Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone. Street. On September the eighth, the same day that Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, he released a whole string of warnings on X. Making the most headlines was the post that warned AI was advancing so quickly it would likely kill us all by the end of the decade.
Other researchers and tech execs were just as concerned, he claimed, but would often downplay the risks to the public. But quickly after his post, experts from other AI companies joined Coxen in expressing their alarm and called for AI development to be slowed until adequate safeguards were put in place.
Now, putting some safeguards around AI development seems like a no-brainer. But many are skeptical of these sudden alarm bells. If the risks are so high, why wait for the government to demand what each company should have already been doing? White House AI advisor David Sachs suggested it was all a coordinated move by these companies to get Congress to exempt them from antitrust laws. That way, the companies could look altruistic while also forming a cartel.
Whatever the motives, AI seems to now have supplanted climate change and overpopulation as the latest version of catastrophism to scare us all. In his 1968 book *The Population Bomb*, Paul Ehrlich predicted that millions would starve in the 1970s and 80s as the human population exceeded our food resources. Later, he predicted that England might not even exist by the year 2000, and that U.S. lifespans would soon be in a sharp freefall.
Now, none of those predictions came true. In fact, as the global population more than doubled, famine deaths plummeted thanks to improvements in agriculture and other technologies. In the 1970s, popular magazines like Time and Newsweek predicted another imminent ice age that would cover the globe by the year 2000. Due to the use of aerosols and natural climatic cycles, by the late 1990s, predictions of global cooling were replaced by predictions of global warming. By the year 2000, we were told entire nations would disappear under water, and the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.
Some predicted that by 2018, children would never see snow again. Also, in the 1970s, we were warned that by the 1990s, all of our oil reserves would be used up. Happily, we discovered new methods of extraction and new sources, so the supply has since grown. And of course, in the late 1990s, there was Y2K because computer systems, including those used by major corporations and the government, only use two digits to mark the year. They would potentially all crash when the year rolled over to 2000.
Thankfully, the predictions of airplanes falling from the sky, power grid going down, our economic institutions all failing, and civilization collapsing were never realized. The computers clicked over from 99 to 2,000 with very little effect. Predictions of catastrophe not only tickle the human propensity for drama; they flourish within a world view in which human existence is believed to be an accident in the first place. In a godless, naturalistic way of seeing life in the world, it should never have evolved the way that it did. We barely survived, as evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once famously put it, by hook and by crook.
Even worse, we still have the potential to mess it all up. Life proceeds on these razor-thin margins, so we should be worried. The weight of the world is really on our shoulders, with all of our fossil fuels, carbon emissions, and spray-on sunscreen. It's heavier than we ever imagined, and we're probably just going to drop it anyway. The story of everything, according to holy scripture, however, is quite different.
While we were created to participate with God in the stewarding of His creation, we were never meant to carry the weight of it all. In fact, we cannot carry the weight of it all. It's far beyond our ability to determine the future of human existence or life on this planet. In the Christian story, the fate of the world is not in our hands. It's in God's hands, and He's demonstrated that He cares for it and is concerned for it, and especially for us.
And He's demonstrated it over and over again. And since God is sovereign, He will accomplish His purposes in history with or without our cooperation. In fact, by dying and rising again, Jesus defeated the enemy of this world and our souls, and now all authority has been given to him. See, that's where the Bible puts the weight of the world. That doesn't mean it's a get-out-of-jail-free card for us.
What we do actually matters. Our ideas, our actions have very real consequences for very real people. We live in the world God made and continues to care for, even as our sin has corrupted the good creation. God accommodates to our fallen states in protecting us, sometimes from ourselves. Check those biblical texts again.
Expelling Adam and Eve from the garden that was as much an act of mercy as it was punishment. Separating the languages at Babel so that we would not do everything that we dream up. That's something that we should know, by the way, but frequently forget. That's an act of mercy too. No one wants AI robots to take over the world, and the environment is not ours to destroy because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
We have to act responsibly in all the various challenges that we face. But Christians should never give in to hopeless despair in the form of catastrophism. Not only has Scripture given us a better story of creation and a better understanding of what went wrong with the world, we also know where history is headed. God's revealed the end of the story, and it's very good because, after all, He is for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
I want to say thanks today to Richard and Joanne of Hedgesville, West Virginia. Thanks for being a cornerstone monthly partner of the Colson Center. You made this episode of Breakpoint possible. Today's episode was co-authored with Dr. Glenn Sunshine.
If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review. Wherever you download podcasts, and for more resources or to share this commentary with more people, go to Breakpoint dot org. Hi, I'm Adam from Texas, and I'm a Cornerstone partner because now more than ever, all followers of Christ must be able to stand up for their faith and speak truth and love to the hurting world around us. The Colson Center has helped not just my wife and I become better apologists, but it has supported us in countless conversations with our children. My prayer is that they will be equipped to boldly engage with the culture and shine brightly for Him and the world throughout their lives.
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