The Problem with AI . . .
The Problem with AI Isn’t What You Think
About this post: What follows is an AI generated essay derived from a podcast - about AI. Links to the podcasts are cited above along with a link to an AI generated transcript of the dialoge between Paul Blackham (the guest) and Glen Scrivener (the host). This was the “Speak Life Podcast”, episode #231.
When people talk about AI these days, the conversation often jumps straight to killer robots and dystopian futures. Will AI take over the world? Will it destroy us all? The media loves this narrative, but if you pause for a moment, it starts to look ridiculous. AI isn’t Skynet, and it never will be. The real issues with AI aren’t about robot overlords—they’re about how we use it and what it does to us.
Imagine you’re driving a car for the first time. It feels overwhelming. So many controls, so many things that could go wrong. But then, after a while, it becomes second nature. You don’t think about steering or braking anymore. AI is like that car. It’s just a tool—an incredibly powerful one, but still a tool. And just like cars transformed how we live and work, AI will do the same. But not because it’s conscious or malevolent. It’s because we’ll lean on it in ways we don’t fully understand yet.
The Halo Effect
Here’s a better way to think about AI: it’s not intelligence; it’s a helper. Paul Blackham uses the term “Helper Assisting in Language Operations” (HALO) to describe AI. And he’s right—AI is more like a clever assistant than a rival mind. It doesn’t think; it processes. It doesn’t decide; it computes. When you ask it to generate a picture or write an essay, it’s not “imagining” anything. It’s analyzing patterns in the data it was trained on and spitting out what it thinks you want.
That’s both its power and its problem. Because AI doesn’t know what’s good for you. It gives you what you ask for, not what you need. If you’re clear and precise, it can help you build amazing things. But if you’re sloppy—or worse, if you let it decide everything—you’re handing over your agency. And that’s where things start to go wrong.
The Real Danger
The real danger with AI isn’t that it’ll become sentient and take over the planet. It’s that we’ll let it deskill us. Think about GPS. It’s incredibly convenient, but how many of us can still read a map? Or take Google. It puts the world’s information at your fingertips, but it’s also made us worse at remembering things. Why bother memorizing facts when you can look them up in two seconds?
AI takes this problem to a whole new level. It’s not just about remembering facts anymore—it’s about creating. AI can generate art, write code, and even craft convincing essays. That’s amazing. But if we start relying on it too much, what happens to our own skills? What happens to the joy of creation?
Paul Blackham tells a funny story about asking an AI to generate an image of Jesus. The AI, in its literal-minded way, produced a picture of Jesus holding a smaller Jesus. It’s a silly example, but it makes the point: AI doesn’t understand context or meaning. It just follows instructions. If we lose our ability to create and think critically, we’ll be stuck with whatever the AI decides is “close enough.”
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t just about individual skills, though. It’s about society. Every major technological shift in history has come with disruption. The Industrial Revolution didn’t just make factories more efficient; it uprooted entire communities. Farmers became factory workers. Local economies gave way to global ones. And for all the progress, there was plenty of suffering along the way.
AI will be no different. It’s already starting to disrupt industries. Graphic designers, writers, and even coders are feeling the pressure. Why hire someone to do a job when AI can do it faster and cheaper? The result won’t be killer robots; it’ll be social upheaval. Jobs will disappear. Entire professions may vanish. And unless we’re prepared, that upheaval will hit us harder than we expect.
Preserving the Human
So what do we do? The first step is to stop treating AI like magic. It’s not. It’s a tool, and like any tool, it can be used well or poorly. If we want AI to serve us, we need to stay engaged. We need to learn how to use it without letting it use us.
But more importantly, we need to remember what makes us human. AI can process language, but it can’t love. It can generate art, but it can’t feel beauty. It can help us solve problems, but it can’t give us wisdom. Those are things only we can do.
That’s why communities like the church are so important. They remind us of what it means to be human. They pull us away from screens and bring us face-to-face with one another. In a world that’s increasingly virtual, the church is a place where people gather, share, and care for each other in real, tangible ways.
Hope Beyond the Hype
At the end of the day, the future doesn’t belong to AI. It belongs to us. The world won’t end because of some extinction-level event triggered by technology. It will end when Christ returns. And until then, we have work to do.
Our job isn’t to fear AI or to worship it. Our job is to use it wisely, to preserve our humanity, and to point people to the ultimate hope we have in Jesus. Because in the end, it’s not technology that saves us. It’s Him.