The world is full of AI initiatives lately. In fact, it is the hottest thing around. People believe that the titans of industry are in fierce competition with one another to “control” artificial intelligence. Elon Musk is embroiled in a lawsuit with Open AI in an effort to present AI to the masses and grow it in a non profit environment. In other words, forget the profit motive. Let’s build AI for the betterment of mankind and allow all to use it.
Now that may not be the right answer for everyone, but I am steadfast in my resolve to not let AI into my life as long as I can avoid it – let alone control my life. I know that I am naive and probably engage with AI more than I realize, but I am trying to stay the course and use my brain rather than depend on some sort of artificial intelligence to do my work for me…
I know, I know… there are legitimate uses for AI. These new programs can search and hunt down data faster than any person could possibly accomplish. I was talking to a friend of mine in the financial services market and he has extolled the virtue of AI compiling reports in minutes, rather than hours or days. The amount of work that can be accomplished is staggering – and can certainly make life easier for a number of people.
There is still some argument about whether people will experience more layoffs in their lives as a result of AI being more efficient in many ways that humans can’t compete with. And there is the ongoing concern that artificial intelligence will ultimately take over control of our lives and we will become subordinate to the computer world and its blinding speed in controlling and assembling date. Time will tell.
I ran across an interesting article that discussed the pros and cons of AI – and the trade-offs in using it. There is actually a new term that has been coined to address this dilemma – “cognitive debt.” Like so many things in life today, we have become a society of instant gratification. If I can find somebody, or something, to do my work for me, why wouldn’t I do that? More and more, though, we are beginning to be consumed in using AI for the wrong reasons. At least in my opinion.
Research has recently shown a clear delineation in the different ways that people tend to deploy AI. Let’s say you have a report to write. You have two choices – write the report and then use AI to enhance your writing or… use AI to write the report and then edit it to add “personality” to it, as AI writing tends to be a little stilted, or devoid of human emotion.
If we, as a culture, depend on AI to do the research and then write our reports, which we then edit, people who have studied the impact of using these tools have concluded that we will lose cognitive power. This will lead to a decline in our ability to be as sharp next time we have something to do. This decline is our ability to do the hard work first leads to “cognitive debt.”
However, if we do the work first, and then use AI to edit and “punch up” our work, the data suggests that we won’t suffer a cognitive decline and we will be sharper the next time. In other words, it is strongly suggested that we do the work ourselves first, using AI as a tool to assist us, as opposed to abdicating our opportunity to create content to a “machine.”
Some people may not like having to stay the course and doing the work first, but I’m all for keeping my brain as sharp as possible. AI at best is a tool we can use to help our work get better… but let’s not limit our God given right to express ourselves in authentic and meaningful ways.
It’s kind of like our faith… To stay sharp, we must study the Bible, doing the hard work of reading and trying to understand God’s word – sometimes with the help of great teachers. It is not the will of God that we look at heavily edited versions of the Word and depend on others to do all our study for us. This defeats the purpose of coming into relationship with God. When people come to Christ, they can’t be saved by someone else. Each must partake of the “lamb” themselves – and that means doing the difficult work of studying ourselves rather than taking an easy way out.
Said another way, I can’t eat a hamburger and you feel full! It just doesn’t work that way. Each must “eat” for themselves. The Old Testament illustrates this principle through the study of the Passover. Our verse for tonight comes from Exodus as Passover approached. Moses, the author of Exodus, tells us in Exodus 12:4, “If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat.”
Did you catch that last part? Each must eat – each must do the work of warding off the Angel of Death that would pass through the community that night. And so it is with God. My encouragement this evening is that God wants to be in relationship with each of us – and we must do that individually. Then we won’t experience cognitive decline. My prayer is that we will do the work of studying God’s word, reading the Bible and learning from dedicated teachers who will teach us the truth. That pleases God… and helps us to stay sharp and focused. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…