shen and University of Montana child psychologist Rachel Severson, recently published a research paper stated, “Children will increasingly come of age with personified robots and potentially form social and even moral relationships with them.” This conclusion was the result of experiments conducted with 90 children between the ages of 9 and 15, in which they interacted with a humanoid robot. Results showed that the majority of children believed that the robot “had mental states (i.e., was intelligent and had feelings) and was a social being (i.e., could be a friend, offer comfort, and be trusted with secrets). The study revealed that the majority of children also “believed that the robot deserved fair treatment and should not be harmed psychologically.” (Source: “Children’s Social and Moral Relationships With a Humanoid Robot.”)
Some two thousand years ago the Apostle Paul discussed this tendency for us humans to opt for the artificial instead of the real. In fact, he said this has been going on since the beginning of time. In the opening words of his letter to the Church of Rome, Paul says that even though humans could see clearly the work of an intelligent being (God) in creation, they chose the things they created instead. They didn’t thank God, instead they just forgot about Him and relied on their own reasoning. Paul called it futile, and said, “Their foolish hearts were darkened.” They abandoned the “immortal God,” the “real,” for the things their hands produced, and they got what they deserved. (See: Romans 1:18-32).
Just for kicks, I asked the following question of Siri: “What is the meaning of life?” Here’s a few of her answers, and I quote (by the way, it’s ok to laugh at these responses):
- “A movie.”
- “I don’t know, but I think there’s an app for that.”
- “I can’t answer that now, but give me some time to write a very long play in which nothing happens.”
- “It’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya.”
- “I can’t answer that. Ha ha!”
- “I don’t believe there is a consensus on that question.”
- “I find it odd that you would ask this of an inanimate object.”
I’m glad to be living in this modern age and have Siri and Google at my disposal, but artificial intelligence can’t hold a candle (or a laser) to true intelligence; the intelligence of Almighty God. There is no app or algorithm that will lead us to the things that matter most, in fact, there are apps and algorithms that will lead us away from these things.
I’m sure Siri is a nice lady, but she’s not my friend. However, I do have a friend in Jesus and so do you. He told us so. He’s not artificial, He’s real! He gives us purpose and hope. You don’t Google Him, and you don’t need a high-speed Internet connection to reach Him.
What are you and I asking of our inanimate objects? What apps are we turning to in our pursuit of the real? We must choose The Creator of Things over the things we’ve created, lest our foolish hearts be darkened.
Prayer: “Lord, please keep us from forsaking You, the source of true intelligence, for counterfeit creations of our own making. Spare us from our artificial intelligence. Please don’t give us what we deserve. Give us what we don’t deserve; Your love, mercy, and grace, the things we need more than anything else. Amen!”
Play to win this week in the game that really counts!