Why Christians Should Not Buy into AI Catastrophism
On Sept. 8, the same day that Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, he released a string of warnings on X. Making the most headlines was the post that warned AI was advancing so quickly that it would likely kill us all by the end of the decade. Other researchers and tech execs were just as concerned, he claimed, but often downplayed the risks to the public. Experts from other AI companies quickly joined Coxon in expressing their alarm and called for AI development to be slowed until adequate safeguards were in place.
Putting some safeguards around AI development seems like a no-brainer, but many of us are skeptical of these sudden alarm bells. If the risk was so high, why wait for the government to demand what each company could have already been doing? White House AI advisor David Sacks suggested that this was a coordinated move to get Congress to exempt them from antitrust laws so that these companies can look altruistic while forming a cartel.
Whatever the motives, AI seems to have now supplanted climate change and overpopulation as the latest version of catastrophism to scare us all. In his 1968 book "The Population Bomb," Paul Ehrlich predicted that millions would starve in the 1970s and ‘80s as the human population exceeded our food resources. Later, he predicted that England might not exist by 2000 and that U.S. lifespans would soon be in a sharp freefall. None of these predictions came true. In fact, as the global population more than doubled, famine deaths plummeted, thanks to improvements in agriculture and other technology.
In the 1970s, popular magazines such as Time and Newsweek predicted that another imminent ice age would cover the globe by 2000, due to the use of aerosols and natural climatic cycles. By the late 1990’s, predictions of global cooling were replaced by predictions of global warming. By 2000, entire nations would disappear underwater, and the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013. Some predicted that by 2018, children would never again see snow.
Also in the 1970s, we were warned that, by the 1990s, all oil reserves would be used up. Happily, new methods of extraction and new sources were discovered, so the supply has grown.
In the late 1990’s, there was the Y2K scare. Because computer systems, including those used by major corporations and the government, only used two digits to mark the year, they would potentially all crash when they rolled over to 2000. Thankfully, predictions of airplanes falling from the skies, the power grid going down, all economic institutions failing and civilization collapsing were not realized. The computers clicked from 99 to 00 with very little effect.
Predictions of catastrophe not only tickle the human propensity for drama, but they flourish within a worldview in which human existence is believed to be an accident. In a godless, naturalistic way of seeing life and the world, it should never have evolved the way it did. We barely survived, as evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould famously put it, “by hook and by crook.” Even worse, we still have the potential to mess it all up. Life proceeds on razor-thin margins, so we should be worried. The weight of the world is on our shoulders, with our fossil fuels, carbon emissions and spray-on sunscreen. It is heavier than we imagined, and we are likely to drop it.
The Story of Everything, according to Holy Scripture, is quite different. While we were created to participate with God in the stewarding of His creation, we were never meant to carry the weight of it all. In fact, we cannot. It’s far beyond our ability to determine the future of life on this planet.
The fate of the world is not in our hands. It is in God’s hands, and He has demonstrated His care and concern for it and especially for us, over and over again. And since God is sovereign, He will accomplish His purposes in history with or without our cooperation. In fact, by dying and rising again, Jesus has defeated the enemy of this world and our souls, and now all authority has been given to Him. This is where the Bible puts the weight of the world.
This is no get-out-of-jail-free card for us. What we do matters. Our ideas and actions have very real consequences. But we live in the world He made and continues to care for. Even as our sin has corrupted the good creation, He accommodates to our fallen states in protecting us, many times from ourselves. Check the texts again: Expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden was as much an act of mercy as it was punishment. Separating the languages at Babel was so that we would not do anything and everything we could dream up (something we should know but frequently forget).
No one wants A.I. robots to take over the world. The environment is not ours to destroy, because “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” We must act responsibly in all the various challenges we face. But Christians should never give in to catastrophism. Not only has Scripture given us a better story of creation and a better understanding of what has gone wrong with the world, but we also know where history is headed. God has revealed to us the end of the story. And it is very good, because He is.
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John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
