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\(^{18}\)“What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols! \(^{19}\)Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it. \(^{20}\)But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.”

What is said about idols in this passage made me think of the hype around AI (2024). There are lots of things besides carved statues that people can create which they believe can save them. Many things people create are actually good. God made us in his image and I believe that one of the things that sets human beings apart is their God-like ability to create new things.

The problem is when we create something to take the place of God as our saviour, or when we treat something someone else has created in the same way. Politics and ideologies can be like that, but as a computer nerd the whole AI hype has very much been in my face and I think part of the reason it’s rubbed me up the wrong way is the way some people seem to think it will make everything so much better and do everything for us.

Perhaps the phrase that got me thinking of AI in the first place was “its maker has shaped it … a teacher of lies”. Unfortunately (despite efforts to prevent or reduce it) AIs do lie, and they can lie very convincingly (as well as amusingly badly on occasion). In this way the creation mimics the creator in quite an undesirable way.

The phrase “its maker trusts in his own creation” couldn’t help but remind me of what I’ve read (but can’t now find) of the optimism the creators of AI have about what it could do for humanity. It is surely an impressive creation (like lots of other things people have made). But we cannot allow ourselves to place our trust in it in the deepest sense of the word. Yes we can trust our tools to do what we’d expect (although I find AI’s non-deterministic behaviour problematic) but no tool can meet our deepest need.

The other thing in this passage that reminds me very much of the talk around AI is the expectation that artificial general intelligence is coming. That we could create sentient machines. Essentially, that we could build something that comes to life.

Unlike the idols in the ancient world, our modern machines can give uncanny illusions of thinking and speaking. But the breath of life isn’t in them. And even if it were, where would that get us?

We cannot build our way to salvation. We cannot save ourselves. Our creations echo our brokenness as much as our ingenuity. God alone is God and nothing anyone can make can compare with him or displace him.