As warnings about artificial intelligence abound, an expert with the Media Research Center, a conservative content analysis group, believes religious liberty could be in peril.
“The [political] left controls AI, and the left is going to what the left wants to do,” Dan Schneider, vice-president of the Media Research Center Free Speech America, told Fox News. “The left despises the whole idea of a higher being that sets standards of right and wrong.”
Schneider believes the left sees faith as an “engine that has destroyed different societies and peoples throughout history,” and will, as a result, use such technologies to crack down on religion.
And his cautionary comments didn’t end there, as he warned AI could become the “single greatest weapon against faith, against truth, against religion.”
Schneider told Fox News there are certainly positives that could come from AI, but Christians should pay attention and get engaged in the conversation before the situation turns dire.
“The left controls the tools of AI, and the left wants to bring that to war against people of faith in the future,” he said. “If people of faith are seeing value in it today, they need to get engaged in this fight to protect the upside of AI for tomorrow.”
As CBN’s Faithwire has reported, Schneider isn’t alone in voicing fears about AI. In a more general sense, some tech heads like Elon Musk and faith leaders such as Johnnie Moore have openly called for a pause of sorts to figure out best practices for using AI before the technology further advances.
Moore expounded upon this topic during a March interview with CBN’s Faithwire, noting the importance of paying attention when people like Musk who are on the “bleeding edge of technology” publicly encourage such a sweeping slowdown.
“I think we ought to pause, and I’m not sure that the general public yet really understands how all of their lives will change, and could potentially change, because of this new technology,” Moore said.
The author and faith leader heralded the transformative and positive benefits AI could bring society, noting the technology could usher in better health, longer lives, and other solutions. But he also warned of what can happen if AI is left unrestrained or is harnessed by unscrupulous world governments.
More recently, David Curry, president and CEO of Global Christian Relief, an organization devoted to uncovering Christian persecution and advocating for believers across the globe, revealed the concerning ways repressive regimes, terrorists, and others might utilize the technology.
“The example that pops out that is a clear and present danger is China and their use of artificial intelligence to monitor the movement of their population,” Curry said. “They have a social scoring system which tracks church attendance and can prohibit children under the age of 18 from going to church or, if it can’t prohibit it, it will certainly punish you in your social score.”
He said this dynamic is already underway inside China, though he also worries about what could come next as technological manipulations evolve.
“What we’re trying to raise the alarm on is the effects that will grow as more and more of these artificial intelligence technologies come online — the way in which the biases and assumptions that are built into this predictive modeling could affect religious faith,” Curry said. “We’re focused right now on the persecution of Christians, the monitoring of Christian activity, the censorship of worship services, pastors posting of videos — all the various implications of artificial intelligence.”
We’ll leave you with his comments on the complex matter: