Artificial intelligence is here. New discoveries leading to new products are coming at a rapid rate of speed. This new approach to processing and integrating data is becoming interwoven into all aspects of life.

            While people define it differently, in essence artificial intelligence is the creation of software systems to make decisions that in the past only humans could make. These software programs analyze huge amounts of data collected from a wide variety of sources. AI searches for underlying trends and patterns, and learns and adapts as this information is processed. Decisions come about almost instantly.

            Artificial intelligence is producing a new economic revolution. While the industrial revolution replaced farmers and later blue-collar workers with robots in industrial jobs, the AI revolution will replace people at all levels of the economy.  Here are a few examples.

            In finance, stock brokers, portfolio managers, and loan officers will be replaced by software programs. Many welcome this change because it will take out emotion from investing. Automobiles, buses, and trucks will lose their human drivers with many arguing that the roadways will eventually become safer because of these changes. Radiologists will be replaced as computer programs learn to distinguish between healthy and diseased anatomy.

            The AI revolution will lead to huge increases in efficiency, cost savings, and economic gains. A human radiologist can read four X-rays an hour at $100 plus an hour while an AI program can read thousands of films a second for no cost. AI programs will also assist many workers allowing them to be more creative and efficient in their jobs.

            There will also be problems. Many workers will lose their jobs, and those who survive may windup with jobs that are less creative and fulfilling. Guardrails will be hard to create because of the random nature of the AI process. You can put a Google block on how to make a bomb, but a creative change in the prompt will provide the same information.

            Because the data is human created, human bias will color the results. A Harvard Business School study of Airbnb found that people with distinct African American names where 16% less likely to be accepted as guests. A 2019 study found that a clinical algorithm used in many hospitals required black people to be much sicker than white patients in order to gain hospital admission.

            The church has two important roles to play as the AI revolution proceeds. The first is prophetic. It must insist that the economic gains produced from the revolution be used to end poverty in this country. The sad truth is that for the first time in human history we have sufficient surplus resources to end poverty in America quite easily, but we lack the will to do it. The AI revolution will make the job even easier with less sacrifice to the haves, and the church must insist that it be done. The church must also use its prophetic voice to uncover bias and to call it out.

            Like all revolutions involving the economic means of production there will be losers. Many people’s lives will be negatively impacted as they lose their job or are forced into positions of employment where work has lost its purpose and meaning. The church will need to create communities that build people up, heal broken hearts, share resources, and bring a sense of the beauty and goodness of life to otherwise discouraged people.

            When you read about the mainline church today as an institution, it’s pretty discouraging. The church is losing members at an ever-increasing rate. Surprisingly, I feel quite good about the church’s future, and I smile when I write this sentence. This optimism may come from all the time I spend on the ProgressiveChristianity.org website.

            My time spent there tells me the prophetic voice of the church is alive and well. It may need to grow louder, but it’s there even among Evangelicals as is seen in Sojourners, the New Baptist Covenant, and prominent pastors like Rick Warren. Warren argues in The Purpose Driven Life that Christians should focus less on what they believe and more on what they do.

            I read about caring church communities when I spend time with people like Gretta Vosper and Carl Krieg. Krieg points out in his essays on Jesus and Wealth that the original Jesus movement was based on creating communities focused on sharing, radical equality, inclusion, and economic justice. It was only after the rich and privileged hijacked the movement toward the end of the first century that the church became about correct belief that gets you a ticket to heaven. Social transformation based on encountering a loving God and living within a loving community was replaced with a focus on the stairway to heaven.

            The churches I read about are placing more and more emphasis on creating loving communities. Whether returning to our first century historical roots will solve the membership problem is an open question, but I’m proud to be a part of a movement pushing the church in that direction.

Author’s note: Much of the background information relating to artificial intelligence came from an important Brookings Institute publication. See Darrel M. West and John R. Allen, “How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming the World,” Brookings Institute, April 24, 2018.

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Dr. Rick Herrick (Ph.D., Tulane University), a former tenured university professor and magazine editor, is the author of six published novels and two works of nonfiction. His latest books are A Christian Foreign Policy, A Man Called Jesus, Jeff’s Journey, A Second Chance. and Moving Beyond Belief.  His musical play, Lighthouse Point, was performed as a fundraiser for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. Herrick is currently retired, living in Bluffton, SC. He is married with three children and seven grandchildren. You can find him at https://rickherrickauthor.com.