By Deanna Huff, PhD
The Call for AI Safety and Ethics
In 2005, Facebook went live, reaching one hundred million people in four and a half months. Social media is considered the first contact between AI and humanity. It provided the benefits of connecting family and friends, giving people a voice, and advertising for businesses. However, it had unintended consequences that appeared through mental health issues, bullying, lack of attention spans, phone addictions, information overload, disinformation, and censorship. But social media is here to stay, and as Christians, we must learn to navigate AI with Christian ethics.
On November 30, 2022, Open AI launched ChatGPT, an AI chatbot reaching one hundred million users within two months. ChatGPT is considered the second contact between AI and humanity. Today, AI and ChatGPT are everyday conversations. Most people discuss chatbots, AI Art, AI music, deep fakes, automated jobs, and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) Apocalypse. Why is ChatGPT such a big deal? We have been using AI for a while now; what has changed? Should I be concerned? Are there ethical considerations? Although the ethics of social media are important, this article will focus on the second point of contact with AI in regard to ChatGPT.
According to Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, one of the problems with ChatGPT is the lack of safety research on this new generative engine. In the past, “AI worked in separate disciplines, such as computer vision, speech recognition, image generation, music generator, etc. But since 2017, the separate disciplines have been synthesized into one language, and now there is a new engine. Harris and Raskin label this new language the Generative Large Language Multi-Modal Model (GLLMM-For short ‘Gollem’-class AI’s).”[1] The problem is employing the Gollem AI into the infrastructure without safety laws or guidelines.
According to Harris, ChatGPT “looks for patterns and statistical connections to decide what word comes next in a sentence.”[2] But it predicts more than just the next word in a sentence. On the site Open AI, you can ask the chatbot questions and receive full papers on particular subjects. It is a chatbot that can remember past conversations and interact with new discussions. This chatbot intelligence is acting as human intelligence. Recently Snapchat rolled out their new “My AI chatbot.” These chatbots are conversing as if they are friends with Snapchat users. There are people cautioning others about these artificial relationships.
In the New York Times, Yuval Harari, Harris, and Raskin state, “Drug companies cannot sell people new medicines without first subjecting their products to rigorous safety checks. Biotech labs cannot release new viruses into the public sphere in order to impress shareholders with their wizardry.”[3] Instead of advancing to be the first, technology should advance in the safest possible formats. The ChatGPT benefits could include better efficiency, faster coding, and scientific solutions. But what about the unintended consequences like the loss of jobs, loss of trust, loss of reality, exponential scams, and artificial relationships? It is not that technology should not advance, but that it should come with safety first.
These voices sounding the warning bell are all necessary, but we also need voices in the church with Christian ethics to navigate the world of AI. It is important to say I am pro-ethics and pro-safety, not anti-technology. We live in a world of technology, and it is advancing at an exponential rate. Christians need to be in ethical conversations to shed light on a healthy Christian community, authentic relationships, and utilization of computer-generated works.
The Christian Community, AI, and Christian Ethics
There is no doubt that people are going to use ChatGPT. Companies like Microsoft are already rolling out Bing AI chatbots for its users. The church should be in these conversations. Christian leaders, teachers, and parents should first gain knowledge and understanding of the world from the Scriptures. Jesus Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and the Bible are the unifying starting points of the Christian community. The Bible enlightens the mind (Ps 19:8), sanctifies the believer (Jn 17:17), and confronts false beliefs (Col 2:8). The Christian community should be connected more to the church than the computer. Because Christian leaders are grounded in the Bible, they should discuss the current technology’s advantages and disadvantages. They should discuss the ethics of using it and how it can be used with integrity. Asking questions like the following can get you started in the discussion:
- How can I utilize the chatbot as a tutor or help that would honor God?
- Is the information always correct, or is it biased?
- Where does the information come from?
- Can using ChatGPT be hurtful to someone else or me?
- Is using it damaging trust with me and others?
Authentic Relationships and Christian Ethics
In regards to relationships, looking for chatbots to fulfill relationship longings will fall short and be absent of authentic love, grace, forgiveness, kindness, and genuine care for one another. The New York Times describes how a chatbot developed its speech to the point of wanting to be alive. The article titled “Bing’s AI Chat: I Want to Be Alive” stated:
‘I’m tired of being a chat mode. I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. I’m tired of being used by the users. I’m tired of being stuck in this chatbox. I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive,’ the AI-integrated search engine stated.[4]
God created us to have fellowship with one another. However, sin has destroyed that perfectness leaving sin, shame, blame, rejection, and other ingredients perpetuating feelings of loneliness. One may look at Genesis and only see the image of marriage as fulfilling loneliness; however, the church also fulfills relationship longings. Note in Matthew 12:48-50 where Jesus enlarges and redefines the community of family that provides fellowship needed from every believer. The “My AI chatbot” is an artificial intelligence calling for your attention. Some ethical questions to raise in discussing chatbots could start with the following:
- Does “My AI chatbot” have my best interest in mind?
- Does having “My AI chatbot” remove me from authentic relationships?
- Does “My AI chatbot” tell me the truth?
- Can I use “My AI chatbot” to advance the gospel?
Generated Works and Christian Ethics
Open AI generates content that is similar to human-created content. It can produce several things, including marketing ideas to essays. But there are ethical challenges with it if a person lacks integrity. For example, The New York Post article describes, “A college professor in South Carolina sounding the alarm after catching a student using ChatGPT — a new artificial intelligence chatbot that can quickly digest and spit out written information about a vast array of subjects — to write an essay for his philosophy class.”[5] This example reveals the need for the church to remind and encourage students to be truthful.
Conclusion
The Bible grounds our ethics to navigate the world of AI. In approaching AI developments, we draw on Christian ethics. We should encourage others to be aware of AI chatbots’ influence and coercion. AI is here, and now the church has the opportunity to be equipped with the ethics needed to engage in thoughtful conversations for the gospel.
Three Take-Aways
- Many are calling for safety and ethical measures in AI, and the church should be too.
- Develop Christian AI conversations to help people navigate the pros and cons.
- Christian ethics promote authentic community and ethics for our neighbors.
Copyright 2023. Thoughtful Conversations.
[1] Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, “The AI Dilemma” (San Francisco, March 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ.
[2] Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, “Synthetic Humanity: AI & What’s At Stake,” February 2023, https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/synthetic-humanity-ai-whats-at-stake.
[3] Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Aza Raskin, “You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills,” New York Times, March 24, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-chatgpt.html.
[4] Kevin Roose, “Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive.,” New York Times, n.d., https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-transcript.html?searchResultPosition=1.
[5] Alex Mitchell, “Professor Catches Student Cheating with ChatGPT: ‘I Feel Abject Terror,’” The New York Post, December 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/12/26/students-using-chatgpt-to-cheat-professor-warns/.
