“What’s one thing you do that AI can’t do? Or two things? Or three?”
Spiritual Director and Writer’s Coach, Charlotte Byrd Donlon, posed this question in one of her recent “5 Good Things” newsletters that she sends out. It was a timely and unexpected challenge when I read it. The reason it seemed so timely was because of something that happened over the weekend that helped congeal some thoughts in my mind when I read her question.
I went to dinner with a couple who are friends of mine. One of them is an IT specialist with a large governmental agency who has worked in support of the virtual world of computers and internet for years. After dinner, as we sat at my home talking about various cultural issues related to themes, choices and content being viewed on formats like wide-screen theaters, TV, streaming services, mobile apps, etc., a comment was made that AI has the potential to take over a lot of things that we now think of as human responsibilities, not only in technology’s virtual world but in our everyday activities, as well. The way it was positioned seemed a bit frightening. One recent example I have heard more than once is that if one needs a quick paper composed on a topic, AI has the capacity to pull resources and write a cohesive, well-researched report on the topic. Questions have already been raised about the impact of such a tool as AI in reducing the willingness of people to think for themselves, solve problems, and craft personal content for things like college essays, for instance. My thought was AI’s “work” seems like little more than the capacity for meticulous research, quick timing, and plagiarism.
Since the question with which I was confronted this morning was posed by a writing coach and spiritual director, I considered how the comment about AI’s writing capabilities would be distinguishable from those of live, human being writers in the context of teaching others to write (and to engage with, analyze, understand, and interpret others’ writing), particularly in writing about something as personal and intimate as spiritual life, its formation, and impact and communication about it to others. I had an immediate and gut response to the question.
The immediate answer presented to my mind, in response to my momentary puzzled cock-of-the-head response to reading her post, was this …… “reservoir of personal experience.” Even now, as I write this response to her question, I suddenly recall watching the movie “Apollo 13” and the impending disaster its crew faced that required prompt and coordinated reason, brainstorming, adaptability, resource inventory and analysis, dexterity, creativity, and probably a 1000 other skills, talents, and gifts that a knowledgeable group of aerospace engineer technical wonks could think of. And when I raised this point to Charlotte she added, “Not to mention the number of people who were participating in the process.” YES! The impact of an experienced and broad, creative collaborative AND FAST effort in such a panic-wrought, potentially catastrophic situation is incalculable. It’s hard to imagine reducing it to a cold, mechanical, algorithm-driven summation of previous considerations or reports of such situations when nothing like it has ever been faced before.
The advantage that a living, breathing human being brings to the process of writing (and, also, probably to any task of more than rote and rapid broad-reach data and content processing functionality) is one’s own store of personal experience. One’s experience is used to access, weigh, value, prioritize, and process facts, data, concepts, goals, and desires through the mechanics of her own soul (i.e., intellect, emotions, will, personality, and conscience). That processing function of all the content available to her and the crafting of a narrative that can bring all the facets together allows the results, the conclusions, the thought-out hypotheses or solutions to be tested through for validity through communication with others and the ability to achieve common understanding.
AI may have access to all the spoken and published works of the Information Age and may have the speed of electrical charge changes and transfers on its side. All the wisdom of the world can be stored, explored and documented in bits, bytes, and algorithms that is available or can be made available to the processing mechanics of AI. Comprehensive accumulated and current input of everything the world has to offer is still only part of what distinguishes human output from that of AI. AI’s output will always lack a human being’s unique offering to mankind’s thoughts and endeavors regarding the mastery of knowledge and its management and control. AI can never achieve the level of ingenuity, creativity, and imagination that a human being can for one simple reason.
There is another component that AI does not possess and that is the Divine spark. That spark, which is God’s own creative and omniscient wisdom, is mediated through the spirit of a human being by the Holy Spirit of God. The human spirit is one way in which humankind is created “in the image of God” by God for the purpose of God. AI is invented in by man out of the image and wisdom of man to serve man. The world can make mankind into blunted and blinded slaves to only the world’s desires to serve oneself and other men by capturing its soul and programming its soul’s components with the things of the world so thoroughly that there is only loyalty to pursue and fulfill the world’s desires.
But the world’s desires cannot stir the soul that is pursuing connection with and is linked to the Holy Spirit of God. The world cannot access the vastness of the mind of God, the depth of feelings of God’s heart, the strength of God’s redemptive will, the breadth of God’s personality, or the holiness of God’s conscience. Only a living human soul, connected with the soul of God by the gift of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Christ’s Holy Spirit’s abiding Presence is the conduit of those things that come from the Divine. The transference of God’s gifts through God’s and humankind’s own soul components……(those gifts being the wisdom of His mind, the selfless agape love of His heart, the controlled force and volitional determination of His will to renew and heal the world’s brokenness, the limitless attractiveness and attachment capacity of His personality, and the just and perfect discernment of God’s conscience) can only be accomplished soul-to-soul through the Spirit-to-spirit bond. The spirit and soul of humankind is what makes humanity unique and superior to all other aspects of the created earth, including man’s own creations. Man may craft a physical, created entity that will be seen to act like men or like a “new” form of intelligence in appearance and task function. But man will never craft a spirit or soul capable of receiving the Unseen Gifts of the Divine Spirit and Soul that are given only by God’s choice, in God’s timing, to God’s children created in God’s image.