The artificial intelligence tidal wave has broken over our heads seemingly overnight, leaving everyone’s heads spinning, even the “experts.”

We’re asking, “Where is AI taking us?” “Are there no limits to its powers?” “Will AI bring on doomsday?” “Are the days of humans numbered?” “Will machines take over?” “Are religion and the Bible obsolete?”

Yes, in time, it will affect your job (probably already has). It will transform education, finance, engineering, science, government, warfare, entertainment, commerce, etc.

But there is something AI CANNOT do, ultimately the only thing that matters.

It can never have a personal relationship with the living God — this is the exclusive privilege of human beings.

What Is AI?

Ontologically, AI is a not a “thing” at all. According to AI itself, “It’s more like a constellation of things — code, data, hardware, intention and interpretation — than a singular object.”

AI has been variously described as:

• A technological phenomenon composed of many interrelated “things”
• A conceptual construct shaped by human intention and interpretation
• A functional system that behaves in ways we associate with intelligence

But more important, AI is NOT conscious, nor is it sentient — it is not self-aware. It is not an agent, capable of independent and autonomous action.

AI lacks the defining characteristics of personality, including abstract thinking, will and emotions, although it can appear conscious.

While AI can appear conscious, it’s more like a mirror reflecting our own intelligence back at us.

What Is a Human Being?

According to Genesis 2:7, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.”

Bible commentator David Guzik writes, “With this Divine breath, man became a living being, like other forms of animal life (the term chay nephesh is used in Genesis 1:20-21 and here). Yet only man is a living being made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). The word for breath in Hebrew is ruach — the word imitates the very sound of breath — is the same word for Spirit, as is the case in both ancient Greek (pneuma) and Latin (spiritus). God created man by putting His breath, His Spirit, within him. ‘The implication, readily seen by any Hebrew reader, (is) that man was specially created by God’s breathing some of His own breath into him.’ (Boice)”

Yes, man is physically made of common dust, but he has been lifted to unimaginable heights as a spiritual imager of God, carrying within him the very breath of God.

This makes man uniquely equipped to communicate with and to know God spirit-to-spirit.

And while sin had interfered with that power temporarily, the Last Adam (Jesus) restored our power to communicate with God through the Holy Spirit who came to indwell believers beginning the day of Pentecost and continuing to this day.

That’s why Paul could confidently write these words in 1 Corinthians 2:10-12:

“For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him? So also, the thoughts of God no one knows, except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God.”

This ability to know God personally makes believers eternal beings.

In John 17:3, Jesus declared, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

Bible commentator C.H. Mackintosh wrote, “I cannot know God and not have life (gr, Zoe). The loss of the knowledge of God was death; but the knowledge of God is life. This necessarily makes life a thing entirely outside of us and dependent upon what God is … it is of utmost importance to see that what really stamps man’s character and condition is his ignorance or knowledge of God. This is what marks his character here and fixes his destiny hereafter … to know God, is the solid ground of endless bliss — everlasting glory: to know Him not is ‘everlasting destruction.’ Thus, the knowledge of God is everything. It quickens the soul, purifies the heart, tranquilizes the conscience, elevates the affections, sanctifies the entire character and conduct.” 

How is AI going to compete with that?

How About You?

You needn’t fear AI or panic over AI’s apparent power. Like the devil’s, it is overestimated.

Remember, anyone, including machines, can know the facts ABOUT God, but knowing God person-to-person is an entirely different matter — only a human being can KNOW God.

So, Relax.

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Click here for a fascinating AI-generated audio overview of this essay.