Almost every day brings some new announcement about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and its adoption by governments, companies, and individuals. More news warns us of future impacts of AI, including job losses, AI hallucinations that make it into court proceedings, impacts on content creators, and dangers of unrestrained AI agents.
During a recent trip to China, one of my strong impressions, frequent experiences, and takeaways was the pervasive use of AI in almost every aspect of interactions and transactions. While the US may lead in ever more powerful AI engines and models, China seems to be leading in the widespread adoption and acceptance of an AI-embedded and AI-enabled life. This high level of interest and adoption was also true of Chinese Christians I talked to. Some Chinese Christian ministries were already embedding AI into their internal work and outward-facing ministry.
This new ChinaSource Journal (CSJ) issue focusing on AI comes at an important time, where the practical benefits of AI are being weighed against important ethical and theological issues that come with every new technology. I appreciated the perspective that AI is like a mirror that amplifies both our virtues as human beings but also our vices. We have already seen some of the problems, such as AI algorithms that make our social media feeds an echo chamber or AI-enabled hacking, making our online life less secure.
As well as dealing with the ethical and theological issues, this CSJ gives practical advice for how to think about appropriate uses of AI, how to explore where AI can accelerate and expand what individuals and organizations can accomplish, and some references for getting started with AI tools.
Asking the question of how AI can support efforts in carrying out the Great Commission is an important perspective. Having tools that can assist in moving between graphic, video, audio, and text in multiple languages opens up new opportunities to get God’s truth in front of more people in more contexts. As an increasing percentage of the world’s population is online, AI assists in making the good news of the gospel more accessible in more languages and formats. Using AI tools for translation, transcription, research, compiling, formatting, and other tasks that have traditionally taken vast amounts of human manpower can now be done in a fraction of the time and cost. The stewardship issue of being able to do more with the same time and effort is an important aspect highlighted in this issue.
Increasing attention within the Christian ministry space, as well as general AI users, has focused on critical issues such as data privacy for individuals and data security for organizations. This CSJ issue gives a number of suggestions for how to consider these issues and begin to construct solutions. The encouragement to follow 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (“test everything; hold fast what is good”) was sound advice. As a still rapidly evolving field with new AI advances being announced each month, we will be finding new uses, new capabilities, and new issues to test and consider.
Among Chinese ministry practitioners, I expect we will see an increasing use of AI-enabled tools. Given the complexity of Chinese Christianity and the need to span both English and Chinese contexts, the use of AI expands what any individual or organization can accomplish. Given the strong push within China to AI-enable all aspects of life, we may find the digital and AI natives within China leading the way in creating useful tools and applications that still align with good theology and practice.
Disclosure: This perspective was written without any AI assistance or input.
