Well, several huge worldview issues for our consideration today. They’re all just landing on us at once. That’s pretty much the shape of the world these days. We’re going to start out with Claude. Perhaps you know Claude. Perhaps you’ve heard of Claude. I’m not talking about Claude the human being. I’m talking about Claude, the Anthropic chatbot. And we’re talking about Anthropic, the big artificial intelligence company. By the way, it is valued right now at $380 billion. You got that right, B, $380 billion. Claude is its rather famous now chatbot. And we are talking about whether or not it is a moral agent, whether or not it has some form of consciousness or might have some sort of consciousness and what kind of moral intelligence it can or might or should have.

Now, okay. The headline in the Washington Post reads this way, “Anthropic Asked Christian Leaders for Advice on Claude’s Moral Future.” So again, remember, we’re not talking about a human being. We’re not talking about a human claude. We’re talking about a chatbot emulating a human being. But then the subhead of the article asked the question, “Can AI be a child of God?” The answer to that, by the way, is no. And then we are told that the report’s going to take us inside Anthropic’s meeting with Christian leaders. Okay. The Christian leaders are later described as religious leaders. We are told that they were invited in order to give guidance on building a moral chatbot. Okay. So these are leaders identified as Christian leaders, religious leaders invited by Anthropic for this conversation. So let me just say that means the company invited the people who would tell them what they wanted to hear.

That’s the way this works. Now, there are massive, massive issues here. So number one, we’re told right up front that this is a chatbot with a discussion about its moral future. And in this article, there are open questions as to whether or not it has already achieved some sort of consciousness. Now, in Christian terms, this is raising the issue of whether or not this chatbot is a moral agent. So that’s just really important. Let’s talk about that for a few moments because we as Christians have better keep our category straight. The most important category in this sense is the category human being. Now, according to the Scripture, every single human being is made in the image of God. There isn’t a human being not made in the image of God. We as Christians believe with consistency that that imago dei, image of God is all the way from the moment of fertilization till the moment of natural death.

Not only that, in our resurrection self, we will also be an image bearer of God. And that by the grace of God and the power of the gospel. But right here on earth from fertilization, until natural death, every single human being an image bearer. Now, being an image bearer means several things. As a matter of fact, it means more than we as human creatures can know. The creator knows us fully. We don’t even know ourselves fully, but we know what has been revealed to us, particularly in Scripture. And one of the dimensions of the image of God revealed to us in Scripture is that we are moral agents. Now, morality is built into the entire cosmos. Right and wrong is simply there because of the moral nature of the creator who made the cosmos to reflect his glory, to display his glory. So there isn’t any possible atom or molecule that’s not a part of a universe, a cosmos absolutely infused with morality, but not everything in that creation is a moral agent.

You don’t blame a rock for dinging your car. You do blame somebody who throws a rock at your car, and that’s because the rock is not a moral agent. A moral agent is one capable of obedience or disobedience, law keeping or law breaking, and of the consciousness of the difference. Okay, so understand that. Lawkeeper, law breaker, obedience, disobedience, and the knowledge of the moral context. So every single human being’s a moral agent, but we understand that’s also developmental. We develop greater, more substantial moral accountability or moral agency along the way. Now, we expect a two-year-old to obey. You’d better expect a two-year-old to obey, but you better expect to have to teach a two-year-old to obey. But you also understand that the two-year-old and the 12-year-old and the 16-year-old are at different levels of the development of moral maturity and moral agency. 

But you know what? To be human is to bear moral agency all the way from the beginning of life. That moral agency, however, is not shared with any other creature, certainly not in the same way. So if indeed your child behaves as your cat, presuming for a moment, you have a cat. Well, if your child behaves as a cat, you’ve got big trouble. You got big trouble, let me tell you. Better your child should act like a puppy than a kitten. I think you know what I mean. The world’s divided between cat people and dog people, but in any event, we really don’t hold dogs or cats morally accountable. We don’t consider them to be, in any sense, full moral agents. We can say bad dog, but we don’t have the dog arrested. We can say, “Behave” to the cat and in general terms, the cat will just stare at you.

The reality is that their actions reflect a moral universe, but they are not moral agents. Only human beings are moral agents. Only human beings can be indicted for a crime. Only human beings can sit on a jury. But now with the development of artificial intelligence, we have an intentional blurring of that line. Now, let me just point out that in terms of the image of God, from a Christian perspective, this means that we should only, in a very limited way, speak of an inanimate object with a name. Now, I can remember that my grandfather sometimes named cars. It was just a way of identifying the car. I guess it was personalizing the car. And that was back, by the way, when cars were really, really big, an awful lot of metal, an awful lot of American pride. And so you’d refer to the car or the truck as Betsy or Betty or whatever. Oddly enough, mostly feminine names as is true for seagoing vessels as well. That’s just a part of tradition as it was, at least for many, many decades when it comes to hurricanes. There you go. 

But nonetheless, no one would arrest a car for hitting another car because the car obviously has no consciousness. It’s not a moral agent. But we understand even when we name a car, we’re actually just doing so familiarily. It’s a human thing. It’s a human attribution. The car doesn’t know it has a name. And furthermore, you just get the point. There’s a categorical issue here. There’s a category of moral agency that’s human beings alone, nothing else. And that includes objects, that includes other creatures, that includes things that swim in the sea, fly in the air, and crawl on the earth. Human beings alone have that kind of moral agency. It is to human beings that God address the law. It is to human beings that God has addressed the scripture. It is to the creature made in his image. 

Now, what about what human beings make? Okay, this is a very interesting question. And let me just point out that it oddly enough arose in a big way in the 19th century. And you say, “Well, that can’t be artificial intelligence.” You’re absolutely right. But you know what? The idea of robots really began to emerge in one sense or another, even without the word in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, the word was actually developed. And there was the idea that there could be these human-like machines, anthropologically inclined machines that could emulate human behavior. You may remember if you’re of a certain age, and I’m of that age, lost in space when Will had a robot friend. And it was a fascinating thing to the mind of a child going back to the 1960s.

And that robot was basically considered to have a personality, and to have a name, and to have some level of moral agency. He was often, by the way, the co-conspirator with a little boy of all kinds of things they intended to undertake, just a part of the very safe black and white television of the 1960s. But if Will got in trouble, guess what? Will was the one in trouble, not the robot. The robot was simply the machine sidekick. Had a personality when it was fun to think of it with a personality, but it doesn’t have a personality, doesn’t have moral agency when it comes to moral responsibility. That’s where AI is really threatening to blur things, to confuse things. And I think it’s a very deadly confusion. Now, I read this article. I mean, how could I pass it up?

We were told that Anthropic asked Christian leaders for advice on Claude’s moral future.

Well, I wish they’d asked me for advice. Let me just tell you, first of all, there’s a categorical distinction between human beings and everything else. Now, is there moral agency involved in artificial intelligence? Two quick things I want to offer as an argument from a Christian biblical worldview perspective. Number one, whatever this is, it wasn’t created by just a thing. It was created by human beings. Anthropic is a corporation made up of human beings. They are ultimately morally accountable for this. Ultimately, it is those who engineer this thing and set it loose and advertise it and name it, who bear the ultimate moral responsibility. I don’t think Anthropic really wants to buy into that, but that’s what they’re nonetheless going to be responsible for because they are putting this product out. And as we know, there are all kinds of things. We’re talking about sexual issues, ethical issues.

We’re talking about young people developing relationships. We’re talking about ties between the use of some of these chatbots and all kinds of pathologies and behaviors, including self-harm, including terrorist attacks. We’re talking about all kinds of things. And it’s just a very, very sad thing. We’re also talking about self-harm in the case of some teenagers, for example, who develop emotional attachments to these non-human chatbots. And I want to be emphatically clear as a Christian theologian, there is human moral responsibility here, and it’s multi-level. There’s responsibility for the ones allowing these young people to have access to such things. There’s moral accountability on the part of the young people themselves, but that’s a limited moral accountability. They’re not the ones who invented this. They’re not the ones who are profiting from this. It is human beings who, by the way, even right now, you cannot bring Claude into a courtroom as a defendant. You can bring human beings, who are involved in such things into a courtroom, and that’s because human beings are moral agents. 

Now, as I said, I want to mention a couple of things here. Number one, we have to keep the categories clear. There’s the human being and everything else. And when we talk about a thing, we’re talking about everything else. But then there is the question, if there is a definition of something like a moral conscience or a moral faculty when it comes to artificial intelligence, what exactly would that be? Okay, here’s the interesting thing. This article in the Washington Post tells us that the leaders of this company have been turning to religious leaders in order to ask them what kind of moral character they should build into this artificial intelligence chatbot. Now, I’m not even clear, it’s not clear to me that they’re taking full moral responsibility for this, although I would insist they should, but it is interesting they’re asking questions, if we did have a moral character, what kind of moral character should we build into this? Just imagine again, this is like one of the nightmare science fiction scenarios of the early 20th century, but let’s face it, it’s real. It’s $380 billion real. 

Listen to this: “Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amadi says that he is open to the idea that Claude may already have some form of consciousness and company leaders frequently talk about the need to give it moral character.” Now, I would say just a matter of a couple years ago, if you saw that you would think it’s a joke You would think that it’s just a part of science fiction. But these days, no, this is a part of Silicon Valley conversation. And that means that Christians have better be thinking about this and thinking about it fast. And I don’t just mean those identified as Christians invited into this conversation by Anthropic.

Whether or not you are going after artificial intelligence, let me just tell you in moral terms, artificial intelligence is coming for you, and for your church members and for your family members, and for your children and for your friends. It is also interesting, very revealing in this article. We are told that Anthropic uses “a 29,000 word constitution” to steer the chatbot’s behavior and apparent personality. I continue reading, “A document written by in- house philosopher Amanda Askel and other employees in consultation with outside experts.” That’s how it came about. “It states that Claude, remember they were talking about a chatbot here. Claude should “never deceive users in ways that could cause real harm” and that “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing.” 

Okay, now we are in really, really problematic territory. Number one, look at that first statement. The policy requires “that Claude should never deceive users in ways that could cause real harm.” Well, who gets to define real harm? In other words, this chatbot is supposedly being built with a moral character, put quotation marks around that, and that moral character is not going to allow it to deceive users, to lie to users in a way that cause real harm. I guess that means in other ways it’s free to lie. How in the world is this machine going to have, let’s just say, the moral character supposedly even to know the difference and furthermore, to make these judgements. Can you imagine setting something like this loose on the public? When you have to use this kind of rather, let’s just say morally convoluted, if not morally irrational language, how about this, “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing.” Okay. At that point, let’s just set off all a four alarm fire right here. Let’s just set off the full alarm because now we’re being told that this chatbot has something you define as wellbeing.

Now let me just point to one of the most bizarre aspects of that. Let’s just say you got a 14-year-old boy and you got clawed the chatbot. Anthropic is concerned with the chatbot’s supposed wellbeing. The chatbot isn’t a person. The 14-year-old boy who’s using it is. And by the way, I guess when you look at this one sentence, that the chatbot is not allowed because of its moral character being built in by the architects of artificial intelligence. This chatbot’s not allowed to deceive the boy in ways that will cause real harm. Well, how about the fact that the very existence of a chatbot, which is a technology you’ve given a name to, might well be deceiving that 14 year old, especially in emotional terms from the beginning. But when we’re told that the company here, Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing, let me just say that this is another very dangerous thing because this is recognizing wellbeing in terms of emotional and physical substance.

And in terms of agency, again, you’re giving it to a machine intelligence and you’re concerned about its wellbeing. How in the world would you even define that in rational terms? You want the technology to have a self-satisfied life. You want it to be secure in its personality. You want it to have a well-integrated character? I’ll just tell you, when you look at this, you recognize we are in a world increasingly risking insanity, but that insanity is very dangerous. And I’m not underestimating the power of artificial intelligence. If anything, I’m trying to underline, and I think there’s something real and really important here. I also think there’s something deceptive and horribly deceptive here. 

Now, just remember that the Pentagon and the US government are quite concerned about Claude. I’ll just use the name. I don’t like it, but there it is. To identify the chatbot, it’s Claude Anthropic’s product here: “The Pentagon’s research under Secretary Imo Michael said in an interview on CNBC last month that Claude’s design could undermine US forces. ‘We can’t have a company that has a different policy preference that’s baked into the model through its constitution, its soul, and pollute the supply chain so our war fighters are getting ineffective weapons.’” Okay, now wait just a minute. I find the government’s position on this, I think very rational. I think the Pentagon’s taking a very rational approach here, but you’ll notice that in this case, the spokesman for the Pentagon acknowledges that the company has a constitution, but the next two words are its soul. Once again, we have this massive confusion, not just moral agency, not just personality, not just consciousness. Now we’re talking about a soul continuing from that Washington Post report: “Anthropic’s March Summit with Christian leaders was built as the first in a series of gatherings with representatives in different religious and philosophical traditions that according to attendee Brian Patrick Green identified as a practicing Catholic who teaches AI and technology ethics at Santa Clara University.”

Green said in an interview that there are big issues at stake, “What does it mean to give someone a moral formation?” Okay, someone, let’s be really careful here. Someone means a human being. Someone does not mean, including also an AI chatbot, but nonetheless, that’s what this person said. What does it mean to give someone a moral formation? How do we make sure that Claude behaves itself? Okay, so now itself and behaves. Does anyone notice that the English language has never been used in this way before? Does that not set off an alarm bell somewhere? The article then tells us, “At one report, the conversation turned to the question of whether an AI chatbot could be called a child of God suggesting it had spiritual value beyond that of a simple machine, but the question of AI sentience, in other words, consciousness was not a core topic of the meetings this man said.”

Okay, so once again, we have the question as to whether an AI chatbot could be called a child of God. Okay, if that’s an open question, let’s just once and for all answer it right now, right here. The answer to that question is no. Child of God means created by God himself as the divine creator. He made human beings. He created us. He created us out of the dust. He breathed life into us. He made us in his image. That is not true of any other creature, but you know what is true of every other creature? That is not true of any other creature, but you know what is true of every other creature? God made them too. God made everything that is. He made everything that is out of nothing and he established what everything is. So you’re looking at this, you recognize there’s a very deep confusion here. Maybe you’re thinking, okay, in a secular age with high technology and with the development of what’s called artificial intelligence, isn’t this kind of to be expected?

I guess the answer to that question is maybe kind of yes, but that doesn’t make it any less threatening and it doesn’t make it any less significant. Let’s just remember if the entire world, if the entire population loses its intelligence, its rationality and its sense in thinking about who is and is not a human being, Christians have to get this question right. And we’re not getting this question right because we just have some kind of superior insight. We’re getting this question right because we understand that it is none other than the creator who told us who we are having made us in his image. 

Listen to this also in this article, “The belief that AI, artificial intelligence has attained some level of sentience [means consciousness basically or self-awareness] is still a minority view inside Silicon Valley, but many who work in the technology think it will eventually attain capacities currently seen as unique to humans.” Okay.

Well, let me tell you again, what it can’t be is human. What it cannot be is actually human. What it cannot have is actually a soul. I continue, “For now, AI researchers are still refining how they control existing AI tools, which remain unpredictable.” How’s that for good news? These companies are asking questions about the future development of technologies they’ve started and then they come back and admit they’re not even in control and don’t even fully understand the products they’ve already released. Can you imagine any other aspect of human activity, any other part of the economy, any other corporate reality that can make that kind of statement out loud and be taken seriously? And the answer is we’re on new ground here and whether we like it or not, that ground is moving and we as Christians have better think with great biblical fidelity and a great deal of agility as well, because we’ve got to stay on this or it’s going to come for us.

Meanwhile, we’re going to be talking about some of these big issues that are coming at us so fast and we’re going to be talking about them for a very long time. They’re going to come back again and again and again with a new guys, a new face, something that comes new as a development. On the issue of social media, again, we know how complex, how morally complex this now is. We know how much good has come by it, but we also know how much evil can come on the same social media platform or network. We know that it can help people to communicate. It can give the voiceless in societies that are oppressed, it can give them voice, it can serve the purposes of democracy, it can serve the purposes of autocracy. It can be a vehicle for great evil. And especially when it comes to younger people, the opportunity or the risk of damage just gets higher and higher and higher.

So that’s why it’s really important to recognize that the nation of Greece has taken action to block social media for children. As the New York Times reports, “Greece is expected to ban social media for children under the age of 15.” That was said by the prime minister last Wednesday, “Joining countries including Spain and Australia that are cracking down on social media usage amid concerns that online platforms are harming children.” All right. It’s really interesting to see that Greece is feeling like it needs to take this kind of action. It is interesting to see though that is contrasted with other European nations and then contrasted across the Atlantic with the United States. So it’s also interesting to look at Pacific region where you have some nations that are taking the same kind of action. Now, what you have in the United States is the open argument that children should have the opportunity to have some kind of access and there should be limitations put into place.

That’s one of the common arguments so that there should be areas that children can’t go, that teenagers can’t go until a certain age and then all those rules should be off. The bottom line is that we understand there is tremendous moral consequence to this, that this is not something that can ever be severed from grave, huge, tremendous moral issues. And we’re talking here about this headline, not being about artificial intelligence per se. We’re not talking about Claude or another artificial intelligence chatbot here. We’re talking about social media. This has been around now for years. Isn’t it interesting to notice how little we’ve actually done to protect children and young people in all these years in which you’ve had social media platforms, social media platforms have now so taken over so much of the national and international conversation, I think it’s extremely telling that an awful lot of Christian parents really haven’t thought this through even now, still just haven’t thought that through.

An awful lot of Christian teenagers just basically have this life separate from even their parents, their families that anyone even knows. It’s just very dangerous. I think it’s interesting to note that there are some countries like Greece in this case, a country that’s actually saying, “We’re just going to say that under the age of 15, this should be just illegal.” Do you know what’s really interesting in so many of these cases? You have the reality that some parents are coming out saying that they are opposed to their children lacking access to anything. We really have reached the point where I think an awful lot of parents have actually just abandoned their parental responsibility to the point. They’re basically saying, “I’m happy for my child to have full access to all of this.” 

There are other parents who have a very different approach, but these days it’s becoming more and more difficult to protect children. And so their access to the technology means that someone somewhere is going to try to entice them into this kind of technology and the use of this in such a way that it’s going to come with all kinds of complications, all kinds of risks, and in some cases, all kinds of threats. This Times article tells us, “In January, Australia became the first country to ban social media for children under 16. Other countries, including France, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Denmark are considering or working on similar measures.” Then listen to this, “Some critics have questioned how useful such bans are, arguing that the restrictions would push children into less regulated parts of the internet.” Is this where we are? Let me just end on this today. Is this where we are? Are we in a situation in which we’re being threatened as Christians with the fact that the children among us, the teenagers among us, the young people among us, they’re going to be exposed to all of this inevitably.

It’s just a matter of the fact we can’t block it. If parents take action in order to try to protect their children and teenagers and young people, they’re going to be ineffective because someone else will find a way around it. There’s no way they can actually do anything that will be meaningful. I mean, just consider what that means and then look at the kid with the smartphone or the laptop or the iPad or something and recognize there’s a battle for the soul that is going on right now. And there are some people who are absolutely convinced when it comes to Christian parents, Christian leaders, Christian young people, when it comes to all these issues, you’ve already lost. 

One final thought on this, government authorities are recognizing what a lot of people just don’t want to talk about, and that’s what’s described here as the addictive design of certain applications, platforms, and all the rest.

You notice the words here are very important, and that is intentional addictive design, which is to say they’re doing this on purpose. They’re after something. They’re after money. Yes, of course. They’re after cultural influence. Yes, of course. But even more importantly than that, they’re after the minds of those who are connected to these platforms. And as Christians, if we don’t keep anything else straight, we better understand that right straight on. This is a battle for minds. Hearts and minds. We as Christians understand, they go together.