It is ironic to have to give account of my use of Artificial Intelligence tools with people who regularly use Internet tools, Web, social media, computers, smartphones. It is not like we are all Amish. We are here using social media, in an Internet age, living like the world around us, using its inventions and tools. We do so carefully and thoughtfully. Now these tools are becoming so powerful that they can start to be of service in our discussions of theology. Like when the printing press was invented, which facilitated the Reformation and the Enlightenment and modern denominations. Some inventions can actually impact religion.
Artificial Intelligence is not God. It is a collator of testimonies: A machine which sorts human logic into a useful form. Like any other computer system. Like a dictionary, a concordance, an encyclopaedia, an index, a study Bible. When you use facebook, you are using similar systems: It is how they find your contacts and the posts you are interested in and how it helps you write your comments. It is a system humans make to be of service to each other and to preserve knowledge for the next generation. It is how civilisation happens.
A computer pioneer called it “hive mind”. The bees in a hive all communicating simultaneously cause the whole hive to function like a single mind. God made bees like this. God makes humans like this too. With humans, we can include past communications too in our hive mind by storing them in retrievable ways. Now add into that hive mind the spirit words of Christ and it goes to the next level and God Himself starts to be part of the hive mind. It is called grace. This is how it will be in heaven, or in the next, new heaven and earth.
