Recommended summer reading about Artificial Intelligence

Recently, I’ve had a number of conversations with people asking me about my thoughts about Artificial Intelligence. People seem surprised when I tell them I’ve tried my best to avoid using AI at all. I’ve never used ChatGPT, I avoid any AI feature on my phone like the plague, I quickly skip past the AI overview on any Google search and look for the “real stuff”. If I do use the AI overview, I make sure I click the actual links to see if the information is actually true. Some of that is because I simply don’t trust AI. I’ve heard too many stories about AI “hallucinating”. One pretty funny one recently was an AI-compiled “summer reading list” that a couple of major American publications put out last month. However, apparently nobody checked the list before hitting “publish”, because while all the authors were real people, the books they had supposedly written were completely fabricated by AI- they weren’t real books! (https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/chicago-sun-times-ai-book-list-1.7539016) Some of my hesitancy is because I see lots of potential for idolatry in AI- whether that’s the foundation of new religions with AI as the deity to be worshiped (https://news.umanitoba.ca/gods-in-the-machine-the-rise-of-artificial-intelligence-may-result-in-new-religions/) or some AI models apparently believing themselves to be worthy of worship (https://futurism.com/microsoft-copilot-alter-egos). Some of it is because I believe there will be all kinds of unintended consequences to the AI revolution- one of them possibly being widespread unemployment and increased reliance on government handouts (https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/14/money-for-nothing-is-universal-basic-income-about-to-transform-society). And some of it, as I jokingly say, is because when the robots do take over, I don’t want them to have anything on me.

If you’re wanting to read more about why it might be a good idea to think carefully about Artificial Intelligence, I have two books to recommend for you. This is my recommended summer reading list for those wanting to think through AI usage, and I promise you they are real books by real authors. I read them (or a version of them) as part of my studies, and they were eye-opening.

Here’s the first: “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleyman. Suleyman isn’t a Christian, so this is not written from any kind of theological perspective (which also means you could get it at the library). But it is written by someone who knows AI well- in fact, he was the founder of two AI companies and is now the CEO of Microsoft AI. He is also very pessimistic/realistic (?) about the negative impacts the AI revolution might have. Actually, that’s understating it. This was one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. If you want to get a sense of how things could go off the rails with AI, read this book. The biggest takeaway: there is a desperate need for AI advancement to be “contained”, and yet that will almost assuredly not happen because of various human (and while he doesn’t use this term, I will: sin-drenched) factors.

When I read “The Coming Wave”, I felt fear for the future of our society. It was a wake-up call in that way. And then I read this second book: “2084: Artificial Intelligence and the future of humanity” by John Lennox. Lennox is a Christian and very much writes with that perspective in mind (which means you will probably not get it at the library). Lennox is a brilliant Oxford scientist and philosopher. I read the original version that was written in 2020 (in other words, ancient history when it comes to this topic), but I see on Amazon that the book has been updated and expanded and republished within the last year. Reading Lennox after Suleyman didn’t really lessen my hesitancy about AI. In fact, it gave me some biblical and theological language for that hesitancy. In the 2020 version, Lennox even suggests that Artificial General Intelligence could be an instance of God actually allowing us to create a god of our own making and give life to it before Christ returns. But the book also gave me hope. It reminded me of God’s sovereignty in the midst of the radical changes that might be coming.

Look, I know I’m on the more extreme end of this. Personally, the Amish aren’t looking too bad these days. On the other hand, I have no doubt there are good and helpful uses for AI. But I do think that we as Christians need to think carefully about this and be discerning about what kinds of new technology we embrace and what the fruit of those might be. Use it or don’t, just don’t assume that because we can do something, we should do it. As Paul says to the Corinthians, “'I have the right to do anything,’ you say- but not everything is beneficial.” (1 Cor. 6:12)