“AI”, Artificial Intelligence, is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “The capacity of computers or other machines to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour; the field of study concerned with this.”

My definition would never make it to a dictionary, but AI is software that can think, and maybe generate more software, and that might be bad news for computer programmers who work in software development.

AI is a revolution in our modern world, and it will probably change the way we live. For example, teachers don’t always know who or what wrote the homework assignments that students hand in. Did they get a good grade for something written by an AI program, or are they just very good writers?

This might be a new idea for most of us, but AI is starting to impact cultures around the world. One news story that interested me was from the African country of Kenya. That is a place that I have visited, and I know that education, with qualifying exams, is an important part of life there.

Apparently, there are people who ‘help’ students to write essays for college assignments. The students use the help to get good grades because for many of them, academic English is different from their first language which is spoken at home.

I am no expert but I visited that part of Africa when I was young, and I still remember how to say “Jambo” (Hello).

Hello AI.

And if you are wondering, I really did write this, and I am not a computer. I am using my old laptop that still runs on Windows 10. Don’t judge me.

I might call the extra academic help ‘cheating’ but now the helpers have a problem, and the problem is making them unemployed as students don’t want to hire and pay the human helpers. The news was reported by the New York Times, but this is a story about AI in every part of the world:

And now there is another news story about AI that seems to be getting attention in all parts of the world.

Did you know that at least one expert has warned that AI could bring about the end of the world, or more correctly, “human extinction.” This story is reported in several news sources, and was given a full report in “Al Jazeera” which you probably know is a news source based in the Middle East. AI news is no longer reserved for a few specialists in Silicon Valley or the stock exchange.

READ: US legislators push AI safety laws amid human extinction warnings

The prediction, from at least one expert, is that AI could destroy the whole world, or at least, the human race.

This is all interesting, and the news media is feeding us more information. What we might miss is the spiritual lesson in the AI revolution.

Where is God in all this new activity?

Most of us were probably not alive in 1945, but do these words ring a bell for you: “Little Boy” … “Enola Gay” … “Hiroshima”? The event associated with those names was followed by another one just like it attached to the name “Nagasaki.”

I am talking about the atomic bombs dropped on two cities in Japan, to force an end to World War Two. “Little Boy” is the name of the first atomic bomb and “Enola Gay” is the airplane that carried and dropped the bomb. Hiroshima is the Japanese city that was mostly destroyed by that one bomb, carried on one airplane.

Japan, one of the most powerful countries in the world, surrendered unconditionally within days, when their government and the people saw the terrible destruction. The world of warfare had completely changed.

I am not an expert on the subject, but if we used all the atomic weapons available today, and any other weapons of mass destruction, the whole human race would be wiped out.

We humans have that power now, and this is a new development. Before 1945, our mass extinction was only an idea in science fiction stories.

Did you know about two thousand years ago, at a time with simple weapons, and no computers or software and certainly no AI — someone told us about the mass extinction threat, that would happen in our time?

This strange idea that we are just beginning to learn about, was explained in some detail, by a man named Jesus:

So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.  (Matthew 24: 15 to 22)

“If those days had not been shortened” — how did Jesus know something that we are just learning about now? And how did a carpenter in a small province of the Roman Empire know what we would become, and how we would develop dangerous technology?

We should pay attention. According to Jesus, we are moving into a dangerous time in the history of the world. We live in a time when impossible things are now possible, and the impossible predictions from Jesus could easily, even likely, happen.

There is a spiritual lesson in AI.