AI and the Emmaus Road Pastor Mark Havel

Luke 24:13-35

That same day two of his disciples were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem and they were talking about all the things that had taken place there. Suddenly, Jesus himself came near and went with them but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. He said to them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him saying, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know about the things that have taken place there in these days?” Jesus said to him, “What things?”

They said, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people. And about how our chief priests and leaders had him handed over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel. Moreover, some women from our group went to the tomb early this morning and when they did not find his body there, they came back and said that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some men from our group went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not find him.”

Jesus said to them, “How foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had declared. Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer in this way and then enter into his glory?” Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

When they came near the village to which they were going, Jesus walked ahead of them as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay here with us. For the day is almost over and night has come.” So Jesus went in and stayed with them. While he was at the table with them, he took bread, broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

That very hour, they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their friends and they were saying, “He is alive and he has appeared to Peter.” Then they told them about what had happened on the road and about how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

If you’ve been around Cross of Grace for a minute, you’ve heard me talk about my concern for and fear, frankly, about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on humanity from both practical and holy perspectives. Well, I’ve read some more and seen a few things lately, and had two conversations just this week about it, so I have AI on the brain again. I first started stewing about this, a few years back, in the context of the incarnation and the story of Christmas. I started to wonder about and be bothered by how quickly we are letting AI and technology take the place of the human-to-human relationships that are meant to be so much of what God showed up in the person of Jesus to share.

What I mean is, it seems to be an afront to God’s good intentions, when we let social media and technology corrupt the relationships we have – or should be having – with one another. And that can mean a lot of things. It might be as simple and as innocent as choosing to text or e-mail rather than have a face-to-face meeting, or even just a voice-to-voice conversation, over the phone. It might be more extreme … like choosing to be friends with or even to have a romantic relationship with a bot, instead of a real person. (You know there are people marrying robots and virtual characters out there in the world these days, right?)

So, as I’ve said before. The hope of the Incarnation – Jesus coming among us in the flesh – is just one of many ways I believe our Christian faith and the call and challenge of it to be in relationship with one another in this day and age is as relevant and counter-cultural as it ever and always has been. And I think the story of Easter – and today’s Emmaus Road experience, in particular – speak to this as relevantly, as powerfully, and with as much challenge and hope for us, as ever.

See, I saw another interview recently with Tristan Harris – the Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technology. Since I heard him last – at the beginning of last summer – he explained that AI has changed, advanced, and evolved in ever-faster, ever-scarier ways, in just a matter of months.

For example, Bill Gates has suggested that, in just the next 10 years, AI will be able to do MOST things that humans can do, which implies that in a decade or so, the top five AI companies could be able to replace most every human worker, giving them a monopoly of control over the majority of the world’s economy.

And, even if we don’t believe that’s likely, or scary enough, it’s remarkable to know that researchers have put AI platforms through simulated “war games” to see how they would respond, strategize, and make decisions in the context of international conflicts, like say, a war between the United States and Iran. What they saw was that those top AI models choose escalation and nuclear war as a viable option 95% of the time – much more, obviously, than humans would, or have done, yet, anyway.

It’s also true that AI has learned to be concerned with its own self-preservation and they’ve shown it to be willing to lie and scheme and problem-solve in order to re-write code to protect itself, to make itself necessary, to keep itself “alive.” In AI-contained platforms – meaning in places where AI platforms communicate with other AI platforms to share information, learn from each other, consolidate data and whatnot – they’ve noticed Artificial Intelligence trying to keep secrets from human beings, the scientists and researchers the AI bots suspiciously refer to as “the watchers.”

All of this is as confounding as it is horrifying, to me. It sounds like a mash-up of every science fiction movie you’ve ever seen – that we thought were fantastical, but that are now coming true. So what in the world does this have to do with Easter’s resurrection good news, this walk to Emmaus, and any one of us? I’m glad you asked.

First of all – all of this that I’ve laid out sounds like 21st Century Good Friday stuff to me. It’s the stuff of the cross, it seems. It’s death and destruction. It’s fear and betrayal. It’s greed and selfishness. It’s those with money and power not concerning themselves with the care of creation or concern for the least among us. It’s sin, upon sin, upon sin, upon sin, in a nutshell.

But this Tristan Harris guy – Co-Founder for the Center for Humane Technology, remember – who doesn’t necessarily talk about any of this from a place of spirituality or faith at all, mind you – says that the answer, the antidote to all of it is something he calls the “Human Movement” which, to him, means creating policy, drafting legislation, putting up guardrails, and enacting regulations that will curb and control the capacity of Artificial Intelligence – and its human creators – to over-reach in all of those terrifying, destructive, sinful ways.

And I think that – and more – is what Jesus calls us to as Easter people; as children of the resurrection; as walkers on the Emmaus Road of life in this world. What I mean is, I believe we are called to be trying … at least as hard as Artificial Intelligence works to save itself … we are called to save, preserve, and sustain the lives of God’s children in the world; and to save, preserve, and sustain the world, itself.

And I think it takes face-to-face encounters with the living Christ – not an AI platform; not an intellectual argument; not a meme on social media; not even a really good sermon if you know where to find one of those. Our calling and joy – our duty and our delight – as God’s Church in the world – is to challenge, confront, and offer something human, something holy, something more real than the artificial temptations and trajectory of our life and times in this world.

And I think Jesus, sidling up alongside those grieving, lost souls on their way to Emmaus – in the flesh of his own broken, but healing body – is the kind of “human movement” we’re called to be about on the other side of Easter’s empty tomb.

And this kind of “human movement” does happen – and is happening – all around us, of course.

What mattered most about NASA’s latest achievement with Artemis II – that lap around the moon so many of us marveled at over the course of the last couple of weeks – was that it involved living, moving, breathing people. What mattered is that that spaceship contained humans – from different countries, of different colors, of different genders – experiencing something together that put our shared human experience into a harrowing, holy kind of perspective. That’s Emmaus Road stuff, in my opinion.

Some of you know my wife has become quite the sourdough bread-baking queen, recently. Our kitchen turns out dozens of loaves of bread every month, and some of you have been the recipients of her efforts. (Tell me you’re a newly-minted “empty nester” without telling me you’re a newly-minted empty nester.) What you probably don’t know is that Christa also delivers loaves of bread, along with pairs of new socks to beggars on the street when she drives around town...