Introduction
Artificial intelligence fascinates, worries, and fuels endless debate. Mathias Gillardo, a data scientist in the medical field and member of Église du Tabernacle, brings both a technical and Christian perspective to this phenomenon in this Soirée du 72. His aim is not to argue for or against AI, but to offer tools for understanding so we can keep a level head, examine everything, and ask what our relationship to these machines reveals about us as human beings.
Message Outline
1. Understanding what artificial intelligence really is
- AI is not new: Alan Turing conceived of it as early as 1950, the Dartmouth Conference (1956) founded the field, Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess in 1997, and Watson won at Jeopardy in 2011.
- According to John McCarthy's definition, AI is a science and an engineering discipline aimed at creating computer programs capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence.
- An AI system is built in two stages: training (architecture + annotated database + learning algorithm) and evaluation on data it has never seen, like a student taking an exam on a new exercise.
- Current models like ChatGPT, Llama, Mistral, MidJourney, or DALL·E were made possible by two factors: the explosion of available data through the Internet, and GPUs, which allow massive computations in a short time.
2. The real benefits and real dangers of AI
- Many uses are genuinely helpful: recommendation systems, voice recognition for people with disabilities, autonomous vehicles, bank fraud detection, medical diagnostic assistance, AlphaFold for drug discovery.
- A concrete example: a commercial fracture-detection system used in emergency rooms, trained on more than 500,000 images validated by 50 radiologists, reduced errors made by residents during night shifts, AI as an aid, not a replacement.
- The dangers are real: loss of low-skilled jobs, excessive dependence, amplified bias (Amazon's 2018 recruitment system favored men), unpredictability of large models.
- The true perils lie elsewhere: deepfake disinformation (the fake Joe Biden robocall to New Hampshire voters in January 2024), facilitated cybercrime, scams using voice cloning of a loved one, autonomous weapons that remove humans from the decision-making process.
3. The real debate: a moral dilemma, not a technical choice
- Sami Biasoni puts it this way: AI offers us compensation for a distant but significant risk in exchange for certain short- and medium-term benefits. Are we ready to make that trade?
- Stopping research is an illusion: the six-month pause requested in March-April 2023 by researchers and business leaders was not honored. What must be pursued instead is regulation, as Geoffrey Hinton (one of the fathers of modern AI, who left Google to speak freely about it), reminds us.
- The European Union and the United States are working on this: the European AI Act has been approved; it classifies systems according to their level of risk and requires transparency and non-discrimination.
- Counter-powers are also emerging: Glaze protects artists' images against non-consensual training, and DeepWare detects AI-generated videos and images.
4. What AI reveals about us: between transhumanism and a hardened heart
- As a Christian, Mathias believes God created us in his image, not physically, but in spirit and heart. And we, in turn, have created AI. It therefore carries something of our image.
- The extreme enthusiasts echo the transhumanist desire: to make humanity into a god, to kill death, to attain absolute intelligence. Elon Musk's Neuralink tests brain chips, while other companies promise to bring ancestors' photos "to life."
- This temptation is ancient: in the Garden of Eden, the serpent convinces Eve that eating the forbidden fruit will make her like God. Ecclesiastes later concludes that the power of intelligence is mere vanity.
- The fearful reveal the other side: our imperfections. Models learn from our real data, with our injustices, our biases, the weakness of our hearts. If the data is bad, it is because our judgment is too.
5. What remains and cannot be calculated: love, heart, blood
- Can humanity be reduced to its intelligence? No, the will must be added to it. Can it be reduced to its creativity? A MidJourney image won an art contest in Colorado in 2022, but human creativity (in music, nature, gastronomy), remains far vaster.
- What truly distinguishes humans from machines is love: not only romantic love, but the capacity to love a spouse, a child, a friend, a neighbor.
- The conversational avatars and "AI girlfriends" gaining popularity among men reveal a dark side: a hardening of the heart, laziness in accepting others' imperfections, the pride of believing it is always the other person who should change.
- Love is made of heart and blood; it cannot be made of calculation. Blood separates us from machines. And for the Christian, the proof of God's love toward imperfect humans is blood that was shed: that of his Son, who became man and not a machine.
Key Takeaways
- AI is neither magic nor intelligent in the human sense: it is an old science that has exploded recently thanks to massive data and GPUs.
- Its benefits are real (diagnostic aid, accessibility, fraud detection), and so are its dangers (disinformation, cybercrime, amplified bias, autonomous weapons).
- The real debate is not technical but moral: accepting distant risks in exchange for immediate benefits, and establishing regulations rather than halting research.
- AI points us back to our two temptations: transhumanism, which wants to make man into a god (as with the serpent in Eden), and fear, which reveals our own imperfections in the data we produce.
- What remains and cannot be calculated is love, made of heart and blood, and for the Christian, it is the blood of the Son made man that stands as its ultimate proof.
Personal Application
- What is your spontaneous attitude toward AI: enthusiasm, fear, indifference, distrust? What does that reveal about the place you give technology in your life?
- Where do you already use AI in your daily life, and does it replace a human effort you should keep making (creativity, reflection, contact with others)?
- Do you recognize in yourself the transhumanist desire (wanting to escape limits, death, imperfection), that the Bible identifies as far back as the Garden of Eden?
- Has your heart hardened toward the imperfections of others, to the point of preferring "effortless" relationships over loving real people?
- How do you keep a level head amid the promises or fears surrounding AI, so as to make it neither a savior nor an absolute enemy?
Verses Cited
- Genesis 1:26-27 · God creates man in his image.
- Genesis 3:1-7 · Eve's temptation: becoming like God through knowledge.
- Ecclesiastes 1:16-18 · The vanity of the power of intelligence.
- John 1:14 · The Word made flesh, not machine.
- 1 John 4:9-10 · Love proved by the blood of the Son.
Further reading
Frequently Asked Questions
Is artificial intelligence really intelligent?
No, not in the human sense. Mathias Gillardo states this clearly in his conclusion: artificial, yes, but not intelligence. AI models sometimes simulate human intelligence in how their calculations are carried out, and conversational robots generate responses that resemble sentences, sounds, even facial expressions, but these are illusions. There is no movement of the heart, no true emotion, no will behind the calculation. Convincing ourselves that these calculations could give rise to consciousness would be a flight forward into illusion.
Can a Christian use AI without compromising their faith?
Yes, as long as they keep a level head. Mathias Gillardo's presentation is not a wholesale rejection: he himself gives the example of an American recipe translated by ChatGPT, or a Malagasy hymn completed with the help of the same technology. AI can serve the common good, help doctors, and protect against fraud. The problem is not the technology itself, but the illusion of turning it into a savior (the "ultimate solution to our sighs and our sufferings"), or of becoming enslaved to it.
Why will AI never fully replace humans?
Because humans are not just intelligence. They are also will, creativity, and above all, love, made of heart and blood. Blood, says Mathias Gillardo, separates us from machines. And for the Christian, the proof of God's love toward humanity is the blood of his Son, who became man and not a machine. No line of code can reproduce that.
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