Have you heard about ChatGPT? It’s the free Artificial Intelligence (AI) application that will generate an article in response to a prompt. It’s not hard to find A LOT of information on it including arguments for and against. I used it just the other day to generate a short biography about the composer who wrote the piece June was playing in a performance group. I asked it to include that piece in the bio, and the result was more than acceptable. We used it “as is.” Once, just for fun, I asked it to write a short homily on the Parable of the Prodigal Son from Luke 15 with emphasis on the older brother. Again, it did a credible job. I expect more than one pastor will be using it to generate sermons or sermon ideas.

On April 10, 2023, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an essay by Gerald Baker with the provocative title: The World Is Ending, But It’s Been Ending Many Times Before. He opens with a list of things people say will result in disaster, among them:

• Climate
• Thermonuclear war
• Plague (e.g., COVID)
• Artificial Intelligence (“the latest terror”)

With respect to AI, he cites an article by AI Expert Eliezer Yudkowsky: The Only Way to Deal With the Threat From AI? Shut It Down. Here’s his opening salvo:

Many researchers steeped in these issues, including myself, expect that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die. Not as in “maybe possibly some remote chance,” but as in “that is the obvious thing that would happen.” – Eliezer Yudkowsky, Time Magazine, March 29, 2023

If you read the article in its entirety, you’ll find links to yet other articles, one describing Microsoft Bing’s AI threatening users.

As I read the articles on the potential destructive force of apps like ChatGPT, I asked myself, what does the Bible say about that? As I wrote that question in my journal (which I keep on my iPad, one file per week), I looked up just 1/3 of a screen and found what Jesus said in Matthew 6:

Do not worry about tomorrow. (Matthew 6.24, LSB)

Then I thought about a similar instruction in Isaiah:

For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” (Isaiah 8.11 – 15, ESV)

Back to the original source: Gerald Baker’s WSJ article. Mr. Baker wrote the piece in the context of Easter! Here’s the opening:

America and the world are living through a very long Good Friday. Like Jesus’ terrified and defeated disciples, we have no inkling of any Easter rising in our future. We are figuratively locked in an upper room of our own fears, bereft of hope, pondering the many ways in which the world is going to demolish us. – Gerald Baker, WSJ, April 10, 2023

He closes with the suggestion that people living in fear should

…read the Gospels. It might cheer them up.

He is not here, for he has risen! (Matthew 28.6, ESV)