For the most part, I have ignored Elon Musk’s AI Twitter (I’m old, I still Twitter) posts. I don’t know, it feels like his AI posts range from his current kink to fake morphing pictures of beautiful, very fake, women. As if we don’t have enough fake women running around the earth right now.

I came across a post from a woman who has lost a teenage daughter, saying she has been tempted to put pictures of her daughter into AI to, “bring her to life” and perhaps to see how her daughter would age. In the end, she has decided that her grieving heart could not absorb even more pain of falsely “watching” her deceased daughter, “grow old.” Smart woman.

The internet, and specifically smart phones, have rewired out brains. That is an absolute fact. We spend hours a day looking down, scrolling, playing mind numbing games, searching for whatever our algorithm dictates, escaping real life.

Yes, you can use the phone to learn. Historical facts, hopefully. Recipes, that’s my every day. World wide information at the tip of our fingers. Much of the technology is useful, but I fear we talk ourselves into it’s usefulness in order to negotiate with our brains how much time of our waking hours are spent scrolling. I won’t even get into the damage that technology has done to an entire generation of children, yet.

Now add AI. It is being sold as fun, creative, useful, comforting, another escape. Bring your loved ones to life, maybe even have a computer generated conversation with them. Are we being rewired again? Has anyone asked that question? What are the risks? Are our brains ready for this? Are our hearts?

My first concern (always the kids) is that the schools are going to implement AI in ways that alter how children view reality without the average parent understanding how detrimental this can be. My second concern is that we’re going to lose even more adults to the almighty technology god that brings the dead back to life.

Dramatic? Maybe, time will tell. I’ve read Pet Cemetary, we’ve been here before. We learned that cats and small children don’t come back the same. Similar, yet off. Oh, and evil. But not the same. Neither can AI bring our loved ones back the same. It is a false promise that you can be with your dead loved one, no matter how much “fun” is sold. Fake news. Misinformation. A lie. Why would the tech giants want us to continue to go down the rabbit hole of deceit? Softening our minds and bringing in a new age of mental distress? I don’t have that answer. I believe perhaps that one is each of us to answer ourselves.

My third concern is how, as Christians, are we to approach AI? Do we believe that “bringing” the dead back to “life” is of God? The answer to that, for all, is a definitive no. God’s promise is that, through His Grace and our repentance, we will meet again in Heaven. Not on the computer. The intense temptation to ‘see’ our loved ones in the here and now is going to be big. Too big for many. An alternate reality, or I should say, another alternate reality.

How many of us are going to want to live in the computer generated reality where our loved one still ‘lives?’ Many, I fear. Why not? Who likes to live with pain? Not me. Not you?

Yet the fact remains that this is our world. Painful at times, imperfect, difficult, confusing. We are faced with challenges that give us opportunity to lean into God or to lean onto the world. Is AI another sparkling falsehood that Christians need to keep an eye on from afar?

I don’t know, for sure. I have my thoughts and I believe that we will quickly be able to see, if we’re watching, how these computer generated images and morphing pictures are affecting those around us.

For now, I would mentally place caution tape around AI. Yes, we can walk through it and there may even be times where it’s necessary. However, on a daily basis, we should heed the huge manhole in the middle of that caution tape before willingly removing the cover and gleefully jumping into the unknown.

To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. Hamlet