Christians Should Steward AI [DRAFT]
On the axe in the garden, the power of the tongue, and the difference between rejecting power and stewarding it.
Technology is the term for the external faculties by which humans accomplish will. Every new faculty we gain amplifies our capability for good and evil, and adds complexity.
Let's say you are Adam in the garden. You will to cut down a tree. You attempt to smack your hands against the trunk to cut it. Ouch, sorry. You have discovered you have no means by which to enact this will. You do not have the power. You must pray a force more capable than you accomplishes your will.
Later, you've invented the axe. Wonderful. Congratulations on your new technology. You may be tricked into thinking your life is now simpler. On the contrary: you must now choose to use your strengthened means to enact your will, or pray a force more capable than you accomplishes your will. Your new tool is a bifurcation.
The Bible does not teach us to pursue disarmament, or in other words, to diminish our means. Rather, the Bible teaches us to embrace strength that is given to use, but steward in meekness.
Indeed, our Lord models what it should look like to have means. In fact our God has every means — that is, all powers to enact his will. Meekness can be defined as power under control. He chooses to wield his full power in meekness. We do not follow our Lord because He is lacking in the means to punish us, but because he chooses to wield the power he does have to accomplish his will. He wills there to be justice. He can accomplish this by any means. He chooses to accomplish it in the one way that spares us.
The Lord has every choice because He has every power. We follow him not because he can't make a particular choice, but because of the particular choices he makes among all the ones he could.
My theory: I believe the Lord of infinite means bestows limited means to his children in hopes we wield the power in a way that reflects him. He says to Adam, name the animals. Joseph, command people. Noah, build a floating machine. Disciples, cast your net technology in the water to catch fish. Paul, use language and paper and ink. Jack, use chat.
My personal experience with this worldview: I am feeling more human than I was yesterday because of the means I've gained by technology.
At group, I was able to communicate more clearly than I would have otherwise with Claude as a tool to create a digital set of symbols. I displayed these symbols on an LCD screen powered with electricity delivered by a wire that enters into my home from weatherproofed lines containing the electricity, electricity being a captured chemical reaction of abstracted energy, harnessed into this form by an engine built in a factory, a machine invented by men, who were tasked to bring Franklin's discovery of electrification to a nation who, in many cases, connected this electrification to an Edison bulb that, for one, became the means by which they studied the scriptures past sundown.
Increased power does not inherently mean bad, or good — it just means application of whatever wields the power. That's the nature of power. My thesis is tech is simply specific powers. Power is a neutral force modeled by the hands of who wields it. I'm defining tech as simply any specific expansion of power.
Using that definition, I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of tech's, or power's, ability to be the tool by which a man offloads his humanity. I think you're right. And the more advanced the capability, the further down is the floor of that hollow, dehumanizing emptying.
At the same time, what I am arguing — which you've alluded to in your wrestlings with the concept — is that power has the other side to it. The way I'd phrase it is: the ceiling increases just as much as the floor lowers with more power.
Applying the principle.
The axe enables you to take down the tree, but smashes its head into wood on behalf of your hands. Keys on the piano enable you to generate the sound, but bonk onto the strings on behalf of your fingernails. Maps enable you to identify a destination inaccessible to you previously, but give you a map on behalf of your method of summiting a mountain with binoculars for target identification.
More starkly: what's the difference between the man at the small town bar who hates his neighbor versus the man in the Middle East who hates his? A bazooka.
What's the difference between the man who couldn't save the kids being trafficked, trapped behind a factory wall in the U.S., versus the man who could in the Middle East? …A bazooka.
I'm seeing each tech advance as only an amplification of the being who wields it. In the same way that a king of the Old Testament is condemned for his laziness and gluttony, offloading all his life to others in hedonism, a good king is lauded for his stewardship of his kingdom to bring blessing to his people. The level of tech, power, height of ceiling and floor are just as high or low for each king — both are carried to their destinations by all organic chariot gps — but one is good, and one is evil.
There, tech and power are the same, but their use of it differs. Therefore, I'm only seeing tech as application of power.
I think you're letting your negative feelings — stemming from your (correct) identification of the glaring obvious potential evils of our newly developing set of tech-flavored powers — stand in for a verdict on the tool itself. You're confusing the wielding of the power with the nature of the power. You're seeing a flattened view.
You must instead see it in two layers rather than one. Layer one is the foundation, power. Layer two is the actualization of the power, the wielding.
Why does that matter? Because you don't want to reject power itself as a default. That is to be more like Adam than Jesus.
Take, for example, the truth that life and death are in the power of the tongue. Then think about technology today. The tongue has never been more powerful. To reject these new powers — written language, electronic messaging, telephone calls, digital stages, electronic mail — outright would be to reject new ceilings for potential good. You'd also be rejecting the new floors for potential evil. Luddite moment. But we don't believe in that way of living because of the way Jesus' ministry entered into the world.
I'm not saying being quiet — because of choosing to be meek, or humble, or kind, or gentle, or loving — is wrong. Loudness is not the virtue. New tech increases loudness. But this is only a means. The same tech in the room capturing Trotman's call to be a producer is the same tech that captured Hitler's words to play the airwaves. Similar power. Different spirit.
The hope: not to become a tech bro, but to transfer hesitancy into wisdom, fear into dominion. Somehow, wielding to become more human.