Bested By Artificial Intelligence
“A generous person will be enriched, and one who gives water will get water.”
Each week, at the beginning of our Staff meeting, a different person offers a devotion. Last week, one of them asked Artificial Intelligence to write a devotion for them. Some chuckled, and I held my breath. Indeed, the AI devotion proved insightful and was filled with scholarly truths from various fields of study. Worse, it took all of twenty seconds for AI to create theirs, and it takes me hours to write each one of my devotions. Worst of all, AI’s devotion was better than mine!
I was living in a jealous place for the rest of the meeting. Yes, I am exaggerating for emphasis, but I bet AI wouldn’t have thought to convey bitterness as a theme. If AI keeps it up, I will express pettiness to set my writing apart. If you think I am joking, contemplate the fact that Artificial Intelligence is continuing to get better at a faster pace than I am!
Yet, before you start crying for me, AI still has its limitations. While I heard about the quality of AI writing, it wasn’t until I listened to the devotion that I realized the quality of AI writing. Where I find limitations is in the human interaction with the reader through the use of examples and storytelling. AI has not experienced what it creates. It conveys patterns based on what others have written, but not its own artistic expression.
While AI might be able to prepare a fact-based term paper with eloquent ease, at any level of creative writing, where the author’s personality and passion speak to the work, AI is not presently capable of conveying the same level of meaning. I consider Artificial Intelligence a blessing because it challenges us to offer more of ourselves to the world. We should lean into what makes us better than AI, even as AI continues to improve. Trust yourself and the Holy Spirit to guide us in using the AI tool to enhance and empower who we are, rather than competing with it. I pray humanity will appreciate the blessing of our uniqueness, whether one is writing a book, at the other end of a customer service call, or performing teaching tasks online. Our unique minds and our personalities make the human experience better, and rarely do perfectly crafted, but coldly calculated expressions move the heart and mind.
