Evaluation – AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep

For a book about a complex technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep is thankfully easy to read and follow. The intended audience is not the tech savvy, but more the general public who has likely heard about AI but does not have any expertise. This book is geared towards those in ministry with a desire to understand the technology from a Christian perspective so they can help others.

The book includes many citations and presents a wide variety of perspectives on both the pros and cons of using AI. This can be helpful for those wanting to dig deeper into these topics. While presenting many perspectives, the authors don’t make many decisive claims or arguments themselves. They are presenting a way to think about technology more than providing conclusions. At the end, they do give examples of specific tasks where they recommend using or not using AI in a ministry context. Some of this applies well to Christians thinking about AI outside a ministry context, but not always in a straightforward way.

Book Summary – AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep

Our aim is to present a biblical-theological framework that will help educators and ministry leaders identify the perils and possibilities that lie before us. We believe this path is informed, theological, and accessible. It is informed because we have been working in these areas of technology for a while and, more specifically, have seen how they’ve evolved over the past ten years. It is theological because, as theologians, we are very familiar with the question about what it means to be human and made in the image of God in an age of AI. And the path is accessible because we are educators and know the importance of communicating concepts that may be completely new to some.

AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep page

Definitions and History of AI

The book begins with defining core technological concepts and the different types of AI. AI is based on algorithms. Algorithms are step-by-step instructions that AI uses to perform tasks. They can identify hidden patterns. They can evolve and learn over time. AI is already embedded in everything from refrigerators to global financial markets, from autonomous weapon systems to Amazon recommendations. It is a core part of how the world functions.

Types of AI:

• Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): has constraints for a specific task (Amazon recommendations)
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): intelligence equal to humans
• Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI): intelligence greater than humans
• Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI): generates statistically probable outputs (ChatGPT)
• Machine Learning: learns from data
• Deep Learning: uses neural networks to analyze large, diverse sets of unstructured data

The authors provide a history of AI highlighting the key figures involved. They then provide a diverse range of perspectives and quotes that capture the current debate over the impact of AI on society. Some warn of the risk of AI taking over the world while others focus on the opportunity to enhance human capabilities. Others focus on the enormous environmental impact. AI has the capacity to change how we understand reality and how we make decisions. There are concerns due to the influence corporations can have by developing the technology to serve their financial interests.

The Impact of AI

Next, the authors outline both the positive and negative potential impacts of AI and Christianity on 13 aspects of society:

• Religion, Spirituality, and Morality
• Relationships
• Education
• Politics
• Media, Entertainment, and Art
• Economics and Business
• Law and Judiciary
• Science and Technology
• Military and Defense
• Foreign Relations
• Transportation
• Medicine and Healthcare
• Environment

For example, in medicine and healthcare, AI has the ability to aid doctors in creating new medications, diagnosing complex diseases, and providing gene therapy. On the other hand, AI may have built in biases that can harm certain patients. AI can also be used to develop new biological weapons.

AI and Christianity – What Does it Mean to be Human?

Next the authors provide their main thesis for how we should approach the intersection of Christianity and AI. They contend that Christians should evaluate AI through a robust biblical anthropology that is based in the purpose and nature of human beings. We should think about whether AI advances or hinders human flourishing. The authors provide a Creational Narrrative to understand the overall story of Scripture.

• Creator: The triune God exists in a mutual loving relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Everything exists to glorify God.
• Creation: Originally, creation was created pure and complete. There is value in embodiment. God’s common grace extends to all creation. Humans are created in the image of God. God calls humans to rule in partnership with him.
• Disintegration: Sin frustrates creation and causes decay and alienation.
• Liberation: The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus liberates all of creation and provides hope.
• Reclamation: God is in the process of restoring and renewing creation through his people.
• Glorification: The ultimate conclusion is a restored heaven and earth.

AI and Christianity – The Image of God (Imagio Dei)

The core part of what it means to be human is that humans are made in the image of God. The image of God can be understood using the framework of reason, relationship, and role.

• Reason: Humans have a rational and moral nature that they use to provide order and structure.
• Relationship: Humans are created for relationship with God and with each other.
• Role: Humans have been given a vocation and authority to serve, guard, and name creation using the agency and power that comes from God.

What it means to be human in relation to technology, such as Christianity and AI, has changed over time. Technology extends human ability to shape the world around them. Technology alters how humans interact with their environment. The printing press led to an increase in individualism because people could learn to read and write on their own decreasing the need for communal reading and teaching.

Technology is not neutral. Technology adds or removes. It has embedded values that can sometime be hard to see. AI could make writing become obsolete. Humans create a digital projection of themselves that exist outside their physical reality and will persist beyond their death. AI could allow humans to direct their own evolution, determining body, mind, cognition, personality, and character through technology. This raises questions about what is required to remain human when so much can be replaced with technology.

Education

Teaching is an essential part of how we need to think about AI and Christianity. The authors look at four areas where AI impacts education.

• AI and Truth: As Christians, we focus on what is true. Misinformation and disinformation have become more common in news and social media with tools powered by AI. All information has become suspect and conspiracy theories are on the rise. AI influences our decisions when it comes to consumerism and politics. AI can hallucinate, making things up and presenting them as facts.
• AI and the Flourishing of the Human Spirit: AI can be used as a co-creator and partner. AI can help Christians remain relevant in an increasingly technological age.
• AI and the Accelerated Life: As Christians, we need to guard our hearts and our peace. We need to find time to slow down and disconnect from technology. We need to seek out practices like Lectio Divina that encourage us to slow down in our reading of Scripture. AI can generate content, but writing causes our minds to engage in reflection and logical thinking that could be lost.
• AI and Family: Technology has created a culture where people remain physically near each other but stay focused on their devices instead of engaging with one another. People have become addicted to their devices and experience increasingly shorter attention spans. Christians need to set routines that push back against this and not just set limits.

Formation and Discipleship

In addition to education, spiritual formation and discipleship are also important aspects of how we think about Christianity and AI. Human agency and the work of the Spirit are both active in the formation of our heart and soul. We need bodily, corporeal habits to form us. How we treat AI will impact how we begin to treat other people.

The authors discuss what they label as “Hearth Habits”. The hearth used to be the center of the home. There were focal things and focal practices that recenter human experience on the immediate and material external world. They use the metaphor of fire and logs to give examples of what this might look like.

• Holy Spirit: Starter and sustainer of the fire in the hearth
• Log 1: Embodied Habits – cooking, hiking, and painting
• Log 2: Place Habits – gardening and homemaking
• Log 3: Time-bound Habits – silent prayer and sacred church calendar/festivals
• Log 4: Social Habits – Eucharist, hospitality, and service.

These “Hearth Habits” are ways that Christians can resist the influence that AI and other technologies can have on our attention and ability to connect with others around us. These technologies are shaping us, and we need to be intentional in creating routines that help us become more like Jesus.

Using AI in Ministry

Ministry is another area where the intersection of AI and Christianity is important ot consider. The authors define ministry as the care for people through worship and witness in a local community. They provide specific recommendations for where to avoid using AI, where to be cautious about using AI, and where to go ahead and move forward using AI.

Don’t use AI:

• to write or deliver an entire sermon or Bible study. A sermon is designed to be a word from God, not just a word about God. A machine cannot hear a word from God. It doesn’t have a soul or a lived experience to draw on.
• as a substitute for interpersonal counseling. AI doesn’t have the emotional intelligence and intuition required.
• to write whole worship songs or design whole worship services. Worship is supposed to be for God by humans.

Cautiously use AI:

• to generate, research, and edit content for sermons and Bible studies. Avoid an over dependence on AI that could lead to laziness or plagiarism.
• to create job postings and volunteer descriptions. Watch out for biases.

Consider using AI:

• to produce content for social media, websites, and instructions. Aim for quality and not trendiness.
• for website management, optimization, and content editing.
• for Human Capital Management. It can provide new ways to recruit volunteers to the right positions.
• to expand God’s mission through language translation.

Intelligence Doesn’t Define What It Means to be Human

What does it mean for humanity when machines become more intelligent than humans? If it is our intelligence that makes humans special, then AI is viewed more as a threat and a risk. In the Christian faith, God created humans in his image. It is the image of God that differentiates humanity from the rest of creation, not our level of intelligence. Artificial intelligence will never bear God’s image. Therefore, AI can never fully usurp what it means to be human because intelligence doesn’t define what it means to be human.

Given the centrality of humans in God’s story, I don’t think there can be a future where AI causes humans to cease to exist. Why would God let the rest of creation endure without humanity?

Technology Isn’t Neutral

Some have argued that technology is a neutral tool that can either be used for good or evil. This argument doesn’t acknowledge the way that technology forms us in a specific way regardless of the righteousness of our motivation or the goodness of the outcome. The authors view AI as an accelerator for the technological trends that we are already seeing with the use of smartphones and social media. The smartphone is not a neutral tool. The way the smartphone allows us to engage the world around us changes our attention span, what we value, and opens us up to be formed by the content that others create for us. AI is created by corporations motivated by profit.

We need to be wise as we determine boundaries around the appropriate use of these new technologies. I agree with the authors about the need to slow down and be intentional with spiritual practices that will form us to be more like Jesus. Christianity and AI are often at odds with what is valued.

My Critiques – AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep

Generative AI

AI can refer to different types of technology. Generative AI has exploded in the last several years and appears to have the largest potential for impacting our lives due to its ability to create content. A majority of the points the authors make in this book are not specific to generative AI, or even AI in general. They are applicable to how we should view technology broadly speaking. I would have loved to hear more analysis around generative AI and Christianity specifically.

AI and Christianity – The Way the Spirit Works

The authors claim that AI should not be used to generate whole sermons or worship services. While I agree with the overall claim, the reasoning provided focuses on the relationship between God and the preacher and not God and the audience. They claimed that a sermon is intended to be a word from God to his people. The preacher receives a word from God and communicates it to the people. Because AI doesn’t have a soul, it cannot receive this word from God. I think this ignores the way the Spirit works in those who hear the sermon. Regardless of the origin of the content, God can use it to communicate his gospel and his word to his people, even AI generated content. I think the impact is more on the preacher than the congregation.

It is also worth noting that AI is trained on existing content, much of which is created by humans receiving a word from God. AI isn’t creating a sermon from nothing. The authors’ claim that the Silicon Valley corporations that create these AI models do not have pure, unbiased motivations in what content is created should still be heeded as a wise caution in how we think about Christianity and AI.

Human Dignity Over Human Flourishing

The authors main thesis is that technology should be evaluated based on whether it advances or hinders human flourishing. My critique is that human flourishing is not the ultimate value or goal that Christians should use to measure the impact. Flourishing brings to mind success, prosperity, wealth, pleasure, and an easy life. Even at a minimum, it would entail a certain level of comfort and a lack of suffering.

There are several problems with this approach. First, the definition of flourishing is going to look very different to different people. The partisan politics in America in recent years has highlighted the fact that many evangelicals have wildly different ideas for what flourishing looks like. AI could be used by someone in a way that they believe advances flourishing and another believes that the same thing hinders flourishing.

Second, flourishing is not how Jesus would describe the Christian life. Sometimes we are called to suffer with Christ. Following Jesus has a cost. It is possible to reframe suffering as flourishing with the right perspective, but I don’t think that is what is being communicated in this book. There could be situations that lead to human flourishing at the expense of the people using it or consuming it.

I think focusing on human dignity instead of human flourishing would be more appropriate. Human dignity is a clearer biblical value and there would likely be more of a consensus on what advances or hinders dignity. There could also be examples of using technology that would advance human flourishing at the cost of human dignity. In that case, I would choose dignity over flourishing.