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I had to rewatch The Terminator and Terminator 2. All the news about artificial intelligence has brought to mind one of the favorite sci-fi tropes: artificial intelligence gone rogue. The Terminator movies were the first movies I really remember delving into this topic, at least in a way that my young brain paid attention to. I know there are older films and storylines I watched later, but The Terminator is the only one with lines like, “I’ll be back,” and “Hasta la vista, baby!” The list is actually long. Just off the top of my head, I can name 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix series, Steven Spielberg’s AI, i, Robot (based on some elements from Isaac Asimov stories, who, in turn, was inspired by a 1939 short story!), Blade Runner, Ex Machina, the last two Mission Impossible films, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. If I worked at it, I could name more. Apparently, we tend to have a built-in fear of technology that is smarter and stronger than we are. Maybe because we can see it coming.
Just this week, two people asked me if I saw the clips of a domestic robot that can (almost) load and unload a dishwasher by itself. I also read an article this week about how computer chips can be implanted in the human brain, enabling people who are paralyzed or facing macular degeneration to do amazing things. Researchers admit that it won’t be long before communication can go both ways between chips and brain matter, unlocking incredible possibilities. Both the dishwashing robot and the chips in the human body touch on the quickly expanding limits of artificial intelligence (AI). It turns out the sci-fi writers of the last 85+ years have gotten a lot of things right, long before we even had anything like a modern computer.
I am not a Luddite. While I haven’t always been an early adopter of technology, I like technology, usually grasp it quickly (when I take the time to learn), and am completely happy to utilize new technologies whenever they can help me. That said, AI worries me. Not because I really think there will be an army of Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike robots marching across the land, but because I see the negative implications it is already bringing to reality in a host of areas. Physical job loss aside, we’re seeing an entire wipeout of entry-level jobs across areas like law, graphic design, and computer programming. Granted, AI can do some things very quickly and very well. Still, when the computer is doing it, we’re not hiring young people who have typically had to learn the ropes of their fields to gain the experience required to handle the more complex aspects of their work later.
I’ve heard an attorney worry about young associates who aren’t learning to write briefs and are quickly becoming dependent on technology to avoid the hard work of researching the law. Those hours of research are how a knowledge base is built up over time. Will the world keep spinning without it? Of course. I know people in the graphic design world who use AI, but they recognize that it’s making some aspects of their work so easy that it’s unlikely many people in school for design today will be employable. In full disclosure, I love Canva, a web-based design platform that uses AI to make designing attractive materials a cinch. I get it. It can do a lot and do it well. But if we were worried about kids having calculators instead of learning math or failing to understand paper maps because we have GPS, we’ve entered a new realm. Some recent college graduates admit very little learning on their way to Dean’s List grades because of the clever and pervasive use of AI to produce much of the output that colleges demand. When we think about education, is it the output or the process? It’s both, but one is getting shortchanged in a hurry. When the 2024-2025 school year ended, ChatGPT reported noticeably less traffic, an indication of the amount of use just one AI platform sees for academic work.
I have never used an AI platform directly. I have made a conscious choice not to use the large language models like ChatGPT. I do utilize AI in other ways. I use AI-powered apps, like Grammarly, to check punctuation, spelling, and grammar. I also use an app that utilizes AI to manage tasks. I see the Google AI results whenever I do a search, of course, and I have encountered Meta’s AI in their social media platforms, too. Amazon has put AI out in front. I see Microsoft has one that pops up every time I start a new document, and I’m aware that many businesses I frequent are benefiting from AI even though I may not “see” it.
AI use in the church is becoming a hot topic. Our Vestry recently approved an AI policy for our staff, which essentially suggests that we won’t use AI for long-form writing or in any way that utilizes private information about parishioners. In effect, it means that you won’t hear sermons written by a computer, and that we avoid AI-generated content in our letters and magazines. We ended up being among the first churches to establish such a policy, but others are following suit. Our diocese is discussing one, and we almost had a resolution at our convention a week ago that would call for minimal use of AI in church settings. The version I have seen some dioceses adopt goes further than I would be comfortable with (essentially anti-anything AI), but I draw the line at AI-generated “spiritual” content.
So much of what we do in the church is animated by the Holy Spirit. The role we play as clergy and lay leaders in the faith is to serve as conduits between the human and the divine, bringing the two together in meaningful ways. AI can write a text that can be read from a pulpit, but is it a sermon? Is it preaching? And what about an AI prayer? There are already examples of AI-generated prayers. It’s not the words themselves that convey the meaning and represent the connection alone, of course. Heck, we read prayers written 500 years ago; they aren’t “our” prayers. Even 500-year-old prayers, however, were written out of a human experience, one marked by sin and redemption, hope and pain, joy and fear. A large language model AI system can come up with words that sound good, but is it the same? I (and many others) don’t think so. It’s not the same in some pretty profound ways.
Some of us are already pretty good at picking up AI-generated text. In part, because it’s soulless. When I am handed something that is AI-generated, I can usually sense it within a few sentences. Sometimes it only takes one. The grammar is perfect, the words make sense, but something is missing. And that something makes all the difference, at least to me.
I’m not worried about being out of a job. Not yet, anyway. I know I have colleagues who have found it easier to let AI write portions, or even all, of their sermons because it’s a time-saver. But AI doesn’t know who’s in the pews and what’s going on in the world (unless you tell it to make a connection directly) in the way that we do. AI doesn’t understand compassion, though it can define it. It hasn’t experienced pain, yet it will regurgitate responses to pain that it has “learned.” AI is about tasks and output, so much so that AI makes up academic and scriptural citations that are entirely fake. If you tell it you want footnotes, it will generate them, but some will be complete fiction. And that’s the problem. If it only gives us what we want, and not what we need, if we don’t wrestle with the hard things and slog through them, then we really will be living in a world entirely run by machines. It’s one thing to live in a world where we don’t need to read our emails or compose our replies, and it’s another completely to imagine a Gospel ministry that knows of Jesus but hasn’t met our risen Lord.
I’m not afraid of technology, but I remain wary of AI, mainly because of what its use portends, so long as we don’t really reflect on its ethical applications and its ethical pitfalls. Many sci-fi writers have gone through the thought exercises about where such technology can go awry, and I suppose we need to consider doing the same, too, and not just get blinded by the upsides. Our shared humanity is what connects us —at least in theory —and we’re having enough trouble connecting as humans already. I hope we can figure this out —and fast —because the acceleration of AI is staggering, to say the least. In the meantime, I’ll keep cranking out my human writing and looking for an affordable version of that dishwashing robot.
