Artificial Intelligence has been in development since the early 1900s. Still, the recent release of several large language models to the public has stirred up uneasiness in the workforce as people realize the ease with which AI can complete countless tasks.
There are three dominant views on the rise of this technology: 1) similar to how photography didn’t replace painters, AI is simply a new medium and will not affect the workforce, 2) AI is a new tool and will aid in human endeavor, and 3) AI will lead to the extermination of the human race. While the most accurate view is likely a combination of all three, Covenant College has decided to completely avoid AI by not allowing for its use. But we must wonder if that is the smartest choice. Is Covenant College being unfair to its students by not allowing them to use one of the most valuable tools man has created? I think Covenant has made a wise choice. The reason: since the fall of God’s creation, mankind has increasingly been losing intelligence.
The Earth is new, the air is fresh, the weather is perfect, the idea of disease and imperfection is incomprehensible, and man is the gem of creation. But very quickly, man rebels against God and destroys his relationship with his Creator. Satan takes his throne as the prince of the world. Man’s days are shortened, destined to death. Imperfection and disease infect the human body. As man multiplies, genetic imperfections multiply. The mind is no longer perfect, man’s brilliance is very available for destruction. For the rest of human history, man will live in bondage to decay.
It is unavoidably true that we inhabit a decaying world, though intelligence seems only now at its greatest development. But there are several great examples of astonishing intelligence from the earliest of biblical history: Adam naming all the animals in a single day; the invention of musical instruments (Genesis 4:21); metal working (Genesis 4:22); the construction of great cities; and Noah building an ark one and a half football fields long (possibly the largest wooden ship ever built). Apart from biblical history, there are many great examples of the brilliance of ancient peoples: the extremely advanced stone-cutting techniques of the Bolivian Puma Punku and the Incan capital Cuzco; the astronomically aligned city of Alexandria and Antikythera mechanism; and the Great Pyramid of Giza and Stonehenge that leave skeptics so baffled as to their methods of construction that they resort to the intervention of aliens.
Regardless of our decay, we are still humans made in the image of God and continue to invent and reflect God’s creative character today. But a reason for the harsh difference between today’s generations and the generations of even just a few centuries ago could be our advancements in technology. The most obvious are smartphones. The immediate access to information that smartphones provide eliminates the need to learn and remember information, leading us to exist in a state of mental atrophy.
With its ability to complete almost any task, AI will only contribute to our mental atrophy. As AI increasingly gets embedded into technologies such as cars, home systems, banks and even ovens, we will soon learn to depend on it. Most recently, Apple’s new first-generation Vision Pro has left the tech world in shock at its ability to use AI to essentially overlay a computer screen over your vision. And with it only being a first-generation device, it is frightening to imagine what future generations will entail. Suddenly a dystopian society with AI computer chips embedded onto the human retina doesn’t seem so distant.
While the idea of having constant access to any information in the blink of an eye may be attractive, we must remember two things: our state of depravity, and our honor of bearing the image of God. The disuse of our mind goes against God’s design. Being created in His image means we reflect His characteristics, which include creativity and intelligence. Furthermore, we are told time and time again that God hates laziness, and we are told to seek wisdom and knowledge, things that are practically impossible with AI that encourages the complete opposite.
For this reason, Covenant, existing as a place to encourage the search for knowledge but more importantly a place that should uphold God’s values, is making the right choice to not allow such technologies that introduce the risk of going against God’s design and increasing the ignorance of our fallen world.