Our Hope -- Sermon Series on Faith and A.I.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Revelation 21:1-15

 

            One of the requirements of my fifth-grade elementary education was 4H. At least once a month our normal afternoon class would pause, and we would have an afternoon of 4H learning and working. For those who may not know what 4H stands for, and I never did, even when I was participating in it, is Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. Its original goal, when it was started in the early 1900’s was to tie public education to rural life. It was designed to be a hands-on program where youth would learn by doing. In this country, it has been connected to and long associated with agriculture and farming. My sister-in-law used to talk lovingly about her days in 4H and how she bottle-raised a calf and showed it at the county fair.

            As I understand it 4H has grown and evolved to be much bigger than a program for farming kids. It has clubs in at least 50 countries around the world and does a lot of good for a lot of people. But when I was in fifth grade I understood 4H to be about farming, yet I lived in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, and I had no interest in farming. So, I wasn’t thrilled about being forced to participate in 4H. But I had to, so I did. That year we had to give a presentation as part of our 4H requirement. The presentation was supposed to be a “how-to” as in here is how to … fill-in-the-blank.

            I decided to do my presentation on dog care and grooming. I felt that it was a practical and necessary skill to have for anyone with a dog. I did my research, which at that time was going to the library and finding books on the chosen subject. I gathered the necessary tools, such as a dog brush and comb. I wrote my presentation. I created posters to go with it. I practiced, and I practiced some more. Then I presented at school. For some unknown reason, my teacher was impressed with my work and entered me in the city-wide contest. My parents took me. I did the presentation there, and I think I came in second or third. Whatever rank I had, I didn’t do well enough to go onto the next level of contest. I received an encouraging letter from the judges who told me to keep trying, keep working, etc. My parents were proud of what I’d done even if I didn’t go any further in the competition. And almost until the day she died, my mother would say that she thought I would have won had it not been for one problem – I didn’t own a dog. I think I demonstrated my presentation on dog care on my Snoopy stuffed animal, which a friend gave me when I had my tonsils out. But there was no real dog in my life at that time.

            My older brother had a dog when I was much younger. But we were a dogless family by the time of that presentation, and I wanted a dog of my own. What better way to show that I could handle the responsibility of dog ownership than to create a 4H project based on that premise?! I had great hope in my ability to win my parents over with my obvious sense of responsibility. That’s why I share this story. To me it is a story about hope, youthful hope to be sure, but it was hope, nonetheless. Instead of “if you build it they will come,” my hope was, “If I groom it, I will get a dog.”

            I realize that this seems about as far from Artificial Intelligence as possible, and I guess that it is. But I think this story also represents where we get confused about hope and A.I. and about what it can and cannot do for us. I certainly think we get confused about hope when it comes to our faith. I put my hope for getting a dog into what I could do, what I could prove, what I could accomplish. And I think that’s where we humans miss the mark on what we hope for and on what we think hope actually is. We believe that our hope is something we do, that it rests in our hands, our ingenuity, our creativity, our imaginations, and our ability to problem solve. We put our hope in our ourselves.

            The  cover article of this coming month’s issue of The Christian Century is “Transcendence Through Tech?” In the article the author, A. Trevor Sutton, asks the question, “Can we build our own future?” The author writes about inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk and philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Musk started his first tech company in 1995. The sale of that company a few years later gave Musk enough capital to start SpaceX. Through SpaceX Musk is working on making humans, as the author writes, “an interplanetary species.” But what Musk has another company called Neuralink. This company is working on “turning the human brain into a supercomputer.”

As the article details, and I quote, “the company has recently implanted its first human subject with a microchip that enables direct brain-computer interface by gathering signals from neurons and sending the data to a computer that processes it in real time. The subject, a 29-year-old quadriplegic, can move the cursor on a computer screen using only his brain.” The company is not the first to try this, but it is the first to work on reversing the process, which means that the computer would also be able to transmit data to the human subject’s brain. As the author writes, “according to Musk, Neuralink’s implants will allow for human symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” Human symbiosis with artificial intelligence.

            The author points out that in the same year that Musk started his first company, 1995, the classic comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” premiered. If you remember that comic, Calvin – named after our spiritual ancestor, John Calvin, was a little boy with a vivid imagination to say the least. His best friend was Hobbes, who also happened to be a stuffed tiger. When it was just Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes would come to life, and would temper Calvin’s wild ideas with some practical pessimism. Hobbes was named after the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. And the author’s point in this Christian Century article, as I understand it, is that Thomas Hobbes would be a good counterbalance to Musk.

There are differences between the two men born in two different centuries, but they both fear and feared what humanity might do to itself. Hobbes believed that a social contract and a sovereign was necessary for people to live with each other, otherwise life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” And while Musk has spoken of artificial intelligence as being something that could make humanity extinct, he also thinks that if used correctly it has the potential to make the future even brighter for all people, artificial intelligence and human beings together have the capability of unlocking humanity’s full potential.

            The author makes an important point, and it is the one that I want to highlight today. Both Musk and Hobbes assume and assumed that humans have autonomy, and therefore our hope lies within us and us only. For Hobbes, who was pessimistic about humans at best, we needed ways to live with each other and we needed sovereigns, rulers, who would keep us from killing one another. But history from Hobbes’ time and more recent history has taught us that has taught us that sovereigns are not immune from causing massive destruction of others and are capable of destroying themselves in the process. Musk, who is far more optimistic, realizes that humans can do great harm, but if properly linked with A.I. can do great and wonderful things

            But there is another way, and that is the way of hope that we read in our passages today. It isn’t hope found in what humans can or cannot do, will or will not do. It is hope found in God, our God, our amazing, awesome, God of love, righteousness, and justice. The prophet Isaiah proclaims God as the everlasting God. Our God does not faint. Our God does not get tired. Our God understands more than we can possibly fathom. And not only does our God not get tired, and not faint from exhaustion, but our God gives strength and energy to all those who wait for him. We all get tired. We all get weary, regardless of our age or place in life. But if we wait on God, our strength will be renewed, and we will rise up like an eagle rises with wings outstretched into the wind. And even if our weariness is bone deep and soul deep, God will lift us up to run with renewed energy and spirit. We will walk and not fall away.

            And the writer of Revelation writes about finally seeing a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, created and prepared by God. And the home of God will be among God’s people. There will be no separation of time or space between God and us, us and God. God will be with us, and we will be with our God. And death will be no more. Mourning and grief will be no more. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. God is making all things new.

            These are two passages of scripture that speak profoundly of hope, of what true hope is. It is not hope in ourselves. It is not hope in what we can do and what we can do only. It is hope in God. This hope in God does not let humans off the hook. Nor does it dismiss or deny what we humans have the potential to do – the good that we can do, and the bad. We were given imaginations, and vision, and abilities to create good. We have powerful technology at our fingertips, and there is much good that we can do with it. But we can just as easily go the other way. With all the good we can do, there is so much bad that we can do as well. Hope only in ourselves can lead to dangerous and disastrous results.

            But our real hope does not lie in artificial intelligence or in social contracts or in any other thing that we alone create. Our hope lies in God. It is no coincidence that the two passages read this morning are both read at funerals, at services of witness to the resurrection. Because one thing we all know that is certain and sure, is that none of us gets out of here alive. But in faith we have the hope that death is not the end. We have hope in our call from God to live faithful lives in the here and the now and in the sweet by and by. And we have hope that God is doing a new thing, that God is calling us to live into the future that God is creating – a future where tears are wiped from eyes and mourning and crying will be no more.

            Technology and the power of our imaginations, our creativity, our passion, our dreams are all good. We have been given the ability to do so much. But our hope does not lie in what we can do, but in what God can do. Our hope lies in what God is doing through us and in spite of us. Our hope lies in God who created us because of love and for love and to love. Thanks be to God, the author of our hope, our true and lasting hope. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Love One Another -- Sermon Series on Faith and AI

Matthew 7:1-12 (Romans 13:8-10)

July 21, 2024

 

            In the summer of 1983, a movie hit theatres that was incredible and unlike anything most of us had ever seen before. The movie was War Games. It was amazing, and although the graphics and technology in it look pretty dated now, it still resonates with our experiences today. It’s premise is that a brilliant but underachieving high school boy hacks into the government’s computer system to play their listed war games. He really thinks he is just playing a game called Geothermal Nuclear Warfare, but what he actually does is trigger the computer. WOPR – which stands for War Operations Plan Response – into playing the simulation of that war game. The people in charge have no idea that a game is being run at first and it looks as though the Soviet Union is starting a war with the United States.

            The authorities figure out that the computer was hacked, that it’s only running a simulation before they launch missiles against the USSR. They trace the hack back to David, the young hacker and take him into custody. David realizes that the computer, known to him and its creator as Joshua, thinks that this is real and will eventually start a war. But no one believes him. David escapes the authorities to find help from the computer’s creator and the action and the tension escalate from there.

            The man who designed this computer system, Stephan Falkan, worked on the advancement of machines being able to learn. And one reason he designed Joshua to play war games was so that it could play out the high stakes of nuclear war without annihilating humanity and most of creation. But as he tells our young heroes, the one thing he couldn’t get Joshua to learn was futility, that in a war of that scale there would be only losers, not winners and losers. Even though this is fictional movie, the technology that was being developed, even 41 years ago, was not. For those of us who were the original audience, this was the first time we were introduced to hackers and computers that could fit on a desktop. As I said, we’d never seen anything like it before. As I was reading some background on the movie last week, I learned that when Ronald Reagan, who was the president at the time, watched the movie in the White House,  he was alarmed that someone might actually be able to hack into government and military computers and ordered that security be heightened to prevent that possibility.

            There’s lots of lessons to be learned from this movie, but the one that I really want to focus on happens in the first scene of the movie. Two air force officers arrive on a terrible night of blinding snow to take their shift controlling a nuclear missile silo. Their work is deep underground, and as they’re getting on the elevator they’re just chatting about their weekend, about a woman that the captain knows, etc. They talk with the officers they’re relieving and joke about being late, and on and on. Nothing unusual. Nothing to hint at the enormity of what they do.

            But minutes into their shift they receive official notice that a launch must take place. They have a protocol to follow, confirmation to receive that it’s real and not a test. But as they are preparing to turn the missiles to launch, the captain falters. He hesitates. He realizes what he’s being asked to do. He breaks away from protocol and tries to call someone in charge to find out what’s happening. The other man keeps telling him that this isn’t protocol, that he has to launch. At one point the captain says he wants to make sure, to at least talk to someone in charge,  before he kills 20 million people. Just as this scene ends, the other officer draws a gun on him, which you understand to be part of his job as well. They both must launch, and if one of them won’t he then he must be forced to.

            It turns out that it was a test; a test that approximately 28% of the officers failed. To the powers that be, that’s too large a percentage. So, they take the human out of the equation and link all the silos to the computer, to Joshua. And in the terrifying minutes toward the end of the movie, it’s Joshua who locks all the humans out to fulfill its original command – launch the missiles.

            I know, I know, it’s a movie. It’s a dated movie from the 80’s. But it’s a great movie, and one that is still worth watching now. And while the whole movie is fantastic, it’s that opening scene that keeps coming back to me. The captain as he is trying to make himself do his job and launch the missiles is whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He knows that he holds the lives of millions of people in his hands. And that’s why he falters. That’s why I would falter if it were me. I couldn’t do that to others just as I would hope they would not easily do that to me. It certainly does not abide by what we know as the Golden Rule.

Although there is no mention in the movie of the Golden Rule, which is the last verse from our passage in Matthew’s gospel, there is a sense that it is implied.

            “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you: for this is the law and the prophets.”

            This is not a rule that is unique to Christianity. Versions of it are found in ancient texts from other civilizations. It’s found in other religions. It is not only found in religious circles, but it is the basis for ethical and moral treatises as well. Philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote about the Golden Rule and its inverse, the Silver Rule, in his work on moral philosophy.

            We were probably all taught this when we were growing up. It’s a worthwhile aphorism to live by. But let’s look at the context that we read it in Matthew. The Golden Rule was not meant to stand on its own. It comes at almost the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We tend to think of the Sermon on the Mount as being only the Beatitudes. But that sermon goes from chapter 5 to chapter 7. So, Jesus is preaching these words in verse 12 not as something nice to consider, but as a way of living that rests on both the law and the prophets. And the law and the prophets were about living justly, living righteously, living as God calls us to live in relationship with God and in relationship with each other. The prophets repeatedly condemn those who live at the expense of others, whose lifestyle and ethics – or lack thereof – come through the exploitation of others, of the least of these. The prophets spoke truth to power. So, when Jesus says these familiar words, he also says, “for this is the law and the prophets.”

            You see, one of the problems of taking the Golden Rule out of this context, of seeing it only as a nice platitude, is that it too easily becomes egotistical. I’m not saying it’s not a good rule. It is, and it’s one that I was taught and that I taught my children. But without the context that Jesus gives it, it can too quickly become about only what I want. I’ll treat others this way because that’s what I want. I’m only thinking about me and my needs, my desires. And that misses the point of the law and the prophets. At best it dilutes the call of God to love others without thought about what that love means for us. We are to love others, even if that love is reciprocated, and this is not love based only on emotions, but love that is lived, love that lived in action and deed even more than in word.  

            In that opening scene of War Games the human at the controls falters because he knows that mass destruction and death is about to rain down on people who are living in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing Golden Rule about that. There’s nothing loving in that. In current war zones right now, there are AI programs that are designed to discern who a leader of the enemy is and target that leader. While that may sound like basic war strategy, the leaders are targeted in homes, homes where families live, where children live. And the AI program does not discern who should be destroyed in that home and who shouldn’t. All are destroyed. But what parameters does this AI program use to discern who the enemy leaders are? How is it programmed to make these kinds of decisions? It seems to me that the human equation with our biases and our prejudices and our hatred is kept in this AI program, but the human equation that understands loving one another, loving our neighbor, is removed.

            So, what does this have to do with us? What does this use of AI and a movie and all of it have to do with us and our faith? I think it has everything to do with us. As people of faith, we are called not only to take seriously the Golden Rule that Jesus preaches, but to live it, to weave it into the very fabric of our lives. We are called to take seriously how this rule is not just something nice to do but is fulfilling the law and the prophets. We are called to hold those who create technology accountable for how it is used for humanity and against humanity. Because we are called to love one another, we are called to consider over and over again exactly who is our neighbor. And we’re called not only to consider who is our neighbor, but how we are to treat our neighbor.

            Paul writes in our passage from Romans, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

            Paul puts this discussion of love into the language of owing, of indebtedness. At first this seems contradictory when we look at it in the larger context of this chapter. Paul is encouraging the Roman church to be good citizens, to be subject to the Roman authorities. As I understand it, Paul posits that being a good citizen is participating in the will of God. So be law abiding citizens. Pay what you owe in taxes, in revenue, etc.

            But one point was made clear by commentators on this passage, Paul was not writing about any kind of financial debt in these words on love. He was talking about allegiance. Listen, pay your taxes, abide by the laws of the state, but when it comes to your allegiance, your loyalty, your fidelity, that goes to God and to God alone.

            And what we owe God is not money. We owe God love. We owe God love. And the way we repay our debt of love to God is to love others. When we love others, any other, all others, than we have fulfilled our obligation to the Law, not the law of Rome, but the Law of Moses. And what Jesus conveyed in his teaching was that the way to fulfill the Law of Moses and the prophets was to love others.

            If the use of technology helps us to love others, and I think that it can, then let’s keep going. But when technology, when AI, is used against others, even others that we think of as enemies, then we are failing our call to love. We are reneging on our debt. Because in the law of love, even our enemies are our neighbors.

            What do we owe God? What do we owe one another? Love. May we pursue this love with all that we have and all that we are. May it be our daily prayer. May our love bless friends and enemies alike. May it bind us one to another with bands that cannot be broken. What we owe God is to love one another. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

The Word: Knowledge, Wisdom, and A.I. -- Sermon Series 2024

John 1:1-5

July 7, 2024

 

            When Brent and I decided to make our big trip to Greece and Portugal, we also started doing our research – mainly on Portugal. In Greece, we have a local connection with my sister. But Lisbon was much less known to us. So, we watched travel videos about it, and I did Pinterest searches, and we googled all the recommendations for the things you must do in Lisbon. One of the sights that is a must see is the Monument to the Discoveries in Belem, which is the neighborhood that borders one end of the city. And Belem is the port at the Tagus River where the great Portuguese explorers like Vasco de Gama departed from on their voyages of discovery.

            The discoveries are a huge part of Portuguese history. The scale of this monument to them reflects that. It is a large stone sculpture of a Caravel, the ship that allowed the Portuguese mariners to cross the Atlantic Ocean. There are stone depictions of historical figures on either side of the Caravel, all leading up to the main one, Prince Henry the Navigator. Others like de Gama and Magellan are represented, as well as others who were vital to the discoveries.

            Now, as I understand it, for many generations Portuguese sailors were only able to sail along the coastline because they didn’t have the ships or the navigational abilities that could handle the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean was the great unknown. Who knew how far it went or how deep were its waters? Who knew the dangers that awaited in that great unknown? To say that it was a great risk to sail out into its depths was an understatement. We learned that in trying to find the right ship that could take on the Atlantic, at least 70 ships and their large crews were sent out and never heard from again. To lose that many ships, maybe many more, was a tremendous cost in lives, in materials, and in hope.

            However, with the advent of ships like the Caravel and innovations in navigational technology like the astrolabe, that helped sailors chart their path by following the stars, the Portuguese were able to cross the Atlantic. They were able to sail further and longer and map new trade routes, and they cornered the market on spices and other riches from distant lands. It made Portugal rich, and they were a mighty empire in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Of course there is a fallout to this. Because on the other side of those leading these discoveries were peoples, cultures, and civilizations, who didn’t know they needed to be discovered. They had been in existence for thousands of years too, so why did they need to be discovered? They were already there. The reality is that the discoveries opened the door for slavery, colonization, exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands. I read once that our technology is always farther along than our wisdom to know how to use it. I’m pretty sure this was in reference to the technology of this century and the last, but it seems to me that it rings true for every human innovation since figuring out how to start fire and realizing that a circle that rolls moves things faster. And it would be true of the discoveries as well.

            So, here we are at, maybe not the dawn of new technology, but certainly in the early days of this technology known as artificial intelligence. Before I go any further, I need to make a full discloser. In trying to decide how I would structure a sermon series about faith and artificial intelligence – from now on known as AI – I used AI to get started. You may not realize this, but if you have Microsoft you have access to AI. Microsoft has Copilot, your everyday AI companion. All you have to do is pull up Copilot, type in a question or key words, and it will generate an answer. I ran my questions about this sermon series several different times using different keywords. Copilot gave me some possible outlines, which got me thinking, and then I put the outline together that I wanted to work with. I sat and read through a variety of scripture passages, played around with themes for each Sunday, etc. etc. My point in telling you this is that while AI gave me a creative nudge, I did the preparation and the theological legwork myself.

            I emphasize this, because one of the ethical landmines of AI is that it does the work that people are supposed to do. I have a good friend who teaches at Belmont, and she told me that they not only have to check students’ work for plagiarism, but teachers also must check to see that it wasn’t written by AI. And now, she told me recently, they have to check to see that a student’s parent has not tried to “help them” by taking the student’s work and using AI to clean it up.

AI is everywhere, more than most of us realize. So, what is it exactly? Here is one definition of AI that I found from Techopedia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the development, deployment, and maintenance of computational systems that can replicate certain types of human intelligence. Currently, this aspect of computer science is focused on creating algorithms and programming machine learning (ML) models that can analyze vast amounts of data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions autonomously.

            And then there is also generative AI, which according to Merriam Webster “is a computer tool that can create text that sounds like it was written by a human, based on a given starting point.”

            This is all heady stuff, but what does it mean for us? What does it mean for the church? What does it mean for our faith? Is the advancement of AI really that big of a deal when it comes to our faith, except that we want to make sure Pastor Amy isn’t using AI to write her sermons for her? Which, on my honor, I did not. I mean technology is with us to stay. We learned very quickly at the onset of the pandemic that keeping going as a church meant using technology – whether it was the weekly church emails to keep everyone informed about protocols to zoom meetings for session and for bible studies to broadcasting our services on Facebook and YouTube, a practice that will continue. And most of the time it’s great to have powerful computers in the palm of our hands. When you’re in a foreign city and you’re trying to navigate from one site to the next, it's reassuring to have a GPS program literally at your fingertips that can help you do just that.

            But I keep going back to that statement I referenced earlier. Our technology is always more advanced than our wisdom to use it. This was true for the technology that powered the discoveries and it’s true for the technology of AI. It may be helpful to have technology that can simulate human intelligence, but do we have the wisdom to know how to use it?

            It seems to me that one reality of human existence is that we are not necessarily born with humility. That’s something that we have to learn, most often in the hardest of ways. One of the overarching themes of scripture is that the people of God kept thinking they knew better than God. It got them kicked out of the garden, it got them stuck wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, it got them sent into exile. It’s not just that humans have a hard time listening and trusting God, it’s that we think we know better. We may not consciously think that, but our actions speak volumes. And it’s not that I think God created us to be mindless drones, just following along blindly. We were created with minds that think and given the gift of reason and free will. God created us with the ability to choose. But God also created us for relationship, with God and with one another. God created out of love. And all that we do, say, and learn should be to build up that love, that relationship.

            That is the knowledge that comes from God, and I think that is the Word that John’s gospel is referring to. In the beginning was the Word, the logos of God. The logos of God is the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God, the creative spark of God, the love of God, the breath of God. The Word of God was at the beginning of creation. This is John’s version of the creation story. I don’t believe he was trying to rewrite Genesis, but I do suspect that he was trying to add to the depth of what creation was and is. In the beginning was the Word – it was the fullness of God’s wisdom and love for all creation, including us humans, despite our lack of humility, our lack of trust, our lack of understanding. God loves us in spite of ourselves, so God the Word, wisdom and knowledge, put on flesh and came to live among us, for our salvation and to show us what it means to be fully human, truly human.

            As I said earlier, one aspect of being human is that we’re not necessarily born understanding that knowledge requires humility. I’m all for intellectual pursuits, I love learning, and increasing our knowledge. And I’m not opposed to technology. It can help human life in so many ways. But I have to go back to the knowledge that I possess – or think that I possess – versus the knowledge of God. I have to return to the God that knows me and, I think, longs to be known by me. I don’t think God wants us to not use our minds, our brains, our intellects. But I also think God wants us to understand that with all we know, we’ll never know all. I think God wants us to approach knowledge with humility. When Paul wrote about knowledge puffing up, he was talking specifically about food sacrificed for idols, but his point about thinking that we know better than others, especially that we know better than God, can be extended to many subjects – including AI.

            We can know a lot. Our knowledge can be extensive, but if it isn’t used for the purpose of building up others, of helping others, of creating a better life for others, than we’re just puffed up and puffing up. We are not building up. We are not extending the love of God. We are not sharing the love of Christ.

            So, where does this leave us? As a preaching professor of mine used to ask, what does this mean for us on Tuesday? I’m not sure I have an answer to that yet. That’s what we’ll be grappling with over the next few Sundays. But I know that AI is with us to stay, and it is probably going to be present in more and more aspects of our lives, including church. So, I hope that I will practice what I preach … that I will approach this subject with humility and the recognition that with all that I know and all that I may learn, there is more out there in God’s universe than I can ever possibly understand. And that’s okay. May we all grow in wisdom and love, and may we more fully know the God who loves us and longs to be known by us. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.