Is AI Ethical? By Lisa Burkhardt Worley, D.Min.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a part of our lives. When do we use it? Should we embrace it totally? As a Christian content producer, is it right to use AI to do my work, or does that take the creativity and inspiration from God out of it?
I have asked these questions lately, and what I have determined is that we should never use AI to replace the Holy Spirit or God’s divine wisdom, whether it is in writing blogs like this one, Christian books, sermons, or Christian music. These works should be Holy Spirit-inspired, and we should not use AI shortcuts to finish a project.
Proverbs 2:6 says, “For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” If we no longer rely on God to inspire others through us, then our writing is not of God.
Have I used AI? Yes. The LORD has gifted me to write, but He has not gifted me as a graphic artist. I needed a nice graphic for a documentary I am working on to fight antisemitism. I plugged the description into ChatGPT, and it came up with the most amazing graphic that I could have never created myself. Somehow, this did not seem wrong.
I also use an app called “Grammarly,” and it catches my punctuation mistakes and often tells me better ways to phrase things, but it is still working with my original writing.
So, when is utilizing AI unethical? I think it is important to pray about it, because ultimately, if the LORD has called us to produce something for Him, does He want something/someone else to do the work? God cannot be deceived. He is a just God. Psalm 99:4 says, “The King is mighty, he loves justice…”
I believe that God is always watching to see if we will be faithful to His calling. Luke 16:10 says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” Will you continue to ask for the LORD’s inspiration, or will you ask AI to write the story from its perspective? As inspirational writers, it is a choice we now have to make.
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AI is a tool gifted for humanity that has the potential to overtake it as used with experimentation. It does not have emotions and being ethical is subjective. It is a machine that collects info and spits it out for us. Example: since more antisemites post etc. AI has become antisemitic. Nothig spiritual to contribute. That is our path for us and for God.