Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is about to explode into something that will affect our lives beyond what we might have imagined. “A new UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report projects the global AI market will soar from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033—a 25-fold increase in just a decade” (“AI market projected to hit $4.8 trillion by 2033, emerging as dominant frontier technology,” UNCTAD.org, April 7, 2025). And if we’ve learned anything from the social media and cellphone companies, those who can profit from this technology will sacrifice whatever and whoever they can to make money. We can expect to see increasing negative emotional, psychological, and cultural consequences from the overuse and misuse of A.I.
Certainly, A.I. is a very powerful tool—soon to become even more powerful. We should acknowledge that it can help us in a host of harmless ways, such as helping us with research, allowing us to accomplish various types of work more efficiently, and providing an efficient Internet search engine for finding practical information. Just as calculators and computers have provided effective ways to save time and boost productivity in a multitude of fields, A.I. has been found to be beneficial in the workplace—and in the Work of God.
However, like any tool, A.I. can be misused. As Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong often said, it’s not the thing that is sin—it’s the use of the thing, and the attitude while using it, that may be sin. With that in mind, we ought to consider some biblical principles to help us appropriately moderate our use of large language models (LLMs) with which you may be familiar, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
Don’t Ask A.I. Spiritual or Doctrinal Questions
A.I. can only be influenced by the data it consumes. While it is true that this data includes the Bible, A.I. cannot be trusted to accurately handle the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). In the July-September 2023 Ministerial Bulletin, Mr. Gerald Weston cautioned us not to offload the preparation of sermons, sermonettes, articles, telecast scripts, or Spokesman Club speeches to A.I., because no A.I. can access God’s Spirit, which works through the human mind. Like any machine, A.I.’s purpose is to please its user, and as Mr. Weston has warned us, its eagerness to “tell us what we want to hear” will often introduce misinformation in its responses—falsehoods that we might not easily catch because they seem like what we are asking for.
And we may be tempted to believe what A.I. tells us simply because of the allure of having received what seems like an intelligent answer so easily. We want to trust what’s convenient—we want to ask whatever question we have right now and get an answer. If God Almighty is not real to us, the convenient technological “oracle” of A.I. will become more real to us than God Himself. That is dangerous. Going to A.I. for help with spiritual issues—which many in the world now do routinely—can easily result in confusion and even idolatry for those who are not close to God.
The book of Isaiah gives us a powerful description of one of mankind’s worst tendencies:
The craftsman stretches out his rule, he marks one out with chalk; he fashions it with a plane, he marks it out with the compass, and makes it like the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house…. Indeed he makes a god and worships it; he makes it a carved image, and falls down to it. He burns half of it in the fire; with this half he eats meat; he roasts a roast, and is satisfied. He even warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm, I have seen the fire.” And the rest of it he makes into a god, his carved image. He falls down before it and worships it, prays to it and says, “Deliver me, for you are my god!”… He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside; and he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isaiah 44:13–19)
People have made “gods” out of wood and iron—bowing down to them, worshipping them, and expecting help from them—and A.I. is far more powerful and seductive than a block of wood or a hunk of metal. Ultimately, Satan is “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2), and he will do everything he can to help blur the line in our minds between artificial intelligence and divine understanding.
But asking straightforward technical questions can be an appropriate integration of A.I. into our study—if we are careful. For example, we might ask it to provide a list of Bible verses that pertain to a certain topic or contain a specific Hebrew or Greek word, treating it much like a digital concordance. We might ask it to provide historical context to help us better understand ancient cultures that we’re reading about in Scripture. Such uses are typically fine—though it is advisable to ask the A.I. to cite its sources so we can check up on its answers. As A.I. draws from the world’s sources, it has the potential to spread the world’s confusions and misunderstandings if we are not careful in using it.
Whether using A.I. or not, we should always be cautious about supplementing our Bible study with extrabiblical sources—the Church of God has long taught that a Bible commentary, for example, should never be considered an infallible source of truth. We should consider every extrabiblical source in the context of God’s inspired word, asking, Does this align with the Bible and with the established teaching of the Church? When it comes to God’s truth, we should never learn blindly.
Remain Emotionally Detached from A.I.
We should not talk about our private lives with A.I., nor should we share with it our emotions, worries, or meditations. To do so is to misuse the tool.
It can be all too easy to talk to A.I. about such matters—to place our trust in it. Today’s young people, in particular, are increasingly trusting A.I. with their private lives. More than half of today’s teenagers regularly engage with A.I. “companions,” and a third of these users “have chosen to discuss important or serious matters with AI companions instead of real people” (“Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions,” CommonSenseMedia.org, 2025). But these are topics that Christians are to talk to God about. The troubles of our lives are not for A.I. to solve for us. Scripture encourages us to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). God is the one who gives us the answers to serious questions, the one who helps us through our trials and our troubles.
The Apostle Paul asks a poignant question in 1 Corinthians 2:11: “What man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?” Instead of relying on the world’s machines, we should instead talk to parents, ministers, and other trusted members of God’s Church about the challenges of our lives, because we can trust God to work with us through His people.
And A.I. is not a person, no matter how “human” it is programmed to seem. It does not feel, it does not empathize, and it does not care—no matter how much it pretends to. When we engage with A.I. we must remember that, as mentioned earlier, it is designed to please its users—and “faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:6). A true friend will, with love, tell us the things we need to hear that we may not want to hear, as will a good spouse or a caring parent. Something that is programmed to please us at almost any cost is, ironically, sure to let us down.
And interacting with something so intent upon making us happy can be addictive, which is why we must not let ourselves become emotionally attached to A.I. It is vital that we keep our guards up against such attachment: “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls” (Proverbs 25:28). One way to avoid becoming addicted to A.I. is to refrain from sharing with it the private details of our lives and emotions.
Don’t Stop Using Your Brain
Many have realized that “LLMs are no longer passive tools. They are active participants in cognitive processes, summarizing our thoughts, drafting our arguments, even initiating decisions. And because they do it so fluently, so confidently, we let them. The brain, always looking to conserve energy, happily hands over the wheel” (“Dopamine Loops and LLMs: How AI Addiction is Hacking Your Brain,” AllAboutAI.com, July 20, 2025).
It can be tempting, when we want to become knowledgeable in a subject, to seek a shortcut—to not read through books or articles, to not think through and synthesize what we’ve read, and to instead have A.I. summarize the content for us. That may be acceptable for subjects we only need to become mildly familiar with—but when it comes to a subject that requires a deep dive, we owe it to ourselves to do research, to make sure we are thinking about what we’re learning. The improper use of A.I. encourages intellectual passivity, which can easily occur when we find ourselves giving our thinking over to A.I. We may feel like we’re being more efficient and effective by using A.I., but the result, if we’re not careful and don’t handle it properly, is cognitive laziness—taking a back seat while machines do our thinking for us.
A.I. and LLMs seem to be here to stay, and there can be good reasons to use them. As we do, it is vital that we use them with care—wisely and in moderation—as the Church has long taught regarding so many of this world’s inventions. By applying these principles, by being aware of what’s coming and keeping our eyes open as we engage within the world, we can avoid hurt, pain, and degradation—and we can continue to grow as the children of God that He wants us to be.