Devices

Devices. For the longest time I have had a fascination with technological devices. If it has a button, I’m interested. I remember the first time I used my well-saved pocket money to buy a calculator watch. I loved that watch and wore it to school with pride, playing with the buttons while I sat on the school bus. That watch seems like an ancient relic now when I think about the smart watch I wear today. But it’s not just watches that have become smart.

In 2023 Ray Ban, a company famous for its glasses and sunglasses, released smart glasses called Ray Ban Metaglasses. These glasses, equipped with a camera, allow the wearer to ask questions out loud and receive in the moment answers, take photos, get speech translation in real time, and yes, they’re prescription lens-compatible, too. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has washed over our world with what feels like the transformative power of a tsunami, and there is no foreseeable end to this wave in sight. Thanks to AI we have smart TVs, smart fridges, smart vacuums, smart doorbells, smart lights, smart cars, and even smart cities!

But is this a good thing? A growing chorus of voices from around the world say no. While AI is developing at an astonishingly fast rate that is set to transform education and health care in many positive ways, it also now poses a very real threat to the safety of humanity—just as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did to our first parents long ago. Countries are today locked in a new arms race to be the first to produce AGI, artificial general intelligence, a kind of AI that seeks to match or surpass human intelligence in all cognitive tasks.[1] And when this code is cracked, there will then also be the potential for unlocking what is being called ASI, or artificial super intelligence. ASI would surpass human intelligence in all areas. The immense danger something like this could pose for humanity boggles the mind.

Setting Parameters

Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist touted as “the godfather of AI,” has now said that there is a 10 to 20 percent chance that AI will lead to human extinction in three decades.[2] This is why in 2023 Elon Musk and a group of other tech leaders from around the world signed an open letter calling for a 6 month pause on the development of AI technology because there has been no time to regulate it or discuss ethical and moral parameters for its development and use. This desired pause, however, did not happen and seems less and less likely to ever happen.

Interestingly, the day after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, newly elected Pope Leo XIV said in his first address to the college of cardinals, “I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificialintelligencethat pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”[3]

Instead, in their human pride they determined to make themselves great, and they determined to do this independent from God.

All of this reminds me of another time in the Bible when humanity tried to build something great, but it backfired badly. Genesis 11:4 says, “And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” Even though God had already promised there would never again be a worldwide flood (Gen. 8:21), the inhabitants of the world in Genesis 11 placed no faith in the God of heaven or His promises. Instead, in their human pride they determined to make themselves great, and they determined to do this independent from God.

As a parent, every time my 2-year-old son attempts something independent of my help and contrary to my counsel, it is always destined for disaster. This is exactly what resulted from the selfish ambition of these builders from long ago as well. Genesis 11:5-7 says, “But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ ”

That God comes down in Genesis 11 is a reminder to us all that God sees us and all that we do. He is the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God who knew what would have happened on the plain of Shinar had He not intervened to disrupt the building of the Tower of Babel. So “the monument to their pride became the memorial of their folly.”[4] As the psalmist once said, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Ps. 127:1).

In light of this, Jesus is today appealing to us all to build our faith on Him who is the Rock of Ages, ensuring that God’s Word forms the foundation for our lives. Knowing the Master and not the latest machines is the most important pursuit we can have. AI will never be able to replace the power of prayer and Bible study as agents to prepare us for an eternity with Jesus.

The Promised Ending

“Satan well knows that all whom he can lead to neglect prayer and the searching of the Scriptures will be overcome by his attacks. Therefore he invents every possible device to engross the mind.”[5]Satan’s devices would be any and all distractions that he can employ to absorb our attention from the pursuit of knowing God and having a saving relationship with Him. Smart technology definitely wasn’t a thing when Ellen White wrote these words, yet I can’t help thinking how appropriate this wording is for today.

While AI can be used as a tool to support our spiritual growth, it also risks being a digital distraction that robs us of precious time with Jesus. If this is something you recognize as a challenge in your life, the Holy Spirit can help you reset your priorities. We are yet again living in a time when the inhabitants of our world are building a tower, not out of brick and mortar, but out of data and code; through AI it seems almost as if humanity is yet again reaching for the heavens without any regard for the Creator or His creation.

Regardless of whether or when AGI and ASI become a reality, this much we can know for sure: the same God who intervened in Genesis 11 by coming down is coming again. And He must be coming soon, because our world isn’t going to be ending in some cataclysmic, nuclear AI-related accident or atrocity. AI-powered robots are not going to mysteriously take over our planet and destroy us all, either.

God’s Word makes clear that God Himself is coming, and He will personally “descend from heaven with a shout” (1 Thess. 4:16) to rescue His earth children from the plains of this earth, and when He does, all the towers of our invention and devising will be brought to nothing. Daily we can choose to start our day with Him and His Word before we reach for our smart devices in the morning. May God help us to live each day looking by faith to Jesus, anchoring our lives in His Word, and praying with joyful expectation of His soon and glorious return.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence.

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/27/godfather-of-ai-raises-odds-of-the-technology-wiping-out-humanity-over-next-30-years.

[3] https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/may/documents/20250510-collegio-cardinalizio.html.

[4] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1890, 1908), p. 123.

[5] Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1911),p. 519.