In his book, Driscoll has given us the beginnings of AI literacy: a framework and principles through which to think about AI Biblically. If AI is confusing or scary to you, then this book will give you the perspective not only to understand AI, but to see it through a Biblical lens: a lens that says AI is good, but fallen. It is made in our fallen image, and will not bring heaven to earth, even as we can and should use it for good things.

Few things keep me awake at night like Artificial Intelligence.
No, I’m not worried about Terminator-like robots taking over our world (at least not yet). But I am worried about the disruption AI will bring to every area of our lives – and very, very soon.
According to the CEO of AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, AI technology is accelerating faster than anyone imagined. He says it’s accelerating at an exponential rate. How could we even hope to keep up with a technology that’s advancing so fast – faster than any technology in human history? And what disruption might that bring?
To further fan this picture of the AI revolution, former OpenAI researcher and genius Leopold Aschenbrenner released a 150-page essay that has been making waves in the AI community, and no doubt among many governments. He writes:
The AGI [i.e. Skynet level intelligence] race has begun. We are building machines that can think and reason. By 2025/26, these machines will outpace college graduates. By the end of the decade, they will be smarter than you or I; we will have superintelligence, in the true sense of the word. Along the way, national security forces not seen in half a century will be unleashed…If we’re lucky, we’ll be in an all-out race with the CCP; if we’re unlucky, an all-out war.’
Superintelligent ‘Skynet ’-level AI by the end of the decade, leading to possible war?
If those words don’t keep you up at night, I don’t know what will. 
Of course, it’s not all bad news: researchers have published a new study detailing the use of AI to predict close to one million new antibiotics hidden within tiny microbes all over the world, uncovering new potential treatments against bacteria and superbugs. One entrepreneur I know is using AI to help teachers do their job better. And AI will open new industries we can only begin to imagine.
Either way, after much thought and research I’m convinced that what this cultural and historical moment needs are people who have ‘AI literacy’ – coupled with Biblical literacy – and an understanding of how the two relate. We need people who can think Christianly about what AI is, how we should approach it, and the sorts of ethical issues we need to discuss – if we’re to use AI wisely instead of being used and misused by AI.
To help fill that urgent need, Australian pastor and author Stephen Driscoll has written a masterful new book about AI, Made in Our Image – God, Artificial Intelligence and You. Driscoll aims to give Christians a grounding of AI in the unchanging principles of the Bible and allow that to shape our understanding of AI.
And he does an excellent job.
The Shape of the Book
Like increasing numbers of us, Driscoll believes that AI is a technology that matters and will last. It won’t be gone in a few years but will be transformative: ‘more like the wheel than the typewriter’.[1] And so, Driscoll begins by outlining his aim: he’s not into making hard and fast predictions about how AI will change our lives (although he does make a few sobering predictions), but rather his goal is twofold:
First, to make AI understandable – which is no small feat considering how new and intricate it is. Large Language Models, Machine Learning, Neural Networks – he explains all this in a way that would make sense to your great-aunt (chapter 2).
But his second and more important goal is to ‘figure out how the Bible might speak into our topic’ so that we have ‘a clear sense of what matters to us, and our place in God’s world, so we can make sense of the future. We won’t be able to predict the future in exact detail, so we need to know what matters most’. [2]  The unchanging principles of the Bible will help us navigate the changing space of AI.
He applies the Bible by exploring what the Bible has to say at its key turning points: Creation, Sin, The Cross of Jesus, and the New Creation (chapters 3-6 respectively).  
What is Artificial Intelligence?
In Chapter 2, Driscoll explains Artificial Intelligence. The big difference between your run-of-the-mill computer programs and AI, is AI’s ability to learn and be creative.[3] They’re not just ‘programmable calculators’, but are good at ‘the very things – creativity, intuition, pattern recognition, strategic thinking – that are some of our greatest [human] strengths.’[4]
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While following Jesus does bring meaning and purpose that nothing else can bring, life can still feel mundane. So, what’s the answer? Stewart takes us to a surprising passage of the Bible, where the apostle Paul writes about God’s power working in the lives of believers, so that they might have…great endurance and patience (Col 1:11). At first blush that sounds so…ordinary. God’s mighty work in someone to give them something so ordinary as endurance and patience? What about miracles? Healings? Converting thousands? But there is enormous power in just turning up. In enduring. In being patient. 

I never thought I’d cry reading a book on masculinity.
But that’s what happened as I read The Manual – Getting Masculinity Right, by author Al Stewart. I don’t think he intended for men to cry as they read that book (at least he didn’t say so in the introduction). But I felt strong emotions as I read a chapter that, for me, touched on the challenges of being a man in today’s world.
In other words, it was my male ‘Barbie’ moment.
Many females will tell you they had such a moment in the recent movie Barbie, where they resonated with the frustrations expressed by the character Gloria (played by America Ferrera), who spills her heart to the main character Barbie (Margot Robbie) about the pressures of being a female in today’s world:
Like, we [women] have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin…You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining…You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!
So, what hit me so hard in Stewart’s book that I couldn’t help welling up with emotion?
For me, it was the chapter on ‘Endurance: The Power of Turning Up’. Here’s what he has to say – and if you’re a bloke, especially if you’re a bloke in the thick of mid-life, with responsibilities growing on you like barnacles – see if it resonates with you:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. So said American author Henry David Thoreau. He’s right. There are many different reasons for this desperation. For some of us, our dreams may be dying. I don’t mean the dreams we had as kids, where we realise we won’t represent our country at the Olympics, but those deeply private things we’d hoped for. Those dreams that we didn’t share with anyone else. Eventually we realise these things are not going to happen…and that sense of quiet desperation lives with us.
He continues:
Or maybe the quiet desperation comes from heartache – just the wear and tear of life. I don’t know anyone who’s reached middle age without major heartache of some kind, be that from a failed marriage, or wayward children, or lack of children, or wider family, or failure at work, or health issues for themselves or for someone they love. Heartache is inevitable.’
While I wouldn’t have thought of my life as one of quiet desperation – on so many levels I feel blessed – these words about the pain and frustration of life hit a nerve, as I’m sure they do for many other men.
For other men, they’re frustrated by the everyday ‘Groundhog Day’ nature of life: ‘It’s easy for us to feel like we’re living the same day again, and again and again. Boredom is just a fact of life…For many men, the repetitive, mind-numbing routine of life is what they dread.’
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The iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet….In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.

In a few years, Cyberdyne Systems will create a revolutionary defense system.
It’s called Skynet.
A computer program that automatically controls the defense of the United States. The system goes online on August 4th…Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, the US government try to pull the plug. But Skynet fights back.
Those are the haunting words of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Robotic T–800 Terminator character in the movie, Terminator 2. Skynet is the US military’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) that turns on its makers, destroying and enslaving humanity.
Skynet is the epitome of nightmares about AI.
While Skynet-level Artificial Intelligence is not imminent, many are sounding the alarm about the dangers of unregulated AI with the advent of ChatGPT. And the spread of AI into everyday life raises the question of what it means for us as individuals, families, schools, workplaces, and society at large. How will AI impact us? Will we one day face a ‘Skynet’ moment, like in the Terminator movies?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve taken a deep dive down the AI rabbit hole, listening to podcasts, reading books, taking courses, and testing it myself. And let me say, it’s been a roller coaster ride of emotions, from dread at how this AI might eventually take our jobs and possibly even our freedom, to optimism about what AI could do for us.
Here are 12 things that I’ve discovered:
1. AI is Like Nuclear Energy: It’s Both Promising and Dangerous
Microsoft Founder Bill Gates has said the power of artificial intelligence is “so incredible, it will change society in some very deep ways…The world hasn’t had that many technologies that are both promising and dangerous—we had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons”.
2. Technological Change Isn’t Additive; It’s Transformative
When a new technology comes onto the scene—especially one as powerful as AI—it doesn’t just add itself to the existing technology we’re using: it often upends it, changing our society.
Think about how the iPod revolutionised the music industry: we no longer buy CDs (let alone cassette tapes). Instead, we download our music directly. We could say the same about cars (horses, anyone?), television, the printing press, the internet and just about any new technology.
In the same way, AI will not just sit alongside our older technology and ways of doing things: it will probably replace much of it and change how we live.
3. A Christian View of Humanity Will Impact How We Approach AI and New Technology
In the biblical view of reality, humans aren’t machines we can discard when better machines come along. We need to care for our neighbours, who are made in the image of God and who will be impacted by technological change.
Love for our neighbours should lead Christians to discern and influence how technology is developed and used, rather than just jumping on the narrative that technological change is inevitable, whether we like it or not.
4. AI Is not Ethically Neutral, but Is Furnished with the Ethics of Its Designers
AI is being used in all sorts of applications that have ethical implications: from hiring for jobs to predicting whether a criminal will re-offend. Concerns have already been raised about racial and gender bias in these programs.[1]
As Christian author John Lennox points out, “If the ethical programmers [of AI] are informed by relativistic or biased ethics, the same will be reflected in their products.”[2]
This is why Christians should try and have a seat at the table of AI design, especially of AI products that have ethical uses.
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We weren’t designed to find our identity by looking within but by looking to our Creator God. Unfortunately, humanity is instinctively repelled by any thought of looking for our identity in Him (Romans 1:18-30), and so, left to ourselves, we look for identity anywhere but the living God. And in the modern secular West, that search for identity has turned inwards.

We’re the first generation in human history in which ‘You Do You’ is the default way of doing identity formation.
‘You Do You’: it’s all about finding your purpose and identity by looking within. It’s fed to us by Disney, our schools and universities, our sporting athletes, and just about every part of secular culture. We’re swimming in a ‘you do you’ world.
And we’ve been on this path for at least twenty years now.
But the consequences for individuals and society of implementing this idea will take decades to uncover and assess. And Australian Christian author Brian Rosner attempts to start doing that in his forthcoming book, How To Find Yourself: Why Looking Inward Is Not The Answer. [1] So, what has Rosner uncovered?
A lot, as it turns out.
While I’ve yet to finish his book, Rosner points out that we can be thankful for the increasing freedom we have to make choices about how we live our lives. But the ‘you do you’ way of doing identity comes at an enormous cost, including an increase in narcissism and a growing mental health crisis:
1) You Do You is Leading to an Increase in Narcissism
A narcissist is preoccupied with himself and constantly craves the approval of others. In 2013, Time magazine reported that “the incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982.” [2]
As Rosner points out:

Today, “Be your biggest fan” is actually a clothing brand, which unapologetically “pays homage to self love.” And given the new profession of influencer, “self-promotion” coaches are not hard to find. [3]
Psychologist Ross King claims that “studies show those with [narcissistic] traits have jumped from about 3 per cent to 10 per cent of the population over the past three decades.” [4] Indeed, some health professionals speak of an epidemic of narcissism in our society. [5] And in numerous studies, psychologists warn that addiction to social media is strongly linked to narcissistic behavior and low self-esteem. [6]

Because of our fallen human nature, we all have narcissistic traits to some degree. But the rapid rise in narcissistic behaviour needs a further cultural explanation.
And that explanation, according to Rosner, is that ‘you do you’ mixed with social media has become a toxic brew reshaping how we think of ourselves. After all, if our identity is determined by looking within us, how do we measure our accomplishments? By comparing ourselves to others, especially on social media. [7]
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