AI Couldn't Have Written the Declaration, part 2
It takes a human to craft a blueprint for freedom.
Recap of Part 1
In the first part of this post, I pointed out that AI is now capable of many tasks once considered uniquely human. But with the Declaration of Independence in view, I want to make the case that it still takes a person to craft a transformative blueprint for human dignity and freedom. Although AI can analyze far more existing writing far faster than any human, it has no ability to envision a future.
The Task of God’s Image-Bearers
In this part, I want to take a deeper look at why it is that people think so much about what is to come, and how this makes us vastly different from both animals and machines. Genesis 1:27-28 will give us a foundation for thinking about this. It describes God’s creation of humanity as well as the purpose for our existence:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
To take dominion means to extend God’s goodness everywhere on earth. The idea is tricky to nail down with modern English. Another translation uses rule over, and some Christians talk about stewardship to get at the idea. Cynics tend to assume believers interpret have dominion as a green light to exploit creation, but no ancient Israelite would have found a license to do harm in the passage.
Although the sin that arrives in Genesis 3 has horribly twisted our efforts, God’s intention was, and remains, for human dominion to bring good to all of creation. We do this by reflecting, in a very limited way, God’s own character and abilities. As we image God, our job is to transform the raw materials of the world for the better. This idea alone could (and does) fill many books. However, for this post, I’m going to keep a tight focus and illustrate this idea in a specific way.
Humans Anticipate the Future
In the first part of the post I mentioned that, unlike an AI, a human author can do more than look backward. And the ability to anticipate—and try to influence—future events is a crucial part of what it means to reflect God’s image. Since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, he has an unlimited ability to foresee and direct future events. People are pretty unimpressive by comparison. The Bible warns those who assume they know how their plans will work out (James 4:13-15). But the fact that we have the godlike ability to anticipate the future at all makes us very different from animals. The human schemes in James 4 might fail. But it would never occur to a goldfish to make such plans in the first place.
Non-Christians Try to Have This Both Ways
The social psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues that “the human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.” He explains:
The squirrel that stashes a nut in my yard "knows" about the future in approximately the same way that a falling rock "knows" about the law of gravity—which is to say, not really. Until a chimp weeps at the thought of growing old alone, or smiles as it contemplates its summer vacation, or turns down a taffy apple because it already looks too fat in shorts, I will stand by my [argument].
Famed atheist Daniel Dennett makes a related observation:
The task of a [human] mind is to produce future [as a poet put it]. . .a mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator.
For the Christian, there’s a logic to why this is so. The God of infinite foresight intentionally created image bearers, human beings with limited foresight. Dennett, on the other hand, can only offer this:
Natural selection. . .has no foresight at all, but has gradually built beings with foresight.1
It’s quite a leap of faith.
Gilbert’s inconsistency is more subtle. But he’s still stuck, on one hand, implying a person is just another animal (“the human being is the only animal. . .”), while also confidently arguing how profound the gap between us is.
Getting Back to AI and the Declaration
Yet AIs can produce language far beyond the ability of any animal. And poking at the inconsistencies of naturalists doesn’t exactly prove what I started out saying: It takes a person to craft a transformative blueprint for human dignity and freedom.
To create something that profound, you not only need to be able to envision the future. You also need to be able to imagine a future with greater freedom. A bot, for obvious reasons, can’t do this. It only processes data. It’s not even conscious.
People reflect the image of a God who is completely free and “does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3). Since everything God chooses to do is good, we display true freedom when we receive God’s grace and respond by pursuing a life of holiness. Christian liberty is found in a life of striving for freedom from sin.
Personal Freedom and Political Freedom
Some will say that’s fine as Sunday school stuff, but what does that mean for a nation? The Declaration of Independence mentions God and Providence, but it doesn’t specifically name Jesus, nor does it urge anyone to repent. Does a Christian understanding of freedom from sin relate to political notions of freedom? Or at this point are we stuck with two very different ideas, each confusingly cloaked in the same word?
Having left Catholicism roughly 15 years ago, I don’t spend a lot of my time looking for quotes by popes. But this one by John Paul II recently grabbed my attention:
“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
I think that offers a clear, practical bridge between a biblical understanding of both personal freedom and political freedom. The first part, “freedom consists not in doing what we like,” is consistent with defining true personal liberty as freedom from sin. Freedom isn’t doing whatever we like. Instead, we experience true freedom to the extent that we obey God.
Now we’ll zoom out for the political frame. This is captured by the last part of the quote: “having the right to do what we ought.” A free society is one that recognizes a citizen’s right to do what is pleasing to God. Immoral governments pass laws that make it more difficult—or even illegal—for people “to do what we ought.”
This can take all kinds of forms. At the extreme, North Korea tortures and executes Christians. Russia bans evangelism everywhere but government-approved churches. In the U.S., laws restricting Christian freedom of conscience may seem subtle by comparison, but are still insidious. One recent example is California’s effort to force churches to pay for abortion coverage.
Let’s wrap all that together. An individual’s effort to live in the freedom of holiness is distinct from a government’s responsibility to ensure citizens have the right to do all that is good and God-honoring. But in a truly free nation, each reinforces the other.
AI Doesn’t Favor Freedom over Oppression
With AI in the wild, these considerations take on urgent relevance. A person bearing God’s image can yearn and toil for the cause of freedom. AI, on the other hand, blindly serves whoever programs it.
China is using AI to monitor its citizens to a chilling extent. And it’s exporting its technology to other cruel governments. That reality makes thinking about AI, the Declaration of Independence, and human freedom much more than a stimulating exercise—It’s an urgent need of our time.
I started the first part of this post by arguing that AI isn’t capable of producing the kind of history-transforming words found in the Declaration of Independence. To build my case, I pointed to uniquely human, God-given gifts, such as an ability to anticipate the future and the desire for personal and political freedom. Tomorrow in part 3, I’ll conclude by sharing what in fact happens when you ask an AI to write words promoting freedom.
Daniel Dennett, Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness, page 57.