Is Natural Intelligence Enough?

My eldest son is a high school English teacher by trade and a children’s picture book author in his spare time. God is indeed present in his work. He was designed by God to creatively minister to the intellectual and emotional needs of high school students, parents, and young children through his work.

He developed and has maintained a blog for several years, entitled Picture Book Spotlight, where he highlights the work of those who are involved in this field: writers, illustrators, editors, and agents. His interviews with those whom he has come to know, and respect are quite informative, entertaining, and enlightening. He has done much to promote their books to a wide audience.

One recent article he posted had a brief comment about artificial intelligence that caught my eye. I won’t quote him precisely, but his assessment was that it was less than desirable. I suspect that this negative view came mostly from his experience as an English teacher. I know that those in his chosen field of academics truly struggle, especially at the high school and college level.

He expanded on why he felt this way. He beseeched his readers, “You are creative and intelligent and beautiful and don’t need that trash in your life. Human intelligence and creativity will ALWAYS win. You will not be replaced and we need your stories and your voice and it is vastly more interesting to read than anything a robot will ever churn out.” This is powerful!

I do not think I can adequately state whether or not we need artificial intelligence. That is not my intent. I want to narrow the focus of my article on the heart of my son’s words of encouragement. I simply want to explore his underlying assumption that humans were made in the image of God. And, as such, we are more than adequate to create our own stories, solutions, and so much more.

The image of God

Let’s begin my discussion with the image of God. This is not an easy concept.

Genesis 1:27 tells us that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines it in this manner: “The doctrine that humanity is in certain respects created in the divine likeness. . . Humanity’s nature and destiny are interwoven with this foundational fact.”

It is not clear to me whether or not our image or likeness to the creator of the universe is physical. It may be; it is hard for us to say. Or, it could be something less tangible. The same word is used in Gen. 5:3 to describe how Adam’s son Seth was made in his father’s image.

In a nutshell, this is what I believe is meant by being made in the image of God: we inherently possess some of His divine qualities. Even though they are mixed in with our fleshly sinful tendencies, people can make things. Not from nothing like God did, but we can make something from something else. We can be kind. We can love. We can know. We can be strong. We can create beauty.

You are creative and intelligent

Let me try to expand from a theological perspective some of the main ideas from my son’s post.

He wrote, “You are creative and intelligent and beautiful and don’t need that trash in your life.” I think what he was aiming at was that students, parents, and children of all ages, especially those who do not feel competent or confident in their writing skills, are enough. They do not need the crutch of relying on automation to produce something of value. They already have it in them.

If you think about it, God is a writer. He wrote a collection of 66 books that has been a best-seller for centuries. He wrote names in His Book of Life (Phil. 4:3). Jesus is referred to as the Word (John 1:1). Human beings made in God’s image have always had the ability to put words together in imaginative ways to bring comfort, teach children, inspire ideas, cause laughter, and drive change.

You will not be replaced

New technology always breeds fear. Rapid advances in communication and transportation, for example, did significantly improve many people’s lives. But these changes also brought the fear of losing those jobs that were no longer necessary due to those new inventions. Those who took care of horses and repaired buggies were suddenly unemployed when everyone bought cars.

Those who make a living with their words have similar fears. Those who write books and articles (like I have done), stories or plays, edit, research, and submit grant proposals for a living find themselves competing against faceless artificial intelligence platforms that can theoretically produce these same items much faster (although arguably less accurate and trustworthy).

Leading into this word of comfort, my son wrote, “Human intelligence and creativity will ALWAYS win.” When you compare the raw emotion, sincerity, and accuracy of what we as people made in the image of God can produce with our words and other forms of expression, it will always be way better than something similar that was piecemealed together by a machine.

We need your stories and your voice

Because of the uniqueness and inherent value of what people are capable of creating that will always stand out above something artificial, the obvious take away that my son was emphasizing in his soap box moment was for all of us to keep on using the creativity and intelligence that God gave to each of us in varying measures. We need to keep on using what we have been given.

Perhaps we all need to take my son’s creative and persuasive words seriously. They most definitely came from his heart, not some AI platform. I, for one, will keep on writing what I feel led to write. I do this to put the spotlight on God. He has graciously chosen to speak through those who are not only created in His image, but have been recreated in the image of His Son (Col.3:10).

How do you display the image of God in your life through the natural intelligence and creativity He put in you? I encourage you to find new ways to do so.

Books by Russell Gehrlein: