What is a Shepherd to do with AI?

 

There are many books on AI and a growing number that make applications to faith and Christian living. But few give you the wide angle lens. If you are looking for a book that makes AI understandable and then goes on to apply it to everyone from marketplace leaders, nonprofit professionals, and ministry practitioners, this is where you should start. The bibliography in AI Shepherds and Electric Sheep has over 400 resources is worth the price of admission all on its own! 

The book starts defining this fast moving area of innovation. I like this description that the authors make early on, "One way of envisioning AI might be to think of it as a galaxy of applications, all of which make use of similar technology but at different levels of complexity. When you look up at the stars, everything looks much the same from a distance, but when you gaze at the heavens through a powerful telescope, you can see widely varying configurations of stars with very different dynamics." 

Towards the end of the book, they describe the purpose of this project like this, "If this book is about anything, it is not about understanding ourselves as techno-humans, fused with the algorithms of machine learning; rather, it is about the need to understand technology as our ancestors understood their ploughs, looms, shovels, and pickaxes - as tools used to complete a job, not to take over our lives so that we become products divorced from family, friends, emotions, and our living history." 

The authors, Sean O'Callaghan and Paul Hoffman, take the reader on a very broad tour of implications, and Biblical perspectives. They apply their thinking to different industries and sectors of society; giving special focus on educators, those involved in discipleship, and leaders in pastoral and nonprofit ministry. It's a lot to take in, but, remember that I called it "a place to start."

Finally, they hit on one of the most important implications of AI in my perspective, "If AI is about anything, it is about decision-making. In fact, one of the attractions of AI to many constituencies is that AI can take the human out of the decision-making loop, thereby leaving room, theoretically, for a dispassionate, logical, and efficient outcome. So if we are asking the question "What is AI?," we can say that it is both a supplement to and a replacement for human intelligence in the decision-making process, depending on the circumstances. This is an important consideration. For the first time in history, a nonhuman entity can make crucial decisions both with and for human beings." 

You can't help but leave this book with the weight of our next few steps forward more clearly understood. Now the question is, "How will we steward the use of AI for human flourishing?"