Have you ever tried to hammer something with the back of a screwdriver?
I have. It hurt my hand! Different tools are good for different things. They each have strengths and weaknesses. Understanding this helps us choose the right tool for the job.
A.I. is a tool that looks for patterns, then uses them to make predictions. Maybe you’ve been to a school cafeteria that served peas on Monday and carrots on Tuesday. Maybe you predicted they’d serve peas and carrots on Wednesday. Maybe you were right! Leftovers are a common pattern.
The reason A.I. seems so smart is that it’s seen billions of patterns. When you ask it a question, it tries to fit it with a pattern it’s already seen, then follow that pattern to predict what words you want to hear.
Maybe that answer will also be true. Maybe not. A.I. can be an incredibly useful tool. But predicting text and discerning truth are two different things, as different as a hammer and a screwdriver. And what people want to hear is not always what’s true!
Recently I read in my Bible again about King Saul. You may remember that the Israelites wanted a king so they could be like the other nations. They had a pattern in mind. God warned them about this pattern, then gave them want they asked for. King Saul did look like a king on the outside; he was a head taller than anyone else around him.
But is that pattern really what makes a good king? Perhaps you read about the tech company whose systems rejected many women for jobs. Most of the company’s current employees were men, and the computer looked at their records to make its patterns. Even if the computer wasn’t told whether a person was a man or a woman, a women’s college or a women’s sport on a resume didn’t fit its pattern, so that person scored lower and might not get the job. Does that mean that person couldn’t program a computer?
Patterns on the outside don’t always tell us what’s on the inside. Later the prophet Samuel almost makes this same mistake himself, but the Lord warns him “man looks on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The king the Lord actually chooses is the youngest son. Young David doesn’t fit the pattern people expect, but he has the courage from the Lord to take on Goliath! His size wasn’t important for being a good king. His courage from the Lord was.
Let’s end with a classic tomato joke. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. (Eww! That wouldn’t taste good!) A.I. knows lots of patterns, but it isn’t wise because it can’t understand what’s really most important about them. We can learn to be wise, though. The Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. To become wise, we can read His Word (the Bible) and seek to follow Him. Maybe then we can use our tools wisely too!
A classroom veteran, George Rietz encourages teachers, teaches homeschoolers, and invents new tools to reshape education. Contact him through ExploreMyWriting.com .
