Ten convictions from The Breath and the Machine, written to be tested against Scripture and signed.
The Breath and the Machine
Chapter 21: My AI Manifesto
We are not the first generation to face a disruptive technology. We are the first to face one that speaks.
It writes, sings, counsels, and persuades. It answers at midnight in a calm, confident voice, and it never has to answer for what it said. Because it speaks, it has to be answered, and every believer who uses it is already answering, whether he has thought about it or not.
This book has built a framework. But a framework left on a shelf protects nobody. A framework is something you think with. A manifesto is something you stand on, so I have boiled this one down to ten lines a man can carry.
I wrote it in the first person because it is mine. I kept my own circumstances out of the wording so you can make it yours. Read each line with your Bible open. If a line does not stand up to Scripture, strike it. If it does, sign it, and then ask someone who knows you to hold you to it. A conviction no one else knows about is easy to lose on a busy Tuesday.
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21
Five of these lines face toward the tool and five face away from it. A man with only the second list ends up afraid of the tool. A man with only the first ends up careless with it.
What I Will Do
- I will go to Scripture first. Before I ask a machine what to think, I will ask what God has said, and I will measure every answer I receive against His Word. (Psalm 119:105)
- I will do my own study before I ask for help. The reading, the praying, and the wrestling come first. The tool may sit beside that work. It does not get to do it for me. (2 Timothy 2:15)
- I will answer for every word that goes out under my name. Sermon, lesson, post, or email, if I cannot explain it, defend it, and stand behind it with the tool out of the room, it does not go out. (Matthew 12:36)
- I will be honest about the help I receive. When a tool has done real work, I will say so plainly, the way a hymnal names who wrote the words, who wrote the tune, and who arranged it. (Ephesians 4:25)
- I will learn the tool well enough to govern it. God filled Bezaleel with skill for the work, and the servant who buried his talent was not praised for his caution. I will understand what I am using, so it serves my calling instead of steering it. (1 Corinthians 4:2)
What I Will Not Do
- I will not treat it as a spiritual authority. It can tell me what men have said about a passage. It cannot tell me what God means by it, and I will not ask it to settle what only the Word can settle. (Isaiah 8:20)
- I will not let it take the place of prayer. No summary of a passage substitutes for time with the One who wrote it, and no machine can do what the Holy Spirit does in a heart. (John 16:13)
- I will not sign my name to words I have not weighed. I will not present an argument I have not tested, an experience I never had, or a quotation I have not checked as though it were my own. (Exodus 20:16)
- I will not let a screen replace the people God gave me. It will not be my pastor, my counselor, or my church. When someone I love is hurting, I will go to them myself, or send them to someone who can sit in the room. (Hebrews 10:25)
- I will not answer it with fear or with carelessness. Running from the tool hands it to people who do not fear God. Running to it without thought hands it my mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
Signed _______________________ Date _____
A Framework, Not a Final Word
I do not know what AI will look like in five years. Neither do you, and neither do the people building it. Joseph’s brothers thought they were getting rid of a nuisance, and God used it to save a nation. The disciples thought the cross was the end. The future has surprised every generation that tried to map it, and that is why principles matter more than predictions. The tools will change. Not one line of that list depends on which tool is in your hand.
Some things can be sped up. Study can be assisted, thinking sharpened, a message carried farther than one voice could carry it. But you cannot shortcut the work of the Holy Spirit, the formation that comes from years under faithful teaching, or the slow business of becoming like Christ through obedience, suffering, and daily prayer. Learning which is which will be one of the defining tests of the church in this generation. The church that passes it will not be the one that refused every tool. It will be the one that knew which tools to use and which altars to protect.
So begin. Set your parameters. Guard your heart. Walk with God. Gather with His people. Use the tools He has allowed you to hold, and hold them under the authority of the God who holds you.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6
The future is uncertain. The God who holds it is not.
Get the book: The Breath and the Machine
Excerpted from The Breath and the Machine by Ben Everson.