Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is rapidly developing. It’s hard to keep up with some of the new ethical challenges Christians are facing. Especially our young people are being bombarded with all kinds of tempting new possibilities for distraction, entrapment, deceit, and apostasy.
John Lennox’s new book 2084 and the AI Revolution mentions some of these new issues. Lennox goes far beyond the use of AI to cheat on school assignments. Let me highlight three areas that parents and Christian leaders should be aware of.
Internet pornography is nothing new, but AI exacerbates this problem enormously. It offers the potential to serve up any fantasy a user might concoct. Writes Lennox,
Some people even attempt to justify AI porn, arguing that it is digital and virtual and does not involve real people. This argument fails through ignorance of the fact that the AI has to be trained on millions of images of real interactions between real people, needing an unending supply of them. (p.157)Additionally, AI offers the ability to create “deepfakes” of real people known to users – think fellow students, teachers, parents – portrayed in pornographic scenes. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s happening now.