Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Randall Christopher Niles has been leveraging information technology to share the gospel, proclaim truth, counter lies. For a few decades now, through GotQuestions and All About God, he has used the internet as a tool that points people to Christ. And recently, he tackled the question of AI.
How he described both what it promises and its perils is something that every Christian needs to hear. Here's Randall Christopher Niles. 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. and 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. affirm 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 1 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 or AI didn't feel like The science fiction that we 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, product recommendations, 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 for systems that can plan, reason, act, and improve themselves. And beyond that? Artificial General Intelligence or AGI.
machines that can outperform humans at all cognitive tasks. And beyond that? Artificial Superintelligence, ASI. or disembodied intellects we can no longer meaningfully comprehend, let alone control. Who's driving the AI race?
The most powerful nations, the most influential technologists, and the most well-funded elites in human history? One of these tech leaders is Jeffrey Hinton, the so-called godfather of AI. He got so concerned with the safety of what they were building that he left Google in May 2023 saying, quote, 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. End quote.
So 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. tens of millions of jobs disrupted or replaced.
entire professions redefined or erased altogether. synthetic media indistinguishable from reality. AI companions replacing human relationships. Digital selves that outlive biological ones. 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.
So what do thoughtful humans do? The answer is not panic or withdrawal. Its formation. Throughout history, whenever civilizations faced upheaval, 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's 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 upgradable hardware. Humans are the image bearers of a living God. In a world chasing artificial intelligence, 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. And 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. And 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. You can learn more about GotQuestions by visiting gotquestions.org.
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