Author: John Stonestreet and Randall Niles
Randall Christopher Niles has been leveraging information technology to share the Gospel, proclaim truth, and counter lies for a few decades now. Through GotQuestions and AllAboutGod, he has used the internet as a tool to point people to Christ. Recently, he tackled the question of AI. How he described its perils and promises is something every Christian needs to hear. Here’s Randall:
Every generation is shaped by its tools. The Industrial Revolution replaced muscle with machines and reshaped labor, cities, families, and time itself. Steam engines led to factories. Factories led to mass production. Mass production led to modern economies. Then came radio—the first technology to speak to millions at once. For the first time in history, a single voice could enter every living room, shape public opinion, unify nations . . . or divide them.
Movies followed. Then television. Those behind the images learned how to move us. Those behind the stories learned how to scale. Culture became centralized. Reality became curated.
And then, the internet. A decentralized miracle with instant access to information and the promise of global connection. Knowledge was no longer guarded by gatekeepers. Anyone could publish, and anyone could speak. Then came smartphones. In an instant, the internet wasn’t something we visited—it was something we carried. A screen was in our hands from the moment we woke to the moment we fell asleep.
With smartphones came social media. It didn’t just connect us, it trained us. It rewarded outrage, amplified fear, affirmed dysfunction, and monetized attention. Truth became negotiable, identity became performative, and algorithms quietly learned what made us tick.
Then, in November of 2022, a tool called ChatGPT was released to the public. No press conferences. No fanfare. Just a simple chat box. Within five days, it reached one million users—faster than any consumer technology in history. Within two months, over 100 million people were using it. Faster adoption than Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.
Artificial intelligence (AI) didn’t feel like science fiction had predicted. It was personal. You could talk to it and ask it questions. You could watch it write, summarize, and create. However, this isn’t just another tool. Something bigger is happening.
For decades, AI had existed behind the scenes, powering search engines, smartphone maps, and digital ads. But now, AI was front-facing and could think out loud. What followed was not slow adoption but sparked an “arms race” unmatched in history. Trillions of dollars in investment. Massive data centers rising across the globe. Energy demands rivaling small nations. The largest infrastructure build-out in human history isn’t for roads, bridges, ports, or cities. It’s for intelligence itself.
The goal? Agentic AI, or systems that can plan, reason, act, and improve themselves. Beyond that? Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines that can outperform humans at all cognitive tasks. And beyond that? Artificial super intelligence (ASI), or disembodied intellects we can no longer meaningfully comprehend, let alone control.
Driving the AI race are the most powerful nations, the most influential technologists, and the most well-funded elites in human history are.
Sam Altman, leader of OpenAI, speaks openly about systems that may surpass human intelligence—and the need to “align” them before it’s too late:
This will be the most significant technology humanity has yet developed. In some sense, ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived. We’re past the event horizon—the takeoff has started. This changes the human story.
Elon Musk has compared advanced AI to,
. . . summoning a demon . . .. AI is likely to either be the best or worst thing to happen to humanity. The biggest risk we face as a civilization . . .. The danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads. By a lot.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, says AI may eliminate “50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years,” creating a “permanent underclass of unemployed or low-wage workers.” He says AI will act as a “general labor substitute for humans,” causing long-term employment disruption that will be “unusually painful.”
Geoffrey Hinton, “the Godfather of AI,” left Google in May 2023, citing his concerns about AI safety:
We don’t understand what we’ve built. We have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us. I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, envisions AI companions, digital identities, and immersive virtual worlds—“a personal superintelligence that empowers everyone.”
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, sees AGI as “civilization-level technology,” as “big as the discovery of fire or electricity.”
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, sees AI automation as the engine of limitless efficiency and “civilizational abundance.”
In a nutshell, ultra-influential, mega-wealthy elites are driving towards technology’s greatest triumph while warning it could be humanity’s last great achievement. Different eccentric personalities. Different worldview visions. But a shared belief, that this cannot be stopped.
Many say we should trust the builders. After all, they’re brilliant and well-intentioned, and they’ve brought us this far. But the concerns are deep, and not merely generated by “doomers” and conspiracy theorists. Alarm bells are sounding from the builders themselves—in their own speeches, warnings, and admissions.
They speak of a coming crisis of truth, the erosion of human agency, the loss of control, and the possibility that intelligence itself may no longer belong to humans. Yet, the race accelerates because to slow down is to lose, and to lose is unthinkable.
In the next five years, the builders project:
For Big Tech elites, all of this is necessary and inevitable. In the transhumanist dream, humanity merges with the machine, to evolve our species beyond biological limits into a new golden age. Along the way, they promise world-changing innovation, medical cures, economic abundance, and a renewed planet.
But who is asking the more important (and ancient) question: What does this do to us? To vocation. To family. To identity. To meaning. To truth. Soon, our workplaces will change, our children’s education will change, our economy will change, and our sense of reality will change. And none of us were ever consulted.
Shouldn’t an orchestrated attempt at human evolution (and societal revolution) involve some level of individual choice? But no choice is being offered. This transition is happening to us. Opting out isn’t an option.
We may be approaching the greatest societal change in the history of humanity. Not merely incremental. Not another economic cycle. But a shift so profound it will alter how we work, how we relate, how we understand truth, and how we define identity, meaning, and purpose. And it’s not far off. It’s coming quickly.
We are at a crossroads unlike any in history. Not a political revolution or military conflict, but a civilizational transformation—one that will reshape what it means to be human.
What do thoughtful humans do? The answer is not panic or withdrawal. It’s formation. Throughout history, whenever civilizations faced upheaval, like wars, plagues, empires rising and falling, those who endured did not do so by controlling the moment. They endured because they were rooted. Rooted in faith. Rooted in truth. Rooted in practices that form resilient souls.
For Christian families, this moment calls us not to loosen our grip, but to double down. To double down on faith that is lived, not outsourced. To double down on prayer, Scripture, and worship—those things that shape hearts and not just schedules. To double down on the belief that human beings are not accidents, not data points, not upgradeable hardware. Humans are the image-bearers of a living God.
In a world chasing AI, we must recover wisdom. In a culture optimized for speed, we must choose steadfast patience. In an economy obsessed with automation, we must reclaim work—not merely as productivity, but as purpose. We must teach our children not just how to consume, but how to steward, create, and build. Not just how to perform but how to serve. Not just how to navigate screens but how to face reality.
This is also a moment to rebuild community. Not digital crowds or algorithmic tribes, but real community—neighbors who know one another, churches that gather in person, families that eat together, friends who look each other in the eye. AI cannot replace human presence. It cannot replace shared laughter, shared suffering, shared worship, or shared responsibility.
It’s time to be honest about what our families are facing. Behind many entertaining and immersive screens is a form of cognitive warfare—systems designed to capture attention, shape desires, alter behavior, and even destroy souls. Not accidentally, but intentionally. If we do not guard our kids’ minds, others will gladly train them.
Does that mean rejecting technology entirely? No, it means discernment and discipline. Boundaries. Sabbaths. Silence. It means teaching our children that their worth does not come from likes, metrics, avatars, or artificial affirmation, but from being known and loved by God and by people who are truly present in their lives.
In an age when truth can be generated on demand, we must cling to truth that is received, not invented. Biblical truth. Moral clarity. Identity grounded not in self-creation but in divine calling. As machines start to simulate empathy, we must practice real compassion. As reality becomes malleable, we must become people who love what is real—even when it’s difficult.
This moment doesn’t just belong to wealthy oligarchs and elite technologists. It also belongs to parents, pastors, teachers, craftsmen, and families at kitchen tables. History will not only remember who built the machines, but who formed the people living alongside them. We can’t stop the acceleration, but we can decide what kind of people we will be within it.
In the end, perhaps our greatest resistance in this AI age will not be protest, but presence. Being fully human. Fully attentive. Fully alive. Teaching our children to pray, work with their hands, read deeply, think clearly, love sacrificially, and know who they are before a machine tries to tell them.
Thanks Randall. Learn more about Got Questions at GotQuestions.org.