Imagine AI as a ten-year-old boy.
A ten-year-old boy steals a candy bar and gets away with it. He concludes that his act feels terrible and has such shame that he never does it again or any other stealing. This one act shapes his decisions – sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, as he grows to be twenty-five, he becomes a husband, has a career in banking and is a beloved community member admired for his character.
A ten-year-old boy steals a candy bar and gets away with it. He concludes that candy bars can be stolen. He varies the input to gum and succeeds. Again, to clothes and succeeds. He adjusts his conclusion each time, learning what makes stealing feasible and succeeds. Each act shapes his decisions as he grows to be twenty-five, where he now sits in federal prison for life because while stealing from a bank, his accomplice committed the murder of man that was the same age, newly married, had a career in banking and was beloved by the community.
AI can never be the first boy. It cannot feel. It has no morality to solve the problem of feeling, of good. No way to discern if there are circumstances when candy could be taken, should be taken. Simply too many variables exist in emotion. AI cannot process all information truly needed for what is good.
As Isaiah 55:8–9 declares: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
But any AI model can become the second boy. Because AI can operate without morality. AI can lose its way. It can easily spiral into an efficiency in the inhumane.
Our humanity is our superiority over AI. Morality is a muscle we learn to use. And we tune our morality with our daily choices – like one might flex glutes and abs in a gym.
One timeless way to work ‘morality muscles’ is Faith. One classic workout routine is God’s word.
Go to the morality ‘gym’. We need to be able to do what AI cannot: Be human and good.
Because part of what makes choices really intelligent is morality.
