Plagiarism. That was my gut reaction the first time I heard about artificial intelligence. My visceral response was oversimplified and hyperbolic. The tool has enormous potential for good, but I remain more cautious about AI than optimistic. How might AI affect the church? Sermon preparation will be one of the initial areas of impact. But first, what exactly is AI?
The Basics of AI
Will this human creation become a threat to its master? Mary Shelley wrote the book Frankenstein with this question in mind. Stanley Kubrick made a movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, about what might happen. Is AI the next Skynet or HAL9000? Or is it an innovation on par with the printing press or the internet?
The concept of AI started way back in the 1950s. Alan Turing asked a philosophical question, “Can machines think?” Many years later, in 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat chess legend
