When I think about artificial intelligence (AI), the same question comes to mind that we so often ask throughout our lives. From birth, we must repeatedly struggle to find our place in the world: in our family, school, workplace, social circles, congregation, church, and public life. Sometimes we have to make several attempts at “finding our place,” because we ourselves change, our circumstances change, and so do the people and environment around us. New eras bring new challenges that lead us to new places. Those who are guided by God must find their divinely appointed place under the leading of the Holy Spirit—the right relationship with others and, as stewards, with the things of this world. While AI has neither personality nor a calling from Christ, today the algorithm might still pose a similar question to us: Where is my place?
Where is my place?—AI asks us, yet we should note this is not the first time in history the question has arisen. What we now call AI has roots stretching back roughly to the 1950s. The first great wave of enthusiasm for creating machines that could imitate human actions and thinking—such as playing chess—fizzled out after about 15 years of modest successes. The emergence of expert systems in the 1980s brought a second wave, producing simple voice-recognition solutions and industrial prototypes. But even then, AI had not truly found its place in the world, and by the end of the 20th century, this era also closed with half-successes. Around 2010, however, three factors converged to launch the third great wave we are in now: smart devices began producing vast amounts of data for machine learning, increasingly powerful computers could process that data, and new theoretical breakthroughs emerged in AI research. Today, there’s no question whether AI can play chess better than we can, or carry on conversations that feel human-like. The third wave has broken through barriers once thought insurmountable, yet the question remains—how far will the sea spread? Where will the new shoreline be? Will it stop, recede, or flood the entire city?
Where is my place?—the question sharpens over time. Many believe AI’s place now is in the “danger zone,” and that the future would be brighter if it were quarantined—or even sunk altogether. The proximity of physical and cyber warfare feeds our fears, though let’s be honest: history has been drenched in blood even without AI. Where could we go back to for a safer world? Only to Paradise—but since the Fall, the way there is not backward, not even forward, but upward, on the path our Redeemer Jesus Christ opened for us on the cross. With Him, we have a secure place.
Where is my place?—AI’s restless search offers no tranquil bobbing on the early-morning sparkle of Lake Balaton’s surface. It seeks its place not above, but here below, in the stormy world into which Christians are called. And the law of this world is that waves eventually smooth out—yet before they do, the crest is followed by the trough. Technology develops no differently. Observations show that every new technology is met with massive attention and excitement at first: everyone wants to ride the wave, and tech companies pour in money. But each growth wave has a peak, when reality’s sharp teeth begin to bite chunks out of the naïve surfers’ joy. Not everything is ripe at the moment it appears; short-lived brilliance bears no fruit, and many “world-changing” ideas prove empty. Eventually, the silver cord snaps, the wheel falls into the well—and the user wonders: Has my technology truly moved the world forward? The search for place does not end there, though—the trough of skepticism gives way to a slow recognition of reality. The poetic question begins to yield real answers: yes, the world has moved forward, but not as much and not in the way we imagined through rose-colored glasses. Yet in some real-life situations, AI can indeed help greatly, providing genuine solutions to genuine problems.
Where is my place—the real place? I believe this is AI’s true question today. Where are the areas where AI is a genuine help, where we would be poorer without it, where it could save lives, where it could be a blessed (though not saving) tool in this world? When we start using large language models and generative AI algorithms (like ChatGPT) in everyday life, we quickly realize they can provide useful information about a given document. But sometimes squeezing that out of them takes nearly as much work as summarizing it ourselves. In fact, we feel most at ease when we know the document better than the algorithm does. I suggest trying this: occasionally ask the algorithm, “Are you quite sure about that?” In my experience, most of the time it will backtrack—or at least refine and correct its answer. So where, then, is AI’s place? Does it help, mislead, or hinder? A Western European researcher once told me that 70% of their research grant applications are written with ChatGPT. Seeing my surprise, he added: the applicant is responsible for the content. If they accept ChatGPT’s “blah-blah” uncritically, their application won’t win—and that’s entirely their own responsibility. The key point is this: AI does not take responsibility. That remains ours, whether we are ordinary users, teachers, system administrators, developers, or manufacturers.
So where is AI’s real place? Although we’ve been putting the question in AI’s mouth, let’s not forget: we are thinking about a tool, an algorithm, an object. Tools—the fruits of technology—are called forth from the dust of the earth by humans and placed in the world according to human choice. Where will we place it? Will it be a stick vacuum cleaner tucked in a corner, or a robot vacuum with free range over every nook and cranny? Perhaps here, too, the saying holds: as many houses, as many customs. The variety of life and the vastness of use cases, the colors of change and challenge AI brings—we cannot squeeze them into a single image or describe them with a single formula. Who, before the wave of deep learning systems, would have thought that in 15 years (that is, today) we could go on vacation without a huge paper road map, simply speaking Hungarian into a handy device and hearing it in 200 languages? Yet who would have guessed that the same device would soon know what I want to buy, see, or hear—before I do? Both enchanting and frightening, attractive and repelling—like the joy and fear of approaching holy things. But this “holy” is more like “pseudo-holy”—not a he, but an it. We must define its place—with clear boundaries—and live with it. We may live with it, but we must not live by it. At the start of the wave, the question was whether AI would take my job. Today, in the phase where the turbulence begins to settle, the question is more how we can use purpose-trained AI algorithms constructively in our work. When and in what do we need it—and when must we rely first on our own wisdom, aesthetic sense, Christian calling from above, and the Holy Spirit’s inner confirmation? How can we discern whether an AI suggestion—learned from vast data and promising high success—is truly effective and right? How can we know for sure what lies behind AI’s “good” suggestions, and from what unseen factors it has drawn its conclusions? Which path leads to the home of light, and which to the dwelling place of darkness? (Job 18:19)
Where is AI’s place in my life? Wherever I put it. It would be good to see this more clearly, more purely, more definitively—and to speak more boldly: if Christ has set us free for freedom, why would we let ourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery? (Galatians 5:1) I have the freedom to switch off my phone. I have the freedom not to sync messages to my watch. I have the freedom to keep a day when my game streak, my series, my online presence breaks—even if I lose a few “lives” for it. Let us be bold Bible readers here, and apply Jesus’ words to our online space as well: “whoever loses [virtual] life for my sake will find it [the true one from Him]” (Matthew 10:39). I have the freedom to help my child clearly define the (measured) place of AI in the Christian life—whether in virtual games, social media, targeted ads for trendy goods, lifelike video chatbots, AI-generated memes, or homework done with ChatGPT. In this current third AI wave, and in the fourth, fifth, or hundredth AI wave ahead, let us dare to build our lives on the truth that our portion “has fallen in pleasant places” (Psalm 16:6), that our place is the “spacious place” (Psalm 18:19; 31:8; 118:5; 119:45) of freedom to act before the face of Jesus Christ. If we believe, confess, and know where our place is, then it will be much easier to find a personal, faith-based answer to the hard question: where is AI’s place in my life?
Author: Balázs Németh, D.Sc., Ph.D. in control engineering, reformed pastor
(The original text is in Hungarian, see the article at Parokia site. The translation is generated automatically by ChatGPT.)














