Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm Shane Morris.

There's a famous story about how the Times of London once put out a query.

What's wrong with the world today?

G.K. Chesterton wrote back simply, Dear Sir, I am.

It's always worth reflecting on his answer and his very scriptural awareness that human

sin is at the root of the world's problems. It's especially worthwhile at a time when so much

of what's wrong with the world is being blamed on non-human artificial intelligence. Alongside those

who think AI will save the world and revolutionize everything are a growing number who think it will destroy the world, or at least come close.

In a recent episode of Ross Douthat's Interesting Times podcast, former open AI researcher

Daniel Kokatio warned that artificial intelligence will become an existential threat to humanity

within two years.

While we await his apocalypse, the damage AI is doing to

education by making cheating normal has become the stuff of regular headlines. AI is destroying

a generation of students, declared the tech news website Futurism. And thanks to AI, everyone is

cheating their way through college, warned New York magazine. But as much as AI's potential can cause

harm, blaming it alone misses the point and likely makes these problems worse. Humans are the

fallen ones. And that fallenness manifest in all kinds of destructive ways. Machines, strictly

speaking, don't have moral intentions. They can only reflect ours. Consider the growing number

of people using popular chatbots like chat GPT, who are being led into spiritual delusions

and psychosis. Rolling Stone told the chilling stories of how spouses and parents have watched

...