The Holy Spirit is greater than AI

AI pragmatism and the two databases artificial intelligence can never touch

It was one of those early morning prayer sessions. Do you have those? When you’re lying in bed, in and out of sleep. You can hear the birdsong outside and you haven’t had a coffee.

I was puzzling over a problem that I really needed a solution for, a situation that I needed wisdom and help with for many months. That’s when I found myself praying, God, I’m in the habit of going to Grok for answers and solutions for things, but this is something different. Only you….

As we started our lazy Sunday morning before church, Petra shared a thought that directly answered the question I’d been asking. It was like a lightbulb went on. Turns out we’d both been puzzling over the same thing. Her idea answered the question.

That was last week, on Pentecost Sunday.

The experience prompted me to drop a little post in my stories that had a lot of responses on IG. It’s gone to wherever stories go when they run their 24 hr course. It went something like this:

The Holy Spirit is greater than AI.

Dropping this reminder on your feed on Pentecost Sunday.

Authentic, not artificial.
Consistent for centuries!
No upgrades required.
No glitches.
No fees.
Freely given.
No infringement.
More than predictive: prophetic.
Better than any learning model.
Serves and guides, will never lord it over you.

I’ve been reflecting on that sentiment this week and wanted to bring the thought into your inbox. We can’t escape the conversation about AI (are you sick of it yet?).

But better yet, we can’t escape the Spirit.

AI haters, adopters and pragmatists

I’m not an AI-hater. I’m also not a doe-eyed adopter who thinks it is the answer to every human problem. I like it most as a tool, especially as a virtual assistant that helps me to consolidate information quickly.

Two recent ways I used AI to improve my life:

• To create a 7-day meal plan with a shopping list, recipes with instructions for our family, factoring in our Macros (it did it in mere seconds; amazing! Giving me back hours of time). #GameChanger

• To cross reference the tour dates of three separate events across the US to see if there were any cross overs in locations (saving me hours of time). #Brilliant

I think I’m an AI pragmatist, if that’s a thing.

Artificial intelligence is built into the processes of daily life. Use the internet for more than five minutes, and it’s supporting you in some way. If you search something or type something on a phone, it’s predicting your patterns and your behaviours.

It’s not just segmented or walled off from our work lives. If, for instance, you use your Bible App or listen to podcasts, AI is serving up your content, reading it back to you.

Even if you don’t want to use it, if you’re on the internet you can’t not use it. But there are two databases that AI can never touch, ones algorithms and machine learning can’t access.

The two databases that AI can never access

The first database that artificial intelligence can never access is the database of God’s wisdom, which is secret and hidden. I know AI can search the online database of the Bible, serving up verses and interpretations from scholars within seconds. It can help us find verses we can’t remember with a few key words in the snap of a finger so that you don’t even have to thumb through your concordance.

But I’m talking about the unseen, unknowable database of God himself.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, people who lived in a time where there was a hunger for secret knowledge, and a growing belief that taught only the elite, with a specific spiritual intelligence, could grasp hold of it. He writes:

But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages of our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

~ 1 Corinthians 2: 7-10

That’s quite the passage!

The Spirit searches the depths of God himself to reveal mysteries unknown, secrets hidden like treasure so we can uncover and find it, the substance underneath every unturned rock.

I might not need to pray about my meal plan, but there is a food I don’t know about that only God can supply.

The frightening side of AI

It’s alarming when you read about AI and where it’s going. The human developers of the learning models and algorithms that continue to advance this often hard-to-understand technological development are afraid of the monster they’re creating.

Just take a minute to read this short article of some of those fears over at Forbes.

Three of the top concerns, on an ever-growing list, are existential and ethical:

• AI has the potential to surpass human intelligence, which poses unpredictable and potentially catastrophic risk.

• Humanity could lose control over AI systems; many predict we’ll see AI act contrary to human safety or values.

• Rapid advancement will lead to complex ethical questions that we haven’t imagined or, currently have no solve for.

If you’re a worrier, I’ve just given you enough to fret about for the rest of your life. It’s wild that we’re not pausing and more thoughtfully developing this technology as the greatest minds (who are developing it) are also the ones afraid of the road they’re leading us down.

But I’m not trying to make you worried (though, you probably should be). By highlighting the amazing, human-created and therefore faulty technology that is artificial intelligence, take a moment to marvel at the authentic intelligence of God’s spirit:

• Who will never dominate or control you.

• Who will not turn you into a meat puppet to extract all your energy like you’re some organic battery.

• Who exists to connect you to the deep wisdom and otherwise unsearchable data of God.

You can’t escape him, but that’s a good thing.

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?

The answer to this rhetorical question in Psalm 139 is, in a word, nowhere.

The startling reveal at the end of this perfectly encouraging passage is that we are the other database that no AI can extract information from.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me
and lead me in the way everlasting.

~ Psalm 139: 23-24

We’re hooked up to devices that take our blood pressure, measure our steps, read our heart beats and analyze our sleep.

But our Oura rings and Apple watches cannot read our hearts. Most of the time we don’t know what’s in them ourselves.

It’s only by connecting the two unsearchable databases—the depths of God and the human heart, through the freely accessible and never-gonna-lose connection of the Holy Spirit—that we get the most important solutions we need.