The Real Reason Artificial Intelligence Creeps Us Out

The HBO series Westworld, based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film, revisits one of the most complex themes in science fiction, Artificial Intelligence (AI). The term “AI” distinguishes the natural intelligence of animals and humans from that of machines.

Think Alexa and Siri.

We tend to be just as afraid as we are fascinated with AI. In science fiction, the portrayals of advanced AI range from robots who are confused (Star Trek TNG, and Bicentennial Man) to machines that are bloodthirsty (I, Robot, the Terminator franchise, the Matrix movies, Ultron in the Avengers, and HAL from 2001, A Space Odyssey, and, of course, Westworld). Either way, pop culture continually impresses us that AI, in any incarnation, is to be feared.

All of these portrayals wrestle with one common question—if humans were the creators, what would the creatures be like?

The answer is simple, alarming, and unavoidable. If human beings created life, that life would be sinful, expressed in, at best, confusion about existence, or, at worst, outright evil.

We end up never trusting our own creation, always knowing that it will likely turn against us. We are the imperfect creating the imperfect. Never trust creators who themselves are incapable of goodness.

Efforts to create AI confirm that we are frail, flawed, and fragile. But more than that, depictions of AI in pop culture alongside any progress we make toward actually producing AI reveal once again that we are creatures with a Designer, a Creator apart from us.

Stanford University neuroscientist David Eagleman serves as the science advisor on  HBO’s Westworld. In a recent interview with NBC News online, Eagleman pondered the complexity of the human brain, the very thing scientists seek to duplicate in AI. He was asked if AI will ever reach the level depicted in the movies. No way, he said without reservation.

Why? Because of our limitations.

For instance, “We don’t know all the issues going on in the brain,” he says. “It is a mystery that has to be plumbed probably for many more decades or centuries before we understand the principles of brain operation. . . . . There are almost a hundred billion neurons — those are the specialized cell types in the brain — and each one of those has about 10,000 connections to its neighbor. So there are almost a thousand trillion connections in the brain and we just haven’t figured out all the secrets to it yet.”

And never mind the complications of free will, the impending ethical problems, and, well, what about the soul? Could AI ever have a soul?

And yet, even with such theological and philosophical clarity, Eagleman skirts the truth that secularism and naturalism try to ignore. Duplicating life is not the same thing as creating life. For that, you need a Creator.

At the exact moment that evidence of our own design stares us in the face, so does our limitation. AI will never be the same thing as human because we are not God.

God is the one and only Creator. He established natural laws that permit us to procreate naturally, and He gives us the ingenuity and creativity to manipulate those same laws so that we can duplicate the appearance of life artificially. But being creative is not the same thing as being the Creator.

And when we do so, the product resembles us, crafted in our own likeness. Sinful, shameful, confused, and unsaved. And dangerous.

But that’s why we so desperately need the true Creator to step in. Even as the complexity of the human brain is evidence of our Creator’s magnificent work, so is His willingness to reproduce in us a new creation, one without sin, with hope and joy. To save us, since we cannot save ourselves.

To get there, we first have to acknowledge that we are the creatures, and He is the Creator. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible” (Heb. 11:3).

Then we confess that we cannot change ourselves, and we cannot produce the perfection we yearn to achieve.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17).

It always comes back to this one thing: He’s God, and we’re not.