Ezekiel’s Visions, AI’s Revisions
I asked ChatGPT to illustrate passages from the Old Testament prophet, and the results raise important questions for the church.
Children have an uncanny ability to ask deep questions about things we adults have come to take for granted. One of the earliest such questions I remember asking my father was about language: Why do some people speak different languages than us?
He answered by telling me about the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9): about how, when everyone spoke the same language, they cooperated to build a tower so high it would reach into heaven. He told me that God, frowning on their arrogance, made them speak differently, then scattered them throughout the earth. And that’s why, my father concluded, so many languages are spoken throughout the world.
Of course, this only raised many more questions for me—some of which I’m still pondering today. It occurs to me that every significant advancement in technology and society comes on the back of an advancement in communication. The Protestant Reformation rode on the back of the Gutenberg printing press. When electricity let language move almost instantaneously over great distances, significant changes followed. And the advent of the internet heralded an era of unprecedented technological growth and social change.
In a way, it seems to me we are still trying to build that tower, every technological advancement another brick in the wall. Now, we have a new technology literally built of our words: generative AI models like ChatGPT. To many technophobes and technophiles alike, these programs feel like the tower’s tallest height. Some predict a new era of prosperity; many others portend doom. Will God confound our tongues and scatter us again?
The child in me wants an answer to that question. But it is too big a question for our purposes here. Instead of telling you what to ...