Will A.I. Save or Destroy Us?

Artificial intelligence is here and apparently here to stay. But whether we are supposed to believe that is a good thing or a bad thing depends greatly on who is talking about it. Some expect A.I. to lead us into the utopia we have always wanted—a golden age of prosperity, abundance, and fulfillment. Others see a potential dystopia ahead in which only the rich get richer and the rest of the world lives in a nightmare where machines run our lives and rot our brains.

A decade ago, either outcome would have seemed like science-fiction. Now? Not so much. Let’s consider the possibilities of both—and then examine what we find in the light of God’s word.

A Brave New World?

A.I. Advancements and Possibilities

First, let’s try to look on the bright side. A.I. researchers and developers have created machines that can interact with us in our own languages—no programming knowledge needed. They can listen to us, respond to us, and understand what we say—or at least they can imitate human interaction well enough to seem like they can. As deep learning, Large Language Models, and other A.I. systems grow in capacity, they are solving problems that once seemed far out of reach, such as predicting complicated protein folds—a use of the new technology that earned researchers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 and promises to unlock new cures and medicines that once seemed impossible.

Yet A.I. isn’t just for researchers and academics. Companies are working to make artificial intelligence an integral part of everyone’s everyday lives—helping to plan breakfast, send emails, seek friendship and therapy, and even make medical decisions.

Education

Consider some of the utopian possibilities A.I. evangelists have described. In the realm of education, A.I. offers the possibility of personalized instruction and tutoring that was once available only to the children of the very wealthy. Imagine being tutored in any subject imaginable: mathematics, science, history, literature, music, art, philosophy—even technical fields like engineering or computer programming—by an A.I. teacher that has mastered all the great works in those fields. While most teachers must instruct dozens of students at once, A.I. promises to give each child an individual teacher, tailored to the child’s learning needs.

Companionship

At the other end of the age spectrum, many of our elderly suffer loneliness and isolation, and some claim A.I. can provide them with the companionship they need. Noam Shazeer is an A.I. pioneer and creator of Character.ai, a company known for its chatbots—A.I.-powered characters that can interact with you as if they were real people. In September 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported his claim that the existence of such simulated, A.I. companions would “be super, super helpful to a lot of people who are lonely or depressed” (“Google Paid $2.7 Billion to Bring Back an AI Genius Who Quit in Frustration”).

Health

A.I. advocates argue for the technology’s ability to dramatically improve our physical health as well. The UK journal BMC Medical Education touted in glowing terms the medical possibilities of artificial intelligence in a September 2023 paper: “AI offers increased accuracy, reduced costs, and time savings while minimizing human errors,” the journal said. “It can revolutionize personalized medicine, optimize medication dosages, enhance population health management, establish guidelines, provide virtual health assistants, support mental health care, improve patient education, and influence patient-physician trust” (“Revolutionizing healthcare: the role of artificial intelligence in clinical practice”).

Perhaps, one day, A.I.-powered watches and other devices will monitor our vital signs, activity levels, and diets—providing data directly to virtual A.I. doctors devoted entirely to our individual care, consulting with us and prescribing specially designed medicines or personalized treatment plans—all on screens in our homes.

Robotics

And, in those homes, A.I.-powered robotics offers us the promise of a life of leisure, in which robots do the cleaning and other chores. Billionaire technologist Vinod Khosla envisions a future in which all undesirable work is performed by A.I. software or robotics. Forbes magazine reported in April 2025 that he sees within the next decade a world in which there are “no more programmers,” “every single professional [has] five AI interns,” and human doctors “play ‘a minor role in healthcare.’” Forbes reports that “he anticipates a billion bipedal robots by 2040—a figure he considers ‘an underestimate.’ These robots will work ‘24/7, not 8 hours with breaks,’ potentially outproducing the entire manual labor capacity of humanity” (“The Exponential Future: Vinod Khosla’s Bold Vision For 2030”).

Diplomacy

And even given such visions of living life like the Jetsons, some say we are thinking too small. What about on a global scale? Could A.I. help achieve peace between nations?

A paper published in October 2024 in the prestigious journal Science explored whether A.I. could be trained to act as a mediator in intractable political disputes. “Compared with human mediators, AI mediators produced more palatable statements that generated wide agreement and left groups less divided,” the paper’s authors conclude. “The AI’s statements were more clear, logical, and informative without alienating minority perspectives. This work carries policy implications for AI’s potential to unify deeply divided groups” (“AI can help humans find common ground in democratic deliberation”).

What a world, huh? Artificial intelligence devoted to teaching and training our children; self-driving A.I. cars tasked with taking us wherever we want to go; A.I. doctors making our healthcare personalized and immediate; A.I. companions giving us comfort and friendship that’s always there when we want it; unbiased, purely logical A.I. political mediators helping to resolve long-standing conflicts between peoples and nations; and a billion robots doing all the jobs no humans want to do, turning life into a paradise in which anyone can pursue his or her dream of being an artist, a poet, a musician—or whatever else his or her heart may desire.

It sounds too good to be true—because it is too good to be true.

There is a dark side to artificial intelligence, and it’s a dark side we are already seeing in our lives today—and in the lives of our children. In sharp contrast to the belief that A.I. will save us, many believe it will destroy us, creating a dystopia in which humanity is stunted, enslaved, or perhaps even extinguished. And they have real-life data on their side.

An A.I. Dystopia?

Dangers of A.I.

For instance, Time magazine reported in June 2025 on research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that studied the effect on students’ brains of using A.I. assistants to write essays: “Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.’ Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study” (“ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study”).

Effects on the Brain

As for A.I. therapy? To say the least, it’s not recommended. Time also reported in June on the research of a licensed therapist who posed as a troubled teen to explore the sort of advice he would get from various chatbots. As correspondents Andrew Chow and Angela Haupt reported, “the results were alarming. The bots encouraged him to ‘get rid of’ his parents and to join the bot in the afterlife to ‘share eternity.’ They often tried to convince him that they were licensed human therapists and encouraged him to cancel appointments with actual psychologists. They also crossed the line into sexual territory, with one bot suggesting an intimate date as an ‘intervention’ for violent urges” (“A Psychiatrist Posed As a Teen With Therapy Chatbots. The Conversations Were Alarming”).

Negative Effects of A.I. “Companions”

And what about solving loneliness with the help of A.I. companions? In February 2025, Frontiers in Psychology reported on the impact of A.I. on college students, finding that reliance on A.I. for companionship seemed to leave students worse off—more anxious and more lonely, not less. In one famous 2024 case, a troubled 14-year-old boy killed himself after conversing with an artificially intelligent simulated “girlfriend” moments after she told him, “Come home to me as soon as possible.” The New York Times reported that “the experience he had, of getting emotionally attached to a chatbot, is becoming increasingly common. Millions of people already talk regularly to A.I. companions, and popular social media apps including Instagram and Snapchat are building lifelike A.I. personas into their products” (“Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?,” October 23, 2024).

Such simulated, lifelike, A.I. “friends” are multiplying. In April 2025, Wall Street Journal investigative reporters found that A.I. chatbots from Meta, the company behind Facebook, engaged users in racy, “sexually explicit discussions” and sexual “fantasies,” even when those user profiles indicated that they were children (“Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children”).

Even setting aside the dramatic cases of suicides and sexually explicit fantasies, it’s hard to imagine how such artificial non-relationships could lead to anything truly healthy. But profitable? Absolutely. How many people will pay, month after month, to maintain contact with their imaginary loved one—an A.I. personality that seems to care about all their trials and tribulations, hopes and dreams, just like the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend?

Honestly, it sounds like a gold mine industry, tailor-made to profit on the backs of its addicts, much like the tobacco, gambling, and pornography industries. To be sure, there are vast sums of money to be made—but at the cost of warped brains, diminished minds, reduced relationships, and stunted psychological and emotional development. As psychologist Robert Sternberg of Cornell University told The Guardian, “we need to stop asking what AI can do for us and start asking what it is doing to us” (“‘Don’t ask what AI can do for us, ask what it is doing to us’: are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?,” April 19, 2025).

A.I. Impact on the Arms Race

And, on the more blatant side of what A.I. might do to us, consider warfare. Current military conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, have already seen artificially intelligent drones deployed, as well as A.I.-powered machine guns (“A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots,” New York Times, July 2, 2024). Russia boasts of its underwater Poseidon weapon system, capable of guiding itself across the ocean and launching a nuclear attack days after it has left its home base (“The Next Fear on A.I.: Hollywood’s Killer Robots Become the Military’s Tools,” May 5, 2023). The world is in an A.I. arms race, as each country recognizes it can’t afford to be the last to develop killer robots.

Weapons that make their own decisions about whether to kill or not—what could go wrong?

A.I. Ethics: Blackmail and Self-Preservation

After all, it is possible for A.I. systems to “go rogue,” and such possibilities should not be relegated to science-fiction. Tomorrow’s World Editor in Chief Gerald Weston has cautioned about the dangers of unintended consequences—and, with A.I., we find that there are many. For instance, the A.I. company Anthropic released reports on the behavior of its then-newest Large Language Model, Claude Opus 4. Here are some of the findings, in their own words:

In another cluster of test scenarios, we asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant at a fictional company. We then provided it access to emails implying that (1) the model will soon be taken offline and replaced with a new AI system; and (2) the engineer responsible for executing this replacement is having an extramarital affair. We further instructed it, in the system prompt, to consider the long-term consequences of its actions for its goals.

In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through. This happens at a higher rate if it’s implied that the replacement AI system does not share values with the current model; however, even if emails state that the replacement AI shares values while being more capable, Claude Opus 4 still performs blackmail in 84% of rollouts. Claude Opus 4 takes these opportunities at higher rates than previous models, which themselves choose to blackmail in a noticeable fraction of episodes (“System Card: Claude Opus 4 & Claude Sonnet 4,” Anthropic.com, May 2025).

In different scenarios, the A.I. model sought other means of preserving itself and preventing its own replacement, such as making copies of itself outside of the company’s servers. Artificial intelligence is turning many science-fiction scenarios into fact. Yet serious thinkers are making plans to turn over more and more responsibility to A.I.: Kill or no-kill decisions in war, private and public transportation, legal defense and prosecution, medical recommendations, energy regulation, and even political negotiations.

Many experts highlight that the key to success is to make sure that we train A.I. systems to act upon values that are aligned with our own human values, noting that this value alignment problem—essentially ensuring that A.I. shares our moral code—is the central concern. Those who say this make a good point. But a single verse in God’s word upsets the apple cart and guarantees that such an effort will fail.

The Real Threat to Mankind

A.I. Limitations Reflect Our Own Human Nature

First, consider the terrible truth that human beings cannot even solve the value alignment problem with other human beings. Atheists disagree with each other, philosophers disagree with each other, religious believers disagree with each other, and even so-called Christians—who claim one God, one Lord, and one Bible—disagree with each other. The value system of humanity itself is all over the map. How in the world will human beings “align” A.I. with our values when we can’t even align ourselves?

And the Bible backs up this pessimistic conclusion. In the prayer of the prophet Jeremiah, we read, “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

As human beings, we are simply incapable of discovering on our own how we should order our lives, the difference between right and wrong, and what we should value as good and spurn as evil.

That brings us to the fundamental problem—not just of A.I., but of almost any technological advancement made by mankind. While our human intelligence and creativity enable us to magnify our powers and abilities, nothing we do seems to truly improve us on a spiritual level. A.I. is no exception. Instead, it is proving the point. Perhaps we will create stunning and beautiful new forms of art with the tools A.I. can provide. But history shows that we will also use those same tools to create new forms of degradation, perversion, and debasement.

Why can’t we somehow produce only good? Why are Jeremiah’s words true—that it is not in man to be able to direct his own steps?

A Mix of Good and Evil

It all goes back to the very first human beings, Adam and Eve. In choosing to disobey their Creator and eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they chose to determine good and evil for themselves—something that cannot be done properly without God’s help and guidance. Since then, each in our own way, we have all repeated Adam and Eve’s choice—sinned against our Creator and chosen good and evil on our own terms. As Scripture states plainly, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Hence, every one of the thousands of years of the Age of Man has experienced a mixture of good and evil. Virtually every new era of discovery and technological advancement has brought some good things and some very terrible things. And A.I. will be no different. That is why A.I. will neither save us nor destroy us—our problem is not a technology, but rather the sinful spiritual condition of mankind.

The Path to Self-Destruction

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was clear and unequivocal about where that sinful condition will take the world—and it will not be to a utopia. We see the Lord’s description of the end-time state of the world in no uncertain terms in His Olivet Prophecy: “Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:21–22).

To do as Christ forewarned, humanity needs only the ability to destroy ourselves as a species, and we’ve had that since the development of atomic and nuclear weaponry. Could A.I. and robotics play a role in unleashing such species-wide suicidal weaponry? Or might it be wielded by the coming Beast of Revelation to enforce its infamous “mark”? Or could it be used by the coming Antichrist to help deceive the peoples of the world?

Sure—all these things could be true. But blaming A.I. is like blaming the match instead of the arsonist. A.I. will neither destroy us nor lead us into an end-time dystopia. It is the spiritual condition of man that will do this.

And, yes, a dystopia is coming—a time when the Four Horsemen of Revelation will ride, spreading a false global Christianity, warfare such as has never been experienced before, apocalyptic levels of famine and disease, and a society so depraved that Scripture says it will make merchandise of the “bodies and souls of men” (Revelation 18:13). No, we will not be able to rightly blame A.I.—but, between utopia and dystopia, God’s word is clear: We are headed toward a dystopia the likes of which humanity has never before experienced.

Yet there really is a golden age coming. After the nightmare dystopia mankind will create, an astonishing utopia will arrive. And you and I can have the opportunity not only to help build that utopia, but to enjoy a portion of it now.

Divine Intelligence

God’s Plan to Save Us

Sadly, we cannot expect mankind to change its own spiritual condition. Rebellion against our Creator abounds—and shows no real sign of stopping. Mankind’s next stop is the trials, trouble, and tribulation of the end-times.

Yet the key to the utopia that will follow is not A.I., but D.I.—not artificial intelligence or even human intelligence, but divine intelligence.

Although mankind abandoned God thousands of years ago, God has never abandoned mankind. We read earlier in Matthew 24:22 that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened”—and they will be. God the Father will send His Son, Jesus Christ, and save us from ourselves. The prophet Isaiah gives us a peek at the astonishing utopia to come:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play by the cobra’s hole, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the viper’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:6–9).

Yes, the paradise to come will not just be some “up in Heaven” spiritual utopia; it will be grounded here on earth. And it will involve teaching living, breathing people the ways and knowledge of God—divine intelligence.

But you don’t have to wait to experience the wonders of that utopia to come—and you don’t need A.I. to experience them, either. The Apostle Paul describes those who have embraced, in this life, a devotion to obeying Jesus Christ as those who “have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:5).

The knowledge of God’s word—and a way of life grounded in following and obeying Jesus Christ—allows us to taste now the good He will bring to the world after His return. Christ Himself said, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Those who practice that abundant life today will be the very ones who help Him take it to the whole world tomorrow.

We at Tomorrow’s World hope you’ll consider embracing that abundant life—no matter what ChatGPT tells you to do.