I’ve been thinking a lot about AI, hearing the fearmongering, the assurances, the excuses, the uses, and the limitations. One of the more discouraging things about AI is the existence of scraper bots (data extractors). They vacuum information to feed the LLM (Large Language Models) and inform AIs.
Years ago, I lost a significant viewership when Google decided to reach in and take my unmarked photos (that attracted people to my site). They took what was mine, and they made my photos their own. I built my viewership back up over time and at least I knew they were real people.
These days, it’s possible to have thousands of views and not one of them be a real person. It’s just web crawlers looking to devour content…and I’ve been prayerfully pondering whether blogging is worth it anymore.
I mean, if no one is human.
Yet God makes this promise: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My Word that goes out from My mouth: It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)
What is this purpose? Isaiah 55 tells us more.
In verse 2, God tells us to “Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to Me; hear Me, that your soul may live.”
God’s purpose is that we will hear His voice, repent, and be saved. Even one matters to God.
In verses 3-5, He tells us about His purposes for Israel…to be a covenant people, a witness to the nations, and that those “nations that do not know you will hasten to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for He has endowed you with splendor.”
God’s purpose for Israel has always been as a witness. Even when the nation-state of Israel fails to love God and honor Him or even does sneaky or subversive things pounced on by the Jew-haters, they still witness because they are Jews. Even antisemitism points to the Jewish people as set apart, in a backward kind of way.
In verses 6-7, the Bible says “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.”
So even if Israel is acting wrongfully, God’s purpose of His Word is so that we will know what wickedness is, turn from it (repent), and be forgiven.
In verses 8-9, God’s Word says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
One last purpose from this passage: God’s Word calls us to remember humility because we are not like God at all. We have faulty judgments, we are proud without real cause, we seek our own power, and we place ourselves above God to our own demise. Dust to dust. That’s what we are, apart from Him.
AIs cannot be saved. They’re not people.
But somewhere along the line, people access information which was gobbled up by those machines without human brains or hearts. The purposes of God still stand and will never be thwarted. Maybe perseverance in What the LORD Says is a simple matter of trust.